Army Corps of Engineers found at fault over Katrina damage

[dixiegrrrrl]

breaking on Rachel.and damn well about time.

More from Times-Picayune:


Corps' operation of MR-GO doomed homes in St. Bernard, Lower 9th Ward, judge rules
By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune
November 18, 2009, 8:00PM


In a groundbreaking decision, a federal judge ruled late Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' mismanagement of maintenance of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet was directly responsible for flood damage of homes in St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. could result in the federal government paying $700,000 in damages to three people and a business in those areas, but also sets the stage for judgments against the govenment for damages by as many as 100,000 other residents, businesses and local governments in those areas who filed claims with the corps after Katrina.

If successful, the damage claims could total billions of dollars.

http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2009/11/post_16.html

One of the best hurricane experts in N.O. was fired by the state after he said theCorps. was responsible.

[BlooInBloo]

1. And i LOVE how Maddow immediately re-jiggered the show tonite to get a full segment on it...

with a knowledgeable person. How awesome is that?

[Retired AF Dem]

2. I find the people that build a city

below sea level at fault.

[EFerrari]

3. They didn't built a defective levee.

And are we really so witless that we can't do as well as the Dutch?

[Retired AF Dem]

4. The Dutch did a fine job

Of course there isn't very many hurricanes in Holland. I wonder how those levees in Holland would stand up to a cat 4 hurricane?

[EFerrari]

5. Except they knew that they'd shorted the levee footing.

They didn't build it to spec and then get bested by a hurricane. They built it substandard.

Maybe that's the part that I'm still mad about.

[Louisiana1976]

6. Not all of New Orleans is below sea level--the more desirable areas

such as the French Quarter are above sea level.

[intheflow]

8. Very true!

The French Quarter didn't flood. That's why the rich folk live there, they made sure the poor people got the swampland.

[liberal_at_heart]

7. I doubt it

My husband is an engineer. Engineers over engineer. They don't under engineer. They take their plans to the bosses and they say oh no that costs too much do something that costs less money.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Um, everyone remembers when Bu**sh** cut the COE budget?

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0905/090105jv1.htm

Ex-Army Corps officials say budget cuts imperiled flood mitigation efforts

By Jason Vest and Justin Rood [email protected] September 1, 2005

As levees burst and floods continued to spread across areas hit by Hurricane Katrina yesterday, a former chief of the Army Corps of Engineers disparaged senior White House officials for "not understanding" that key elements of the region's infrastructure needed repair and rebuilding.

Mike Parker, the former head of the Army Corps of Engineers, was forced to resign in 2002 over budget disagreements with the White House. He clashed with Mitch Daniels, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, which sets the administration's annual budget goals.

"One time I took two pieces of steel into Mitch Daniels' office," Parker recalled. "They were exactly the same pieces of steel, except one had been under water in a Mississippi lock for 30 years, and the other was new. The first piece was completely corroded and falling apart because of a lack of funding. I said, 'Mitch, it doesn't matter if a terrorist blows the lock up or if it falls down because it disintegrates -- either way it's the same effect, and if we let it fall down, we have only ourselves to blame.' It made no impact on him whatsoever."
***
Parker -- who, along with members of his family, was forced to evacuate his Mississippi farm on Sunday night -- drew media attention (and the White House's ire) in 2002 by telling the Senate Budget Committee that a White House proposal to cut just over $2 billion from the Corps' $6 billion budget request would have a "negative impact" on the national interest. Parker also noted that cuts would mean the end of scores of contracts and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

After Parker's Capitol Hill appearance, Daniels wrote an angry memo to President Bush, writing that Parker's testimony "reads badly. . . on the printed page," and that "Parker. . . distancing actively from the administration." Parker, a former Republican congressman from Mississippi, was forced to resign shortly thereafter.
***
more at the link.

[Louisiana1976]

10. Thanks for this post--I recall having read that Bush cut the COE budget

so he could afford tax cuts for his rich friends. Which makes him responsible for New Orleans' drowning.

[Thothmes]

11. Check the age of those levees and sea walls

believe they predate the Bush administration by many years.

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. Facts and opinions are 2 different things.

Fact: John Barry's book Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 details very well the beginning of the problem, including the poor planning that led to severe flooding of the river, and subsequent decisions
and shortcuts which created levee problems, specifically the Gulf-Outlet Canal.
I suggest anyone seriously interested in actually knowing about New Orleans and the levees read it.

Fact: Ivor Van Heerden, the scientist who led the state's independent investigation into Hurricane Katrina levee failures, was fired for stating the truth. He had warned for years of the levee problem.
"It is no surprise that van Heerden has been fired, as he has also been very critical of the LSU administration. His May 2006 book, The Storm: What went wrong and why during Hurricane Katrina--the inside story from one Louisiana scientist, tells of a case in November 2005 after Katrina where two LSU assistant chancellors told him to stop talking to the press, because it was "hurting LSU's quest for federal funding across the board."
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/04/lsu_hurricane_s.html
(van Heerden was given another job, it states in the story.)
but still was a shock to hear of his removal from his important post at the Hurricane Center.

For a good review I suggest Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_van_Heerden