February 2001
Bush’s first budget proposed more than half a billion dollars worth of cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers for the 2002 fiscal year. Bush proposed half of what his own officials said was necessary for the critical Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project (SELA)—a project started after a 1995 rainstorm flooded 25,000 homes and caused a half billion dollars in damage.
Bush did this to offset the tax break he gave to the top 1% of rich Americans. The first major economic initiative pursued by the president was a massive tax cut for the rich, enacted in June of 2001. Bush signed his massive $1.3 trillion income tax cut into law-a tax cut that severely depleted the government of revenues it needed to address critical priorities.
February 2002
Bush provided just $5 million for maintaining and upgrading critical hurricane protection levees in New Orleans—one fifth of what government experts and Republican elected officials in Louisiana told the administration was needed. Bush knew SELA needed $80 million to keep working, but the he only proposed providing a quarter of that.
During 2002, contractors working to raise the St. Charles Parish hurricane protection levee north of Airline Hwy had to use their own funds because Congess and the President provided only $2,000,000 for the entire Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity project, which includes all the hurricane protection levees in St. Charles, Jefferson, Orleans and St. Bernard Parishes.
February 2004
The SELA project sought $100 million to repair the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain levees, but Bush offered only $16.5 million. The Army Corps of Engineers asked for $27 million to pay for hurricane protection upgrades around Lake Pontchartrain—but the White House cut that to $3.9 million. Gaps in levees around Lake Pontchartrain & the Industrial Canal, which were supposed to be filled by 2004, were not filled because of budget shortfalls. Repair work on the levees, including the ones that failed, was stopped due to lack of funds.
June 8, 2004
Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for.
From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:
"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."
The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.
May 25, 2007
Donald Powell, recovery chief for the Gulf Coast, publicly stated, "the federal government is responsible for this hurricane damage because of the failure of the levee system.” This is the very first statement ever out of the White House that accepts responsibility for the failure of the federal flood protection system in Louisiana.
Feb 02, 2008
Judge rules the ACOE not liable, but at fault
"While the United States government is immune for legal liability for the defalcations alleged herein, it is not free, nor should it be, from posterity's judgment concerning its failure to accomplish what was its task," the judge wrote. "This story -- 50 years in the making -- is heart-wrenching. Millions of dollars were squandered in building a levee system with respect to these outfall canals which was known to be inadequate by the corps's own calculations."
"It is not within the court's power to address the wrongs committed. It is hopefully within the citizens of the United States' power to address the failures of our laws and agencies."
= new reply since forum marked as read
Good news Friday.
