Reuters: (Bush) Budget cuts delayed New Orleans flood control work

[truthpusher]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050901/pl_nm/weather_katrina_funding_dc_1

Budget cuts delayed New Orleans flood control work

By Andy Sullivan
7 minutes ago

Bush administration funding cuts forced federal engineers to delay improvements on the levees, floodgates and pumping stations that failed to protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters, agency documents showed on Thursday.

The former head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that handles the infrastructure of the nation's waterways, said the damage in New Orleans probably would have been much less extensive had flood-control efforts been fully funded over the years.

"Levees would have been higher, levees would have been bigger, there would have been other pumps put in," said Mike Parker, a former Mississippi congressman who headed the engineering agency from 2001 to 2002.

(snip)

complete story: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050901/pl_nm/weather_katrina_funding_dc_1