The good, reality-based folks at factcheck.org have taken on the task of examining the history of the New Orleans levee concerns and the slashed funding that has been so widely reported. Administration officials can no longer deny (and that means you – Chertoff) that their failure to act to prevent this tragedy was anything less than callous disregard for public safety and the life and liberty of the grand citizens of that once vibrant city.
In an article titled “Is Bush to Blame For New Orleans Flooding”, factcheck.org uses a fact sheet that had been produced by the Army Corps of Engineers on May 23, 2005, to analyze the Lake Ponchartrain levee problems.
…
FY 2006 BUDGET/EFFORT. The President’s budget for fiscal year 2005 is $3.0 million. This will be insufficient to fund new construction contracts. We could spend $20 million if the funds were provided. These funds are necessary to maintain the project schedule and to meet our contractual and local sponsor commitments.
IMPACTS OF BUDGET SHORTFALL. In Orleans Parish, two major pump stations are threatened by hurricane storm surges. Major contracts need to be awarded to provide fronting protection for them. Also, several levees have settled and need to be raised to provide the design protection. The current funding shortfalls in fiscal year 2005 and fiscal year 2006 will prevent the Corps from addressing these pressing needs.
That’s straight from the horse’s mouth.
From factcheck.org:
In the past five years, the amount of money spent on all Corps construction projects in the New Orleans district has declined by 44 percent, according to the New Orleans CityBusiness newspaper, from $147 million in 2001 to $82 million in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
The Bush administration has been throwing out a lot of numbers at their press conferences this week: x number of National Guard troops, x number of MREs, x number of helicopters etc. Well, it’s time to start throwing these budget shortfall numbers back at them in a big way.
Officially, the Army Corps has taken on this stance:
We don’t know whether the levees would have done better had the work been completed. But the Corps says that even a completed levee project wasn’t designed for the storm that actually occurred.
Okay – then that begs the question: why wasn’t the planned upgrade aimed at dealing with a category 5 hurricane?
On the issue of whether Bush erred when he said that a breach had not been anticipated, you can mince words and employ semantics or you can look at this statement by Walter Maestri, the emergency coordinator of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans when he was interviewed by PBS’s Bill Moyers on the issue following a simulation of a category 5 hurricane in 2002:
No one – not one person can deny that this event was not foreseen and could have been prepared for in a much more aggressive way. Anyone who does so is a bald-faced liar.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Bald-faced lying indeed. I wrote that levee post about them being breached on Monday, not Tuesday. But this is the other part of it — it was predicted. It was inevitable if nothing got done.
The Industral canal levee was breached during the storm, and the 17th Street canal levee collapsed shortly after. This was the catastrophic breach. The other component besides timing (MONDAY!! sorry…), is that the part that collapsed was where the construction work was. It was connected to a brand new part of the levee. I’m still not sure if it was still under construction, unfinished and abandoned, or what. But it’s probably somewhere in the Times-Picayune archives.
A dKos diary by firefly has a good rundown of the levees in New Orleans and links to the National Weather Service reports of the the breach:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/4/1795/78689
You are right. The overtopping of levees in the case of a category 5 storm was forseen and “something could have been done.”
But: Who is proposing to do something about the evacuation of much of the central United States when the New Madrid fault next lets go? Nobody. Who is proposing the pre-construction of refugee housing for 10 million Los Angelenians who will be homeless when the Big One hits? Nobody. Who has stockpiled iodine kits for the millions who will be exposed when a dirty bomb is let off in San Francisco bay? Nobody.
Who has pressed for an energy policy that meets the requirements of low pollution, non-global warming, low cost, self-sufficient transportation? Nobody. Who has proposed a single-payer health care system that meets the simplest and most basic medical needs of the country? Nobody.
The problem is a lot bigger than just inadequate disaster planning in New Orleans…
HERE ARE SOME MORE FACTS:
The levee system which protects NO from the river has contributed to the widespread loss of wetlands and coastal Louisiana, the loss of both which contributed mightily to the storm surge reaching the city with such intensity.
The coast and wetlands soak up much of the storm surge BEFORE it gets inland.
So there is a good/bad in this equation. It is not as simple as you believe.
The amount of money required to reinforce the levees to withstand a category 5 hurricane (katrina was a 4 when it hit land)not too mention the amount of additional land required to bulk them up, is impossibly large. I have heard it estimated in the hundreds of billions. A few million more funding here or there makes almost no difference.
The grand people of New Orleans are the most murderous people per capita (or 2nd most)in the urban US during the best of times. New Orleans is an extremely violent and dangerous city, as many lost foreign and US tourists have discovered to their great dismay over the years.
It is also a great and unique city revered the world over filled with wonderful people. Again, not as simple an equation as you posit.
I lived in NO for two years 1996-98. I was afraid on the streets after dark a lot. During the best of times.