Tommy on Mar 17th 2009 Army Corp of Engineers, Levees
I’ll just let this speak for itself:
The clock is ticking. Congress told the Army Corps of Engineers to give New Orleans what it thought it had, so-called Category 3 hurricane protection, and the Corps’ deadline is 2011. So, less than two years from the moment when the Corps again tells New Orleanians the comforting news that we’re safe, here comes confirmation that a money shortage may be inclining the Corps toward building a technologically inferior solution to the problem of getting rainwater out of the city while keeping storm surge from entering it.
The first problem is a recurring one: It rains a lot in New Orleans, and when it does, it often seems as if the sky is having a clearance sale on water. The second problem also recurs, though much less frequently: when a major hurricane is in the Gulf of Mexico, storm surge can get to Lake Ponchartrain and needs to be kept in the lake, lest it catastrophically flood the city.
This Times-Picayune story points out that not only is the Corps leaning toward the cheaper solution, which outside experts deride as technologically inferior, but, some critics allege, the Corps may be inflating the cost of the superior solution and underestimating the cost of its preferred solution—putting its fingers on the scale.
Tommy on Mar 3rd 2009 News
As Barack tours the nation conducting town hall meetings, it begs the question Howard Fineman asks, why isn’t New Orleans isn’t exhibit A in his argument for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan:
The vast grid of streets here in New Orleans, laid out long ago on grassy bottomland near a waterway, remains eerily devoid of houses. Modest bungalows were ripped from their moorings by the foul, murderous floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina three and a half years ago. Eventually, the storm-tossed homes were torn down and carted away. Today, cinderblock foundations dot brush-covered lots like archeological remains. Live oaks line sidewalks upon which no one walks to school, or rides a bike, or runs to the corner store.
[....]
Still, if President Obama wants a vivid place in which to dramatize American economic plight as he sells his recovery package, he should come here, to this still-struggling city, and to the Lower Ninth. The president is on the road, visiting hard-hit towns in traditionally Red States. It’s a dramatic way to sell his plan—and to remind congressional Republicans that they oppose him at their peril. Well, Louisiana is such a Red state, where Obama had hoped to win last year.
And even though New Orleans is a special case, it is a case that must not be forgotten. Indeed, in the campaign, Obama promised he’d remember. Let’s see how well he upholds that vow. And Obama should not forget that George Bush’s glaring failure of leadership in the aftermath of Katrina is a chief reason why Obama, who sought to embody calm competence and attention to detail, is president.
