Project Katrina

Who knows what is going to happen, but if the levees fail again three years after billions of dollars was appropriated to fix them, the failure of George Bush and the entire Republican party should really be clear to anybody with half a mind.

On the eve of Hurricane Gustav’s expected arrival, many in New Orleans, from residents of the Ninth Ward to the city’s mayor to the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, have their doubts about whether the levees will hold.

“There is a real likelihood of getting some overtopping. Additionally, rain is a big factor here,” said DHS chief Michael Chertoff about water pouring over the tops of the levees.

Three years since Katrina and $3 billion later, the levees still leak and much of the repair work remains incomplete.

“Huge areas of Louisiana are going to be devastated. We’re going in essence to see what Katrina didn’t destroy, what Rita didn’t destroy in 2005 being destroyed now in 2008,” said Ivor Van Heerden, a professor at Louisiana State University who wrote a book about why the levees broke during Katrina.

At best the levees are estimated to be able to withstand water levels rising at the rate of an inch and hour. The coming storm, however, promises much more. In some places storm surge could reach 18 feet.

The Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with repairing the levees, says work was being accelerated.

Despite Congress authorizing $12.8 billion to rebuild the levees, only $3 billion has been spent. The engineers blame red tape, saying the studies, approvals and environmental committees have all slowed down the work.

The Army Corps has already been blaming environmentalists for their complete lack of process in rebuilding the levees, but considering that the local press recently found engineers filling the levees with newspaper, their protestations aren’t even really credible. In fact, they failed to use the money and are scrambling to finish in a matter of days what they haven’t done in three years since Katrina hit and the problem was identified.

On Rush Limbaugh’s comedy radio show today he asked former Governor and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (R-AR) how he believed the Republican party should respond if Hurricane Gustav makes landfall in New Orleans during the Republican National Convention next week.

“I think they’ve called in Pat Robertson to pray it off the coast,” Huckabee jokingly responded. Listen to this segment:

Yeah this is really, really funny Huck. Maybe you think the best way to protect an American city is to pray, yet some of us think there is another solution. Build levees and pumping station to the specs required.

Our Traditional Media has done a terrible job covering the real reason behind the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. But Harry Shearer, via the Huffington Post, has done his best to explain that the flood never had to happen. It was the direct fault of the Federal Government and specifically the Army Corp of Engineers. Period.

This is why Harry has for years called the aftermath of Katrina the Federal Flood. How he highlights what nobody else seems to want to write about,

This July was good to New Orleans. No major storms nearby, and a wealth of visitors packing the streets, clubs, restaurants. The Essence Music Festival, the big cocktail convention (seriously), then an international classical piano competition (ditto), and the SCLC’s national convention–compared to last July, when the streets were empty, the resettled part of the city was thriving and vibrant.

August brings a different mood. In Friday’s Times-Picayune, we learn that the Army Corps of Engineers is now scrambling—the paper’s word—to reinforce a crucial floodwall abutting a neighborhood that suffered disastrous flooding three years ago. Apparently, the Corps—which “concluded” on its own that Congress hadn’t authorized it to build a new, stronger, more deeply anchored floodwall before completing so-called 100-year flood protection in 2011—has realized the floodwall is far more vulnerable than it had thought.

More disturbing is the fact that the problem is the elevation figures the Corps used, right after Katrina, in calculating what was needed to strengthen the existing wall. They were “culled” from the original floodwall design plans. It’s been well established by the independent forensic investigations into the Katrina disaster that the Corps had a bad habit of using old, outdated elevation figures in the original design of the failed structures. So why “cull” those after the disaster proved them so disastrously wrong?

Combined with the continued reports of water leaking and puddling in backyards on the supposedly protected side of the 17th St. Canal—reports the Corps is still scrambling (my word) to explain—New Orleans is once again forced to ask: is this the best America can do?

I mean it just won’t stop. From The St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The barrier quickly erected to try to protect Winfield from the flooding Mississippi River was breached this morning, and nearly 130 homes were reported damaged or destroyed, authorities said.

Lincoln County emergency operations officials said a 1,600-foot Hesco barrier, used to protect troops in Iraq, was heavily leaking and topped about 4:30 a.m. National Guard members, who had erected the barrier, were withdrawn. Alarms sounded, warning nearby residents to evacuate.

At least 92 homes have been destroyed, and 36 damaged, officials said. Thirty-six more homes have been impacted by the flooding. Officials estimate that 650 more homes are inaccesible to emergency officials, so the extent of the damage isn’t yet determined.

In my neck of the world, right outside of St. Louis, people have pretty much been working 24/7 to save their commuinites. Although there is still some concern, most believe we’ve seen the worse and the levees will continue to hold. Reuters reports:

Walls and levees held back the cresting Mississippi River on Sunday as requests for government aid poured in from homeowners and businesses swamped by the worst Midwest flooding in 15 years.

Across from St. Louis, where the river remained near the crest reached on Friday, Cahokia Mayor Frank Bergman said his city of 17,000 had escaped disaster by a few feet meters.

“We got lucky,” he said as he walked a 50-year-old network of levees and flood walls that withstood the river’s rise. River water that seeped under the levees at a few spots had been cordoned off by walls of sandbags.

Well this isn’t good news, but really something we’ve known for a while. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports the city of New Orleans is danger of massive flooding if it is hit by only a Cat 2 hurricane.

That assessment has been based on levee heights across New Orleans that indicated a strong storm surge could once again place the Crescent City underwater. New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, that Category 3 storm killed more than 1,800 people and caused more than $81 billion in damages.

Levee heights were to blame for much of the flooding associated with Hurricane Katrina and the Army Corps of Engineers were given over $7 billion to repair and construct levees capable of handling rising water yet the city is said to still be among the most vulnerable in the country when it comes to levees being breached.

Reuters reports:

Overflowing rivers in Iowa and other Midwest states forced evacuations and disrupted the region’s economy on Friday with fears of worse to come from fragile levees and more rain.

A Cedar Rapids hospital was flooded and evacuated its patients after a levee break on the Cedar River turned the downtown area into a shallow lake. Thousands were forced to leave their homes in the worst Midwest flooding in 15 years [….]

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver said the damage to his state could cost billions of dollars. Scores of bridges spanning nine overflowing rivers have been swept away or weakened.

In a report to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee last Thursday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) inspector general said they are more prepared for an emergency situation than it was after Hurricane Katrina, but nowhere near ready for another such catastrophe. So what are they waiting for?

Louisiana 1976 at Daily Kos has done an outstanding job of covering Katrina related issues. This post hits at the core of the issue based on an article via the weekly New Orleans Gambit.

But back to the levees themselves—every time federal culpability for their failure has been brought up, there have been those who’ve propagated the meme—a Big Lie first set into motion by a BushCo intent on discrediting Louisiana, Gov. Blanco, and her other Democratic leaders at the time—that Louisiana and New Orleans had been responsible for levee maintenance and upkeep.

This spin is counteracted by the following comment, which also contains detailed info on how previous presidents of both parties have more competently handled major disasters, and how Dubya himself dealt with 2004 hurricanes in an electoral vote-rich Florida led by his brother in that election year by azureblue:

…. here are a few tidbits about Bush’s string of failures, the first showing how Bush caused the flooding of new Orleans:It is simple: no money to repair, things (levees) fail. The ACOE gets blamed rightly, but the truth is the ACOE had been begging for money rom Bush & Bush kept cutting the fund to rebuild the levees and stopping work in progress:

February 2001

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

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.

February 2004

The SELA project sought $100 million to strengthen the levees holding back the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, including the industrial canal- which is where the levee gave way, 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. Levee repairs around Lake Pontchartrain and the IC, stopped because of budget shortfalls.

Comparing previous disaster responses:

President Nixon: August 1969 when Cat-5 Hurricane Camille hit the MS coast, President Nixon had already readied the National Guard and ordered all Gulf rescue vessels and equipment from Tampa and Houston to follow the Hurricane in. There were over 1,000 regular military with two dozen helicopters to assist the Coast Guard and National Guard within hours after the skies cleared.

President Clinton: September 1999, Hurricane Floyd—Cat-3, was bearing down on the Carolinas and Virginia. President Clinton was in New Zealand meeting with President Jiang of China. He declared the area a Federal Disaster so the National Guard and Military can begin to mobilize. Then he cut short his meetings overseas and flew home to coordinate the rescue efforts. All one day BEFORE a Cat-3 hit the coast.

President Bush (41): August 1992—was in the midst of a campaign for re-election. Yet he cut off his campaigning and went to Washington where he martialed the largest military operation on US soil in history. He sent in 7,000 National Guard and 22,000 regular military personnel, and all the gear to begin the clean up within hours after Andrew passed through Florida.

But look what Georgie does for FL:

Right after Hurricane Charley first made landfall on Aug. 13, 2004, Bush declared the state a federal disaster area to release federal relief funds. Less than two days after Charley ripped through southwestern Florida, he was on the ground touring hard-hit neighborhoods.

Illegitimus non carborundum

For the residents of Louisiana bad news just seems to pile on top of bad news. Of course Hurricane Katrina and Rita in recent times cause enormous problems, but now it appears that glacial ice from as far back as 750,000 years ago is one factor in New Orleans sinking at a rate of 0.17 inches a year. A comprehensive plan needs to be put in place yesterday to deal with all the issues (most interrelated) that is causing this problem to continue to occur.

Sediments deposited into the Mississippi River Delta thousands of years ago when North America’s glaciers retreated are contributing to the ongoing sinking of Louisiana’s coastline, finds new research by NASA and scientists at Louisiana State University.

The weight of these sediments is causing a large section of Earth’s crust to sag at a rate of 0.04 to 0.3 inches a year, the study determined.

The sediments pose a particular challenge for New Orleans, causing it to sink irreversibly at a rate of about 0.17 inches a year, according to data from a network of global positioning system stations and a model of sediment data collected from the northern Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi Delta.

“When the effect of this sinking near New Orleans is combined with a potential 0.9 centimeter (0.35 inch) annual sea level rise that could result should ice sheet melting accelerate as projected by many climate models, it is possible New Orleans could see a relative sea level rise of roughly one meter (3.3 feet) in the next 90 years,” warned co-author Ron Blom of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.