Project Katrina

Well it is about time and now it’s official. A Federal district judge, Stanwood Duval,  has ruled that The United States Army Corps of Engineers was liable for the damages inflicted on at least three plaintiffs by its failure to mitigate the damage its construction and operation of the MR-GO channel caused to the wetlands and, ultimately to the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish on August 29, 2005.

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.

USA Today reports what I think anybody that even closely follows the situation of levees in our nation already knows:

Communities nationwide have repaired fewer than half of the 122 levees identified by the government almost two years ago as too poorly maintained to be reliable in major floods, according to Army Corps of Engineers data.

State and local governments were given a year to fix levees cited by the corps for “unacceptable” maintenance deficiencies in a February 2007 review that was part of a post-Hurricane Katrina crackdown. Only 45 have had necessary repairs, according to data provided in response to a USA TODAY request. The remaining unrepaired levees are spread across 18 states and Puerto Rico—most in California and Washington.

People living behind the unrepaired levees “have every right to be concerned,” said Tammy Conforti, head of the corps’ levee safety program. “If (people) depend on that for flood risk reduction,” she said of each unrepaired levee, “… those deficiencies need to be corrected.”

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina I heard people from both sides of the political spectrum talk about not rebuilding New Orleans and not upgrading the levees. It made me wonder if they realized that millions upon millions of folks need levee in dozens of states to keep their homes and businesses from flooding.

Sometimes, well OK a lot of the time the sheer ignorance of our population stuns me.

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.