Posted on 08/30/2005 7:04:35 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
By Will Bunch
Published: August 30, 2005 9:00 PM ET
PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans late on Tuesday. That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until until it's level with the massive lake.
New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.
Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming....Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.
On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”
Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:
"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don’t get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can’t stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn’t that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can’t raise them."
The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.
The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.
There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:
“That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said.”
The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late.
One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.
The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night noted that local officials were saying that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Will Bunch (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News. This article, in a different form, also appears on his blog at that newspaper, Attytood.
Why should my tax money go to pumps for NO?
Oh yeah, political pork and no responsibility for the people who want to live below sea level in an area subject to hurricanes.
Just like federal money to rebuild on the rich folks homes on the outer banks of NC. That is in my neck of the woods and I am against that also.
Why should my tax money go to pumps for NO?
Oh yeah, political pork and no responsibility for the people who want to live below sea level in an area subject to hurricanes.
Just like federal money to rebuild on the rich folks homes on the outer banks of NC. That is in my neck of the woods and I am against that also.
It makes no sense to build a city below sea level and in a vulnerable location. Let's take ALL the public money now being spent on illegal aliens and use it to relocate the devastated Americans!
Cheney promised N.O. to Halliburton.....
Well it is Bush's fault you know.
Did I do that? Arrrrrr, I'm gone.
My divorce, my ex's love of Bush caused our breakup.
It's Bush's fault that its Bush's fault!
Gees, the left is so despicable its not even funny anymore.
And the legislature on Louisiana couldn't appropriate the funds?
The gambling revenues were diverted to ???????
This type of cheap shot is the reason the democrats are losing.
I'm NOT a republican btw. I'm pretty Green.
Wasn't you. It's Bush's fault you did that.
http://www.news8austin.com/content/your_news/default.asp?ArID=144232
Read the last line in the news article.
Who was it that personally appealed to Governor Blanco to evacuate?
If I remember correctly, the announcements from Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Nagin to evacuate came AFTER Bush appealed to them to evacuate.
N.O. should be used as a landfill for all the debris of all the effected states. A city below sea level? Memories of Atlants.
This is a stupid article. I just posted a thread on extended news about hurricanes from the 1500's to present.
It's not like they didn't know there was a problem before George Bush took office.
Sheesh!
Written by a clueless, Leftwing "brotherly lover" who has probably never been to Louisiana and would have great difficulty trying to find New Orleans on a map.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! The Federal Government cut spending! We might have to pay for this stuff ourselves! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Good find...bookmark it
Who is this RAT trying to kid? We spend over $1 trillion annually on social welfare. Surely, we could have taken a few hundred million out of that $1 trillion budget for social welfare so NO could screw with their stupid leeves. We all know why this RAT fails to talk about the $1 trillion in wasteful social welfare. This is just political anti-Bush crap.
That Bush family evil doings go way back. Did you know that it was Prescott Bush that egged on Leopold and Loeb?
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