September 08, 2005
Swamps Versus People
Protecting the environment is an important part of conservatism. Who but the most blinkered and unimaginative ideologue would be indifferent to the destruction of wildlife, endangered species, and unique scenic landscapes. But conservatives also believe that nature has a hierarchy, and that our protection of the environment ultimately is a duty to ourselves, God, and future generations.
Conservatives believe that the life of a snail darter cannot take priority over the life of a human being, and, less dramatically, that our economic well being will sometimes trump environmental concerns. But the environmental movement has long rejected this human-centered environmentalism, in some cases considering human beings the chief enemy of their environmental goals. These fouled-up priorities had something to do with the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans.
Anyone who has read the various public interest lawsuits on behalf of endangered species, habitat protection, and the like knows that environmental groups vigorously oppose any proposals to balance environmental policies with human needs. If it hurts some obscure species or the wetlands (i.e., swamps), a project should ipso facto be rejected in this view. One of these "public interest" lawsuits in the 1970s apparently prevented the building of floodgates that would have stopped waters from the Gulf of Mexico from overwhelming New Orleans' levees, as reported today:
As radical environmentalists continue to blame the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina's devastation on President Bush's ecological policies, a mainstream Louisiana media outlet inadvertently disclosed a shocking fact: Environmentalist activists were responsible for spiking a plan that may have saved New Orleans. Decades ago, the Green Left--pursuing its agenda of valuing wetlands and topographical "diversity" over human life--sued to prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from building floodgates that would have prevented significant flooding that resulted from Hurricane Katrina.In the 1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Barrier Project planned to build fortifications at two strategic locations, which would keep massive storms on the Gulf of Mexico from causing Lake Pontchartrain to flood the city. An article in the May 28, 2005, New Orleans Times-Picayune stated, "Under the original plan, floodgate-type structures would have been built at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes to block storm surges from moving from the Gulf into Lake Pontchartrain."
"The floodgates would have blocked the flow of water from the Gulf of Mexico, through Lake Borgne, through the Rigolets [and Chef Mentuer] into Lake Pontchartrain," declared Professor Gregory Stone, the James P. Morgan Distinguished Professor and Director of the Coastal Studies Institute of Louisiana State University. "This would likely have reduced storm surge coming from the Gulf and into the Lake Pontchartrain," Professor Stone told Michael P. Tremoglie during an interview on September 6. The professor concluded, "[T]hese floodgates would have alleviated the flooding of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina." . . . .
Why was this project aborted? As the Times-Picayune wrote, "Those plans were abandoned after environmental advocates successfully sued to stop the projects as too damaging to the wetlands and the lake's eco-system." (Emphasis added.) Specifically, in 1977, a state environmentalist group known as Save Our Wetlands (SOWL) sued to have it stopped. SOWL stated the proposed Rigolets and Chef Menteur floodgates of the Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Prevention Project would have a negative effect on the area surrounding Lake Pontchartrain. Further, SOWL's recollection of this case demonstrates they considered this move the first step in a perfidious design to drain Lake Pontchartrain entirely and open the area to dreaded capitalist investment.
I thought until reading this article that the Corps of Engineers bore significant responsibility for this debacle; after all, they are responsible for building, maintaining, and making recommendations regarding the levees. And they had some (apparent) freedom of action to do this in spite of the obstacles of New Orleans' Byzantine power structure. But it seems in the wake of this environmental challenge--likely one of many--they attained a kind of learned helplessness. Extreme environmental groups, by advocating civilization-destroying C02 reduction, have shown repeatedly that they will always put abstract environmental goals ahead of people. They have also shown that any significant project by the government or the private sector could potentially be stopped through expensive environmental litigation about non-human interests, such as endangered species and wetlands protection.
This time their approach caused a disaster of unimaginable proportions.
Great Article. I had wondered why something like this was not in place. Talk about your all time backfires. Hopefully when/if the city rebuilds someone will demand that this project be put back on the table ASAP.
Posted by: BradM at September 8, 2005 12:00 PMTHANK YOU for pointing that out. I’ve been making that point since last Thursday (up until then I was literally too occupied crying over the children and babies killed and harmed and displaced to think straight) only to be met with blank stares. Even my most conservative friends had no idea that the appropriate stop-gaps were prevented by none other than the usual watermelons. (Green on the outside… red on the inside.) YOUR POST IS SO APPRECIATED!
Posted by: missjoy at September 8, 2005 12:01 PMWow. That’s a lot of right wing blogs you quote as sources, Chris. I’m curious, was the levee break caused by the storm surge? The storm surge preceeds the hurricane, and the levees didn’t break until after the storm passed.
It’d be interesting to see a real engineering investigation, rather than liberal-hating blogger speculation.
Chris, your primary link is to a discussion of this article. The original 2003 article suggests “revisiting” two proposals, one which was “opposed by shipping interests” and one which was “successfully challenged in court in the 1970’s”. Perhaps you can point us to a similar discussion of why the second proposal wasn’t adopted?
Trying to be informative, not partisan, I have to say that I totally disagree with your main conclusion. To start with, ask yourself: why were rejected proposals from the 70’s worth revisiting in 2003? Scientific American’s 2001 article makes it clear that NOLA’s situation had been becoming progressively worse:
New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms. The low-lying Mississippi Delta, which buffers the city from the gulf, is also rapidly disappearing. A year from now another 25 to 30 square miles of delta marsh—an area the size of Manhattan—will have vanished. An acre disappears every 24 minutes. Each loss gives a storm surge a clearer path to wash over the delta and pour into the bowl, trapping one million people inside and another million in surrounding communities.…
At fault are natural processes that have been artificially accelerated by human tinkering—levying rivers, draining wetlands, dredging channels and cutting canals through marshes. Ironically, scientists and engineers say the only hope is more manipulation, although they don’t necessarily agree on which proposed projects to pursue.
It’s well worth reading the article, which does a good job at making the science and politics readable and interesting. Some more choice quotes:
Humankind can’t stop the delta’s subsidence, and it can’t knock down the levees to allow natural river flooding and meandering, because the region is developed. The only realistic solutions, most scientists and engineers agree, are to rebuild the vast marshes so they can absorb high waters and reconnect the barrier islands to cut down surges and protect the renewed marshes from the sea.Since the late 1980s Louisiana’s senators have made various pleas to Congress to fund massive remedial work. But they were not backed by a unified voice. L.S.U. had its surge models, and the Corps had others. Despite agreement on general solutions, competition abounded as to whose specific projects would be most effective. The Corps sometimes painted academics’ cries about disaster as veiled pitches for research money. Academia occasionally retorted that the Corps’s solution to everything was to bulldoze more dirt and pour more concrete, without scientific rationale. Meanwhile oystermen and shrimpers complained that the proposals from both the scientists and the engineers would ruin their fishing grounds.
…
Then Hurricane Georges arrived in September 1998. Its fiercely circulating winds built a wall of water 17 feet high topped with driven waves, which threatened to surge into Lake Pontchartrain and wash into New Orleans. This was the very beast that L.S.U.’s early models had warned about, and it was headed right for the city. Luckily, just before Georges made landfall, it slowed and turned a scant two degrees to the east. The surge collapsed under suddenly chaotic winds.
The scientists, engineers and politicians who had been squabbling realized how close the entire delta had come to disaster, and Bahr says that it scared them into reaching a consensus. Late in 1998 the governor’s office, the state’s Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and all 20 of the state’s coastal parishes published Coast 2050—a blueprint for restoring coastal Louisiana.
No group is bound by the plan, however, and if all the projects were pursued, the price tag would be $14 billion.
…
As far as the Corps is concerned, all of the Coast 2050 projects should be implemented.
…
If Congress and President George W. Bush hear a unified call for action, authorizing it would seem prudent. Restoring coastal Louisiana would protect the country’s seafood and shipping industries and its oil and natural-gas supply. It would also save America’s largest wetlands, a bold environmental stroke. And without action, the million people outside New Orleans would have to relocate. The other million inside the bowl would live at the bottom of a sinking crater, surrounded by ever higher walls, trapped in a terminally ill city dependent on nonstop pumping to keep it alive.
So Chris: How much has your home town changed since the 70’s? The SciAm article doesn’t quantify the changes precisely, but it says that due to development, NOLA pre-Katrina was in a different and more perilous situation than in the 70’s — that’s why the plans were being “revisited” in the first place back in 2003. And it also suggests that there wasn’t agreement on what to do until the late 90’s.
Putting all the blame on environmentalists in the 70’s for the levee breach is at least as misleading as putting all the blame on Bush, which by the way I consider unfair. As I understand it, Bush choose to do basically nothing to protect NO. But as it happened, if he had chosen to back to the 2050 plan to the hilt, it would still have (probably) been too little too late - as it happened.
Of course, if that cat-4 storm hit in 2010 instead of 2005, then Bush’s decision to ignore NO would have led directly the deaths of hundreds or thousans so it was still a bad decision. A hurricane had to hit sooner or later, and the gamble was that it would be later, long after Bush was out of office, so it would be somebody else’s problem. That’s a gamble that politicians make all too frequently - passing the buck to the future. Sort of like the deficit.
On the other hand, W is responsible in another way - as producer of the recent Keystone Kops episode starring FEMA and DHS. And BTW, your final links seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with their content.
Posted by: William Cohen at September 8, 2005 12:41 PMIts hard to catch the right picture from Singapore. There is enough blame to go around on this incident. Poor leadership at the local and state level; the above references; the level of the disaster and not taking on the vision of a disaster so large in coming that people just threw up their hands in dispair; and even the voodoo queens, but I gues we wont go there.
Posted by: tom at September 8, 2005 12:44 PMChris,
Unfortunately, you’re going to need to provide some technical details to back up the assertions. For example, you suggest environmentalists are responsible for stopping a proposal to build floodgates.
Would these floodgates have withstood a direct hit by Katrina, and a storm surge of up to 28 feet?
There are already 300 miles of levees. Subsidence is a constant problem, and underfunding of maintenance has persisted for decades. In a game of ‘what-if,’ this proposed engineering project would almost certainly have been underfunded, and inadequately maintained.
What if? Building those floodgates might have resulted in housing developments being built in the floodplain of the former Lake Pontchartrain, in which case the catastrophe caused by Katrina could have seen the horror multiplied.
Thank God the environmentalists stopped the disaster from happening! Thank God the evil conservatives were prevented from killing tens of thousands of people!
Really, what a silly post.
Posted by: phx8 at September 8, 2005 12:45 PMWilliam Cohen,
“As I understand it, Bush choose to do basically nothing to protect NO.” It’s not Bush’s job (or my job, or congress’s job or the senate’s job) to protect NO. It’s NO’s job to protect NO. It’s NO’s job to evaluate their situation and needs and act accordingly.
“On the other hand, W is responsible in another way - as producer of the recent Keystone Kops episode starring FEMA and DHS”
While I’ll give you the fact that FEMA and DHS, collectively, are nothing but an enormous waste of working, taxpaying, citizen’s money… Bush did not single-handedly dream up, institute, authorize, and implement FEMA nor DHS. To say “W is responsible” is just plain dumb.
There are plenty of people responsible, but the FACT REMAINS that if floodgates had been put in place back in the day, and maintained, and improved upon as necessary, (and who better to do it and pay for it than the people who live in NO) we would not even be HAVING this discussion.
Posted by: missjoy at September 8, 2005 12:56 PMChris said: “But the environmental movement has long rejected this human-centered environmentalism, in some cases considering human beings the chief enemy of their environmental goals.”
First, yes, you are right, the environmental movement held the belief that the natural earth is our home and a perfect home it was before overpopulation by humans began to foul the home, much as Katrina has fouled homes with sewage, chemical pollution, and bacterial and virii.
Second, change the word “their” to “our” in the last sentence quoted above, and you have another true statement. Their goals are our goals. Their goals are an environment that supports human populations and does not undermine human populations which the environment will do when overpopulation and abuse of that environment occurs.
Posted by: David R. Remer at September 8, 2005 12:57 PMmissjoy said: “There are plenty of people responsible, but the FACT REMAINS that if floodgates had been put in place back in the day, and maintained, and improved upon as necessary, (and who better to do it and pay for it than the people who live in NO) we would not even be HAVING this discussion.”
By this reasoning, the Republicans on the floor of Congress at this moment spending federal dollars in the gulf coast to aid and rebuild, are flawed Americans. It was a NO problem, NO residents should pay to fix them, your logic goes. The magnitude of this hypocrisy by Republicans would take a few volumes to elucidate. People are responsible for themselves, or they are not. Which is it Republicans? Or does it depend upon whether cameras and spotlights are upon you? That would seem to be the case here.
Posted by: David R. Remer at September 8, 2005 01:04 PMMan versus nature is a false dichotomy. In many ways the levees ARE the problem. The French started building levees in the area almost 300 years ago and we have never stopped. That has allowed – encouraged – building in places that are not suitable for dense human habitation. This includes much of New Orleans and probably all the parts that are currently under water, mud or snakes and alligators.
Of course, I don’t advocate changing this overnight, but we should start thinking about restoring some of the tupelo and cypress to absorb the silt, storm surges and ordinary pollution. We will all live much better.
The first rule is to do no harm, and some of our well-intentioned policies cause harm. Consider Federal Flood Insurance. Why do people need it? Because no experienced private insurer will sell insurance to someone who wants to build on a place that floods a lot.
So the Feds step in and reward stupidity, greed and environmental degradation. People have built their houses and businesses with reasonable expectations. We should not cut them off with nothing, but next time we pay out, we should insist they move up the hill a little. Flood plains can be used for some crops, to grow timber, for parks and many other things. They just should not have permanent structures on them.
I am not talking about the 100-year floods, but some disasters happen with monotonous regularity. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. NFIP pays claims averaging $200 million per year for about 40,000 repeat offenders. Flood damage costs increased from an average of $2.6 billion per year (in 2002 dollars) during the first half of the 20th century to more than $6 billion per year over the past 10 years. These are not just natural disasters. We contribute by our land use habits. So let’s start working smarter and leave the places where the water flows alone.
I know from the article that the gates were designed to stop a category V, so I don’t see how they would have failed to deal with the storm surge of Katrina without knowing more. I also know from common sense that they were not revisisted sooner because there’s no reason the Army Corps of Engineers would bang its head against a brick wall after losing this (and similar) lawsuits.
I realize New Orleans has changed since then. But it sounds like the hurricane threat got worse in the intervening years, as one would expect, due to the effects of the levees on erosion in the absence of other projects.
I think the principle that these gates designed to protect people were stopped to protect wetlands as an end in themselves is the problem, and this is the archetypal environmental public interest case. I don’t know how effective the gates would have been, but it’s hard to imagine that they would not have helped simply by reducing the total volume of water that flowed into Pontchitrain from the Gulf.
Posted by: Roach at September 8, 2005 01:11 PMNew Orlenas will likely have to shrink after this, the way Galveston did in 1900. But to say, this whole situation is kind of nutty is not a solution to an existing city with 500,000 residents. We cannot undo history and must sometimes adjust to inherited circumstances using technology and ingenuity, even while recognizing the situation is less than perfect. It is unimaginable there would not be some kind of commercial center where the Mississippi River drains into the Gulf of Mexico. And to build, maintain, preserve, and now rebuild New Orleans is hardly the same as the hubris involved in rebuilding luxury condos on barrier islands off the coast of Florida, which I agree is a misuse of federal money. Most of New Orleans relief should be premised on building elsewhere, with a smaller, shipping and tourist-oriented New Orleans in the wake of this disaster. Most of this will occur naturally no doubt, as individuals start over in Houston, Dallas, Baton Rouge, and elsewhere. But to simply say the city is in a crazy spot is not a really useful piece of information in going forward or in protecting the city once it is extant.
Posted by: Roach at September 8, 2005 01:16 PMjack, Bravo! Another rare occasion where we agree entirely. Very well stated. The complete failure of logic behind the national flood insurance program is in dire need of coming under scrutiny. Certain environmental conditions portending disaster can effectively be eliminated through engineering while respecting the natural environmental propensities. Others will eventually defy engineering and economics regardless of human effort. Rebuilding a city on sinking ground below water bodies all around it is the highest folly.
Posted by: David R. Remer at September 8, 2005 01:19 PMRemer,
I would agree 100% that “the Republicans on the floor of Congress at this moment spending federal dollars in the gulf coast to aid and rebuild, are flawed Americans.” I’ve got no disagreement with you there.
It WAS a NO problem! Yes!
NO residents SHOULD pay to fix them! YES!
“The magnitude of this hypocrisy by Republicans would take a few volumes to elucidate.” Very true! But at least give me a nod when I say that hypocrisy isn’t just the bailiwick of Republicans… the Dems are just as guilty. Yes?
Remer, if the offer came along for the federal government as we know it (and all of the boards, cabinets, bureaucracies, departments, and other methods of redistributing MY money and the future money of MY CHILDREN) to be torn down and rebuilt from the groud up, I’D TAKE THAT OFFER.
I will admit, as a card carrying registered Republican, that the Republicans in D.C. are NOT ONE BIT better than the Dems I wanted them to replace back in ‘94. I think a good scrubbing and flushing of the toilet bowl we call D.C. is long overdue.
You stated “People are responsible for themselves, or they are not. Which is it Republicans?” Well… simply put, people SHOULD be responsible for themselves… but they are NOT - because the government enables them to not be. Shame on the people and the policies that enable dependance on the federal government.
missjoy, it would appear that your political views would be far better represented, at least on this issue, by the Libertarian Party, not the socialist Democrat wannabe, Republican Party.
Posted by: David R. Remer at September 8, 2005 01:58 PMWe have come to a point in environmental politics where balance is maintained by swinging between two extremes. One side says “every bit of nature must be saved, at any cost!” The other side says “No immediate detrimental effects? Destroy it.” Reason, like in all big ticket political issues, is replaced by emotional rhetoric making voters happy. It is of no more use to blame one side more than the other for environmental “what ifs” than it is to blame one side more than the other in an arms race.
Posted by: Erika at September 8, 2005 02:08 PMMan versus nature is a false dichotomy.
Jack makes a good argument. Truth is, we’ve got to figure out smarter and not just politically more acceptable answers to these issues. If human interests always outweigh the interests of the environment, nature will inevitably get its revenge. I frankly don’t know what the right solution in New Orleans will ultimately be, but let’s look hard at the question in a reasonable, bipartisan way before we invest billions.
Posted by: Reed Sanders at September 8, 2005 02:35 PMWillinam,
So Chris: How much has your home town changed since the 70’s?Despite having grown up in a fly-over cross between Mayberry RFD and Little House on the Prarie i have come across in my life more coastal elitists who’ve had the common sense educated clean out of ‘em than i ever saw ‘Barney Fife’s. (Although i come pretty darn close myself more than i care to admit ;)
Speaking personally, i really don’t care for the way my childhood stomping ground has been turned half into a nature preserve and half into a state park with the clearing of trees and regrading the land to make it handicap accessible my favorite moss-covered shady spring is now bare rocks with little shade and few minnows. Selling a small lot to a Florida power company seemed prudent enough, until they installed a series of high power lights whose 24/7 glow can be seen miles away. Though crickets and fireflies chirp and shine at all hours; now most, like the original villagers, have fled— leaving today not a neat yet dusty ghost village as would happen in the past, but a slumful of new residents who have nothing left in their surroundings to appreciate and care for. It’s great fun to watch elite educated urbanites ‘protect’ with their high theories what we country folk have been managing for generations despite our backwoods ignorance. So much for the largest virgin prarie in the nation. She ain’t no virgin anymore.
The same is being done to this country as a whole. The elitist class is using all her resources according to their personal (liberal or conservative) theories and desires for the benefits of those they deem worthy and leaving behind a barely a memory of what once was a land free and expansive— a nation great because her people were great in character rather than capital and immorality.
Posted by: jo at September 8, 2005 02:40 PMIt makes no sense to rebuild a getto in a swamp.
Who wants to pay billions to prop up the cheap-plastic-bead industry, or for that matter the “girls gone wild” video ind.?
Move NO upriver to higher ground, allow the natural marshes to act as a buffer zone for flooding of the NEW NO.
I’m sure any getto could be “charming” at times, but how many billion would you pay to rebuild a getto in detroit, just because they have an auto-show once a year?
Posted by: Beagle at September 8, 2005 02:52 PMBeagle,
Good thinking. Maybe we should put ‘em on a reservation, eh? We could give ‘em all smallpox-infested blankets, too.
Posted by: ElliottBay at September 8, 2005 04:19 PMNew Orleans is “totaled.” Like a ‘82 Buick that will cost thousands to repair, it will likely cost more to rebuild the city—ghettos and all—then it will be worth when the project is over. Some city belongs there; it is a geographically essential location, the intersection of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. But the rebuilt New Orleans should be smaller and geared around its essential tourist, oil and gas, and shipping sectors. The vast swaths of ghetto are not good for the city or for their residents. Scattering about these people to more civilized, less crime-ridden, and more orderly places will likely allow some individuals to escape multigenerational poverty that the toxic culture of New Orleans did not allow them to do. These people deserve help, but there is no reason to spend extra money to rebuild every inch of New Orleans, 80% of which was a blighted place of drug abuse, shiftlessness, illegitimate “families,” and a degraded and ignorant culture of violence. Perpetuating this at substantial cost to the nation serves no good, not even a sentimental one.
The smallpox blanket analogy is apt in a different way. Until now, New Orleans functioned as a reservation with the hopelessness of reservation culture. By shipping poor and (collectively) dysfunctional New Orleanians to far flung locales like Phoenix, Louisville, and Dallas, perhaps they’ll learn to behave like the locals there and get a job, behave better, and earn some self-respect. Their common culture until now has little to recommend and suggests that its breakup by nature may prove fortuitous for them and the nation.
But, hey, if you think a city with endemic corruption, third world crime rates, and people that shoot at rescue workers is A-OK, then I guess we really should build it back in its pre-Katrina splendor and with the exact same mixture of productive and unproductive neighborhoods, people, and officials.
Posted by: Roach at September 8, 2005 04:53 PMAmerican Pundit. Physics? As in what goes up must come down? All that water was driven inland. Once the hurricane had moved thru the water had to flow back out and overwhelmed the storm weakened levees at that point from the lakeside of the city. Lake Ponchartrain was also full of storm surge water.
Posted by: Mark at September 8, 2005 05:11 PMA little off topic but you know the problem with the small pox blanket story is that everyone repeats it, but nobody analyses whether it could have been actually worked.
Question – what was (would be) the major limitation of small pox as a bio weapon?
Answer – Transmission comes from close person-to-person contact. The virus can’t live long outside a living host.
Question – why was it possible for the WHO to declare smallpox eradicated? Wouldn’t it be possible for someone to become infected by (say) finding an old blanket infected with smallpox?
Answer – See above and read about smallpox transmission.
Posted by: jack at September 8, 2005 05:13 PM“It WAS a NO problem! Yes!
NO residents SHOULD pay to fix them! YES!”
Hey, you convinced me! Sell those poor kids off as sex slaves in Thailand, you can raise the $150B right there! Well, maybe not, but look at how much less housing needs to be rebuilt! Yippee, look at me! It’s so easy to be compassionate!
Missjoy, if the levee’s were just a NO problem, why are your gas prices up? All those refineries were by the port which was by the ocean and a river - economically speaking, a great place for refineries, unless there’s a hurricane. Just like NO is a great place for a city, unless the levee breaks. NO has been taking the risk for years, and we’ve been saving a few pennies on our fuel bills. We’re all connected, whether you accept it or not.
Posted by: William Cohen at September 8, 2005 06:07 PMChris Roach-
Oh, those poor environmentalists, they just want to nix everything useful so they can save some swamp- [tires squeal as brakes are applied]
Except the loss of those swamps is precisely what got New Orleans in trouble in the first place. Those swamps, as you call them, constitute the Mississippi Delta, and the Delta is exactly what New Orleans was built on. It’s subsiding because other projects have ended up dumping the sediments that once replenished the Delta uselessly into the depths of the Gulf of Mexico. So, one of the reasons NOLA is in the trouble it is now, quite simply, is that some of our other attempts to forestall certain disasters, like floods from the river, have had unintended consequences.
Take the Old River Floodgates. There was this project done a while back, because the Mississipi was just about to jump through the Old River and start exiting into the ocean through the Atchafalaya, leaving New Orleans without it’s economically vital traffic. Two things happened. This piece of Public works, despite the best intentions of the project, is part of what’s been sinking the delta, through the sediment dumping I told you about.
The other issue is one you should take note of. This floodgate was hit with the full force of a Mississippi flood, and it damn near broke through. The flood waters scoured a pit at the base of the gates. They held, but the forces were greater than expected.
My point? We may think we can dictate terms to nature, but nature can still show us a thing or two.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at September 8, 2005 09:16 PMWhy did the Mayor and Governor fail so badly down in Louisiana? It is an embarrassment to Democrats. They knew clearly that 100,000 people would not be able to evacuate. It say’s right in their own evacuation plans. And it clearly states that the Mayor is responsible for the evacuation. What about the thousands of school and city busses that sat waiting to be flooded? You need to look at the link that posts New Orleans evacuation plan.
http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=46&tabid=26
The plan clearly states what the Mayor and the Governor are in charge of, and neither one of them did any part of their job. The leadership of the local government is embarrassing and incompetent down there.
Below is a few clips off of New Orleans own website. Look who was not in control here. Check the link above and see the entire thing for yourself.
“”””The authority to order the evacuation of residents threatened by an approaching hurricane is conferred to the Governor by Louisiana Statute. The Governor is granted the power to direct and compel the evacuation of all or part of the population from a stricken or threatened area within the State, if he deems this action necessary for the preservation of life or other disaster mitigation, response or recovery. The same power to order an evacuation conferred upon the Governor is also delegated to each political subdivision of the State by Executive Order. This authority empowers the chief elected official of New Orleans, the Mayor of New Orleans, to order the evacuation of the parish residents threatened by an approaching hurricane.”””””
V. TASKS
A. Mayor
* Initiate the evacuation.
* Retain overall control of all evacuation procedures via EOC operations.
* Authorize return to evacuated areas.
Shelter demand is currently under review by the Shelter Coordinator. Approximately 100,000 Citizens of New Orleans do not have means of personal transportation.
They knew all of this. Why did they not act?
Because they were faced with an actual disaster before they had an actual plan, and even a mandatory evacuation can’t force people to leave. Besides, the Federal Government initiated a plan whose very doctrines said that they were to take a pro-active role, rather than simply supporting or submitting to the local authorities, in addition to declaring a federal state of emergency, which essentially meant that they had the lead on this.
You should know this before you start following others in putting the blame for the debacle after Katrina struck solely on the shoulders of the local authorities. You should also remember that the whole reason for FEMA is that local and state authorities can be crippled by the magnitude of the disaster, the normal lines of communications and supplies destroyed by the effects of the disaster.
What you suggest is that we rest the greatest responsibility in the most uncertain emergency structures to survive a major disaster.
Right now, the Bush administration is doing damage control of the wrong kind. Its surrogates and its officials are telling you that the locals are to blame for the fiasco, because they were caught unprepared.
Even if true, it should have been a challenge that FEMA should have risen to, rather than shrunk from. It should have been a situation where the federal responders had information to give, rather than information to learn about the disaster.
Addtionally, the president should have been off his vacation, and off his fundraising trail the minute that Hurricane started to look nasty. The fact remains that the president took on activities for the first few days of this crisis that were low to no priority for the American people. Bush’s vacation, and his fundraising not only shouldn’t have been first on Bush’s agenda, they shouldn’t have even merited a place there, in light of the events.
The Republicans in the White House and in Congress have become altogether too nonchalant about the constant state of crisis. They will spend like drunken sailors, tackle irrelevant partisan agenda items, and then wonder why their reputations suffer in the media.
It isn’t us hating on them. Without their help, we’d be hard-put to persuade people that they weren’t doing their jobs. There are plenty of Democrats who haven’t done their jobs, and I want them gone, too, replaced with Dems of better character. We want people in office that folks will want to stay. No use competing with the Republican Party, and putting second-stringers out there to lead the charge.
But in the meantime, all these people have an opportunity to redeem themselves, and should be given the chance, with our positive and negative commentary following up behind them all the way. If these people want to keep their jobs and their honor, they can demonstrate by action the true quality of their character, which political compromise might have previously eclipsed.
Or they can wallow in the shameful political backstabbing while people die, and the effort continues to get bungled. Their choice. Bush may still redeem himself, but he’s got a bitch of a first impression to overcome, and nobody else can do it for him.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at September 9, 2005 12:05 AMWell, the test is over and the results are in and we now know what will be the result of a large terrorist attack on this nation!
Posted by: Lnala7 at September 9, 2005 08:47 AMI love it. The conservative phalanx, being caught unaware and dumbfounded once again by the blinding incompetence of the Bush administration, clears its collective throat to begin the counterspin: it’s not the responsibility of the federal government to protect the homeland; it’s the fault of the people of New Orleans who did nothing! Yeah, that’s the ticket. This counter-attack is as predictable as, well, as the damage caused by Katrina. I don’t think the public is going to swallow this one the way they did the 9/11 crap, or the Iraq invasion crap, or even the Terry Shiavo crap. But good luck, you guys. I can tell you’re really working hard at it.
Posted by: Mental Wimp at September 9, 2005 05:00 PMWilliam said: “No group is bound by the plan, however, and if all the projects were pursued, the price tag would be $14 billion.”
Looks like a bargain now, doesn’t it?
Posted by: David R. Remer at September 10, 2005 01:45 AMI have compassion for the truly needy and/or displaced people in the Gulf as a result of Katrina and, as a result have contributed financially to the relief fund.
I am hoping that my contribution will help feed, clothe, house or otherwise improve the current situation of someone.
I am opposed to any private, state or federal funds being used to help rebuild homes or businesses in the same location. That is to say that the first step MUST be deciding on the appropriate corrective action to bring the topographical elevations to an acceptable standard. If that means moving the entire city further inland, then so be it.
Posted by: steve smith at September 10, 2005 10:58 AMSteve,
i can perhaps understand your view with respect to private homes and supportive service, entertainment and other business; but i fail to find credible the suggestion that oil rigs and associated businesses would best relocate to higher ground further from the resource.
Posted by: jo at September 10, 2005 02:14 PMIn 1977 Save Our Wetlands Inc.(SOWL) enjoined a
planned Corps Hurricane Barrier project(floodgates),
where the Gulf of Mexico enters Lake Pontchartrain at
the Chef Menteur-Rigolets.
Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, Joe Towers, a
retired Corps counsel stated that if these barriers
had been constructed “New Orleans would have been
saved.” This statement was picked up by the right wing
hate anti environmentalist spin docs into a fabricated
“Green Genocide” yawn and spun around the internet.
However, it so happens that Joe Towers was the Corps
counsel that SOWL complained to the FBI about when the
Corps was caught criminally diking-damning 5,200 acres
of navigable wetlands for the Eden Isle Subdivision,
located smack dab in the middle of a hurricane tidal
surge, on the North Shores of Lake Pontchartrain,
Slidell,La. And it also happens that this same Eden
Isle Subdivision has now been obliterated by Hurricane
Katrina. So you can’t help but wonder how reliable a
source Joe Towers can be??
Unfortunately for the Rush Limbaugh-Fox-National
Review-Karl Rowe-Clear Channel-pro Bush hate anti
environmentalists-Green Genocide misinformation
disinformation www.frontpagemagazine.com right wing
radical groupies, Joe Towers is not the best of a
reliable source. Why?
On Sept.28,2005 the GAO issued a report that stated
“if the barriers had been constructed. the flooding in
New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina would have been
worse” http://www.saveourwetlands.org/
http://www.saveourwetlands.org/
Posted by: real facts at November 11, 2005 10:23 PMInvestigations Into La. Levee Breaks Mount
By BRETT MARTEL, Associated Press Writer Thu Nov 10, 9:27 PM ET
NEW ORLEANS - A federal prosecutor said Thursday he’s pursuing tips about corruption relating to the building and maintenance of levees that broke during Hurricane Katrina.
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Meanwhile, new evidence has surfaced suggesting steel reinforcements driven into parts of the failed levee system were not nearly as deep as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had thought.
U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said his office is focused on the political and business relationships of those involved in building the levees, not whether the levees were poorly designed or improperly built.
“We’re not in the business of trying to second-guess if something could have been designed and built better,” Letten said. “Our investigation is looking into whether there was illegal conduct, whether it be diversion of funds … that would have contributed to poor execution of the work.”
Letten refused to give names or discuss specifically what officials or others were alleged to have done. He said only that he had received “information that there were individuals in positions of responsibility that had conflicts of interest, and that’s something we’re always interested in.”
Letten declined to say whether he’s investigating federal or local officials. However, local agencies handle most of the building and maintenance of levees.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is officially responsible for design and construction, but sometimes that means little more than reviewing plans and inspecting work.
Design drawings show that steel pilings reinforcing the levees should have been driven to a depth of 17 feet below sea level.
Preliminary findings by an investigative team, however, suggest that didn’t happen in the case of the 17th Street Canal levee, which sent floodwaters through hundreds of homes and into the center of the city when it broke.
The team, led by Louisiana State University civil engineering professor Ivor van Heerden, found through sonar tests that sheet pilings at the canal went to only 10 feet below sea level.
Steve Spencer, chief engineer for Orleans Parish levees, said his agency followed the plans under Corps guidelines. He said he could not explain without further investigation the discrepancy between the 17-foot depth in the designs and the 10-foot depth found by van Heerden’s team.
Independent engineers have said the levees wouldn’t have been strong enough even at 17 feet, because they were built on loose, porous soil that is prone to having water seep through it. To compensate, they said, builders should have used stronger earthen material and driven steel pilings far below the 18.5-foot depth of the canal bottom.
Corps engineer Fred Young declined to speculate about the implications of van Heerden’s findings.
“To me, the design drawing shows it should have been at minus 17. I don’t know what (the LSU team) is doing and how they’re getting minus 10,” Young said. “We’re looking into it.”
No one has been able to look at the sheet piling that was torn out of the levee when it breached. Van Heerden said he asked to see it but was told it was buried under dirt at the construction site where the levee is being repaired and could not be dug up right away.
Several agencies are looking into possible wrongdoing in regard to levee building and maintenance. State Attorney General Charles Foti and Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan have said they’re conducting their own investigations.
Posted by: real facts at November 13, 2005 04:50 PM April 7, 1999
CERTIFIED MAIL RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED
Senator Mary Landrieu
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510-1803
Dear Senator Landrieu:
Enclosed is SOWL letter to you dated November 19, 1998 requesting you introduce a resolution in the United States Senate to investigate our disappearing wetlands in Louisiana and the affect on flooding as well as our insurance rates. Hopefully the United States Senate can recommend steps to insure our remaining Louisiana wetlands are preserved.” (See copy enclosed for your reference.)
As of this late date. no response from your office has been received. SOWL realizes you are busy supporting the bombing in Yugoslavia and it was announced in the New Orleans Times Picayune on April 2, 1999, your support of sending U. S. ground troops into this European War theater.
In the meantime, we, your constituents, have our own war. Louisiana has one of the highest rates of cancer and birth defects as a direct result of industrial toxic dumping.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers construction of the Mississippi River Gulf outlet is pouring Gulf of Mexico salt water into our rapidly eroding wetland hurricane tidal buffers. St. Bernard, Plaquemines and Orleans Parishes are sitting ducks for major flooding.
Also, the Corps, in conjunction with Louisiana state agencies, have been reckless in their rubber stamping of wetland destruction permits to land developers in St. Tammany Parish. And now, urban sprawl over once vast north shore coastal estuaries invite major flooding.
What does it take to get your attention? Do we have to be 12 feet under water? After we flood, will you fly over us in your big jumbo Washington airplane and bestow upon us your declaration as a federal disaster area?
We, your supporters, did not send you to Washington to perpetrate Ronald Regan’s Star Wars. We the people of Louisiana sent you, Mary Landrieu, to Washington to address our problems in this State.
It’s time to take your fingers off the nuclear trigger and address the problems here. We’ve already had our F. Edward Heberts in the United States Congress.
SOWL requests your response to SOWL’s November 19, 1998 and now this letter in the near future.
Sincerely,
Save Our Wetlands
Read more about Senator Mary Landrieu:
Environmentalist “Shocked” at Tirade
Landrieu Makes Environmentalists Blood Boil
Mary Landrieu defends Nuclear Power Plant Loan Guarentees
Sierra Club Defies Bush, Landrieu’s Position On Drilling, Energy Conservation
A SENATOR MARY LANDRIEU ALERT - BEWARE!
