Environmental Wackos Flood New Orleans (but they saved the shellfish)
- From: "FYIS.org/" <Danl_K@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 17:47:58 -0400
New Orleans: A Green Genocide
By Michael Tremoglie
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 8, 2005
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."
The New Orleans Army Corps of Engineers and Professor Stone were not the
only people cognizant of the consequences that could and did result because
of the environmental activists. While speaking with Sean Hannity on his
radio show on Labor Day, former Louisiana Congressman and Speaker of the
House Bob Livingston also referred to environmentalists whose litigation
prevented hurricane prevention projects.
In other words, unlike other programs - including the ones leftists like Sid
Blumenthal excoriated the president for not funding - these constructions
might have prevented the loss of life experienced in the aftermath of
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.
On December 30, 1977, U.S. District Judge Charles Schwartz Jr. issued an
injunction against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lake Pontchartrain
hurricane protection project, demanding the engineers draw up a second
environmental impact statement, three years after the corps submitted the
first one. In one of the most ironic pronouncements of all time, Judge
Schwartz wrote, "it is the opinion of the Court that plaintiffs herein have
demonstrated that they, and in fact all persons in this area, will be
irreparably harmed if the barrier project based upon the August, 1974 FEIS
[federal environmental impact statement] is allowed to continue."
If the Greens prevailed, it was not because the forces of common sense did
not make a compelling case. SOWL's account reveals that during the course of
the trial the defense counsel, Gerald Gallinghouse - a Republican U.S.
Attorney who acted as a special prosecutor during the Carter
administration - felt so strongly that the project should continue that he
told the judge he would "go before the United States Congress with
[Democratic Louisiana Congressman] F. Edward Hebert to pass a resolution,
exempting the Hurricane Barrier Project from the rules and regulations of
the National Environmental Policy Act because, in his opinion, [this plan]
is necessary to protect the citizens of New Orleans from a hurricane."
Despite this, the judge ruled in favor of the environmentalists. Ultimately,
the project was aborted in favor of building up existing levees.
However, the old plan lived on in the minds of those who put human beings
first. The Army Corps of Engineers as recently as last year had publicly
discussed resuming the practice. The September-October 2004 edition of
Riverside (the magazine of the New Orleans District Army Corps of Engineers
Public Affairs Office) referred to this lawsuit and project. Eric Lincoln's
article titled, "Old Plans Revived for Category 5 Hurricane Protection,"
stated:
In 1977, plans for hurricane protection structures at the Rigolets and Chef
Menteur Pass were sunk when environmental groups sued the district. They
believed that the environmental impact statement did not adequately address
several potential problems, including impacts on Lake Pontchartrain's
ecosystem and damage to wetlands.
Ultimately, an agreement between the parties resulted in a consent decree to
forego the structures at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur Pass.The new initial
feasibility study will look at protecting the area between the Pearl River
and Mississippi River from a Category 5 storm.. (Emphasis added.)
The article added, "[A]lternatives that would be studied in the initial
feasibility report are: Construction of floodgate structures, with
environmental modifications, at Rigolets and Chef Pass." (Emphasis added.)
The Times-Picayune recorded last May, "the corps wants to take another look
[at building the floodgates] using more environmentally sensitive
construction than was previously available." This time the Army Corps of
Engineers would modify the original plans because of the environmentalists.
However, the project was already delayed more than two decades because of
the environmentalists' lawsuit. If begun immediately it would take another
two decades to complete: a 40-year delay caused by the Green Left.
Planning for a category five hurricane was, indeed, visionary thinking. Few
people believed such a storm would take place more often than once every few
centuries, and no one had the political will to fight for the funding such a
project would necessitate. However, scientists had long warned about New
Orleans' vulnerability to the potential for massive loss of life caused by
such things as the environmentalists' lawsuit. A National Geographic
article, written after a smaller hurricane last year, captured the
sentiments of one such expert:
"The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before
landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24
hours - coming from the worst direction," says Joe Suhayda, a retired
coastal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years
studying the coast."I don't think people realize how precarious we are."
As it turned out, this is exactly how events played out during the next
hurricane, one year later. USA Today noted, the levees the government had
constructed were no match for the vortex of this force of nature. Soon
Katrina pushed inland:
Hurricane Katrina pushed Lake Pontchartrain over the flood walls...The
spilling water then undermined the walls, and they toppled.Lake
Pontchartrain, a body half the size of Rhode Island, was losing about a foot
of water every 10 hours into New Orleans.
The rushing lake soon overwhelmed the city's pumps. The ever-rising water
soon mixed with sewage, creating a toxic liquid mixture that burned the skin
on contact. When the flood levels grounded the city buses Mayor Ray Nagin
never deployed, it denied thousands of New Orleans' poorest and feeblest an
escape.
Despite the mayor's apparent incompetence, these floodgates environmental
activists sued to prevent from being constructed may have kept a flood from
consuming the city to the extent it did in the first place. The current
programs aimed at reinforcing existing levees but would only prove effective
against a level three hurricane; they were not adequate for a level five
storm like Katrina. Moreover, they did not fortify the specific areas the
government sought to protect, to keep Lake Pontchartrain from flooding the
entire city, which everyone knew posed a danger to a city below sea level.
In other words, this plan would have saved thousands of lives and kept one
of the nation's greatest cities from lying in ruins for a decade.
At a minimum, such a plan would have staved off a significant portion of the
disaster that's unfolded before our eyes.
Worse yet, the environmentalists' ultimate decision to reinforce existing
levees may have actually further harmed the Big Easy. There is at least one
expert who claims the New Orleans levees made no difference - in fact, they
contributed to the problem. Deputy Director of the LSU Hurricane Center and
Director of the Center for the Study Public Health Impacts by Hurricanes
Ivor van Heerden said, "The levees 'have literally starved our wetlands to
death' by directing all of that precious silt out into the Gulf of Mexico."
Thirty years after its legal action, Save Our Wetlands boasts, "SOWL's
legacy lives on and on within the heart and spirit of every man, woman,
child, bird, red fish, speckle trout, croakers, etc."
Despite its pious rhetoric, the environmental Left's true legacy will be on
display in New Orleans for years to come.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19418
I knew it would ultimately be Dem Prez Lyndon Johnson who was to blame, <g>
DanlK, FYI Services Collectibles
www.FYIS.org
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