Re: Politicians to the Rescue, and Who Wrote the Building Codes?

Jack Linthicum wrote:

Andrew Venor wrote:

Jack Linthicum wrote:

Andrew Venor wrote:


William Hamblen wrote:


On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 23:51:02 GMT, fairwater@xxxxxxxxx (Derek Lyons)
wrote:




Of course the article fails to mention the billions *already* spent
that supposed to save the city from Lake Pontchartrain.  (Yet, as is
typical of bureaucracies, no matter how much is spent it's never quite
enough.)  The article also fails to mention that levee and pump
station construction takes months - if not years.



40-50 years.  After the 1953 North Sea Floods, the Dutch and the
British immediately began big programs of flood control projects that
were completed not so very long ago.


And even then it might not be enough.  From what I heard, the section of
the 17th Street Canal on New Orleans that failed had recently been
upgraded and reinforced.

ALV 



Cite? Where did you hear this?


I think it was mentioned by some official of the Corps of Engineers
official in an interview on CNN yesterday.  I wasn't taking notes, so I
don't remember exactly who.

ALV


FYI here's a bit of verification, with the usual NO qualifier.

While I couldn't find the CNN story again, here is what I found in today's NY Times quoting Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager with the Army Corps of Engineers.

"A breach under these conditions was ultimately not surprising," he said last night. "I had hoped that we had overdesigned it to a point that it would not fail. But you can overdesign only so much, and then a failure has to come."

No one expected that weak spot to be on a canal that, if anything, had received more attention and shoring up than many other spots in the region. It did not have broad berms, but it did have strong concrete walls.

And I'll also post this from the article as well.

Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded."

"It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/national/nationalspecial/01levee.html

Is that qualifying enough?

ALV 


SEP
01
2005
A Tragedy By Any Other Name

That the Bush administration diverted funds from the rebuilding of the
New Orleans levees to Iraq is by now well-known. What you might not
have heard is that the people cleaning up the mess are really pissed
about it. A tipster informs us that down in New Orleans, they have a
name for the flood waters that have invaded the city: Lake George.

This is from a friend at the EPA:

    We're naming it Lake George, 'cause it's his frickin fault. Have
you seen all that data about the levee projects' funding being cut over
the past three years by the Prez, and the funding transferred to Iraq?
The levee, as designed, might not have held back the surge from a
direct Class 5 hit, but it certainly would not have crumbled on Monday
night from saturation and scour erosion following a glancing blow from
a Class 3. The failure was in a spot that had just been rebuilt, not
yet compacted, not planted, and not armed (hardened with
rock/concrete). The project should have been done two years ago, but
the federal gov't diverted 80% of the funding to Iraq. Other areas had
settled by a few feet from their design specs, and the money to repair
them was diverted to Iraq.

    The NO paper raised hell about this time and again, to no avail.
And who will take the blame for it? The Army Corps, because they're
good soldiers and will never contradict the C in C. But Corps has had
massive budget cuts across all departments (including wetland
regulatory) since Bush took office, and now we've reaped what was sown.
It really pisses me off to see the Corps get used by the Administration
to shield Bush -- they do great work when they're funded. This was
senseless, useless death caused not by nature but by budget decisions.

.

Relevant Pages

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  • US returning $13 million taken from Iraq improperly held aka stolen.
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