YEP! IT'S BUSH AGAIN!
Why the Levee Broke
By Will Bunch, Attytood
Posted on September 1, 2005, Printed on September 1, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/24871/
Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters
continued to rise in New Orleans on Wednesday. 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.
There have been numerous reports of bodies floating in the poorest
neighborhoods of this poverty-plagued city, but the truth is that the death
toll may not be known for days, because the conditions continue to frustrate
rescue efforts.
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 this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans
CityBusiness:
The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection
project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete
due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists
of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank
of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson
parishes.
The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the
president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.
"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got
at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the
levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now
I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them
interest."
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."
That June, with the 2004 hurricane seasion starting, the Corps' 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. According to New
Orleans CityBusiness this June 5:
The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve
levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson
and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item
called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7
million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay
salaries but little else.
"We'll do some design work. We'll design the contracts and get them ready to
go if we get the money. But we don't have the money to put the work in the
field, and that's the problem," Naomi said.
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 was a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street
Canal, site of the main breach on Monday. The levee failure appears to be
causing a human tragedy of epic proportions: "We probably have 80 percent of
our city under water; with some sections of our city the water is as deep as
20 feet. Both airports are underwater," Mayor Ray Nagin told a radio
interviewer.
The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The
Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to
dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed
by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a
significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane
protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local
officials say they need."
Washington knew that this day could come at any time, and it knew the things
that needed to be done to protect the citizens of New Orleans. But in the
tradition of the riverboat gambler, the Bush administration decided to roll
the dice on its fool's errand in Iraq, and on a tax cut that mainly
benefitted the rich. Now Bush has lost that gamble, big time.
The president told us that we needed to fight in Iraq to save lives here at
home. Yet -- after moving billions of domestic dollars to the Persian Gulf
-- there are bodies floating through the streets of Louisiana. What does
George W. Bush have to say for himself now?
Will Bunch is a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News and author of
the blog Attytood.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/24871/
By Will Bunch, Attytood
Posted on September 1, 2005, Printed on September 1, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/24871/
Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters
continued to rise in New Orleans on Wednesday. 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.
There have been numerous reports of bodies floating in the poorest
neighborhoods of this poverty-plagued city, but the truth is that the death
toll may not be known for days, because the conditions continue to frustrate
rescue efforts.
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 this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans
CityBusiness:
The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection
project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete
due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists
of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank
of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson
parishes.
The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the
president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.
"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got
at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the
levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now
I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them
interest."
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."
That June, with the 2004 hurricane seasion starting, the Corps' 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. According to New
Orleans CityBusiness this June 5:
The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve
levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson
and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item
called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7
million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay
salaries but little else.
"We'll do some design work. We'll design the contracts and get them ready to
go if we get the money. But we don't have the money to put the work in the
field, and that's the problem," Naomi said.
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 was a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street
Canal, site of the main breach on Monday. The levee failure appears to be
causing a human tragedy of epic proportions: "We probably have 80 percent of
our city under water; with some sections of our city the water is as deep as
20 feet. Both airports are underwater," Mayor Ray Nagin told a radio
interviewer.
The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The
Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to
dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed
by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a
significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane
protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local
officials say they need."
Washington knew that this day could come at any time, and it knew the things
that needed to be done to protect the citizens of New Orleans. But in the
tradition of the riverboat gambler, the Bush administration decided to roll
the dice on its fool's errand in Iraq, and on a tax cut that mainly
benefitted the rich. Now Bush has lost that gamble, big time.
The president told us that we needed to fight in Iraq to save lives here at
home. Yet -- after moving billions of domestic dollars to the Persian Gulf
-- there are bodies floating through the streets of Louisiana. What does
George W. Bush have to say for himself now?
Will Bunch is a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News and author of
the blog Attytood.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/24871/
