Wow, you beat me there - no way am I going to subject myself to reading that long of an article from a source of Bush administration propaganda. For one, you might refer to a reputable source of news; second, highlights and a link would be much more conducive to a healthy debate. Blaming local residents is exactly the type of ridiculous political shift the blame approach that the Bush administration campaign led by Karl Rove is pushing. Totally disgraceful.
That tells everone how uninformed you are.
Think about it in these terms . . . mantaining a levee; not something that a local resident can do. Preparing for a disaster of this scale that has been expected for years requires Federal action. The Bush budget cut funding for projects to prepare for this problem with the levees! Also, who was most effected by this disaster? The poor. As Christians, the plight of the poor is something that should be of interest to all of us. Another example of Bush's failures: Under the Bush administration the poverty rate has increased every year and under Clinton the poverty rate declined every year.
Well you know, when you live in that type of area. That is below sea level you will have problems.
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.
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.” 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.
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.
New Orleans Levees Not Designed for StormSeptember 5th, 2005 @ 1:17am
By MARY DALRYMPLE
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Projects designed to keep New Orleans from flooding in a hurricane prepared the city for a probable scenario, not the worst-case scenario. The network that was supposed to protect the below-sea-level city from flooding was built to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, the Army Corps of Engineers said. It was overwhelmed when Katrina's winds and storm surge came ashore a week ago as a Category 4 storm.
That has left some lawmakers wondering why officials only considered the consequences of a moderate storm.
"What that, in essence, says is that you're not going to worry about the biggest disasters that could occur, you're only going to worry about the smaller ones," said Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee."How many times do we have to see disaster overwhelm our preparedness before we recognize that we are playing Russian roulette with people's lives, with their livelihoods and with the life of whole communities?"
Louisiana lawmakers have long lamented that Corps of Engineers programs designed to protect New Orleans and surrounding areas were starved for cash.
Corps officials, said, however, that funneling more money into the agency's levee repair programs wouldn't have totally averted disaster. The infrastructure around the city was designed to withstand only a Category 3.
Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, Corps of Engineers commander, said some flooding would have occurred even if the remaining repair projects planned for the levees had been completed.
The infrastructure assumed that a storm bigger than a Category 3 has a very low probability of occurring.
When the project was designed about 30 years ago, the corps believed it was protecting the city from an event that might occur only every 200 or 300 years.
"We had an assurance that 99.5 percent this would be OK. We, unfortunately, have had that .5 percent activity here," Strock said.
Former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., said everyone has known for years that the levees wouldn't stop a "once every hundred years" storm that could put New Orleans under 20 feet of water.
The complaints and problems with corps funding go back to the Carter administration, and presidents since then have tried to draw money from the agency's projects to pay for other priorities.Mike Parker, a former Mississippi congressman who left as civilian head of the corps in 2002 after criticizing the White House budget office, said the funding problems occurred through Democratic and Republican administrations.
"The corps requested money to complete the projects through the years, but the funding level wasn't given to them in order to do it," he said.
It's the Bush administration taking the brunt of the heat now.
House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said New Orleans got an infusion of money for flood control projects in the late 1990s.
"There was less money spent after that huge project, as, of course, there would be," Blunt said. "Any time you do a big building project, when that project's over, the next year you spend less money."Blunt suggested there might be a limit to the amount that federal programs can do.
"This is not something that government can always prevent," he said. "You know, God is actually bigger and nature is bigger than we are, and this is one of those instances."
Two Corps of Engineers projects were in place to control flooding and prepare for hurricane damage in southern Louisiana. One was a flood control project with channel and pumping station improvements for Southeast Louisiana; the other was a project to protect residents between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River levee from surges driven by a fast-moving category 3 storm.
Each year since 2001, the corps asked for much more money for those two projects than the Bush administration was willing to request or Congress was willing to spend, according to figures compiled by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.In addition, funding for the two programs declined between fiscal years 2001 and 2004, although both saw slight increases this year. Much of the federal budget outside homeland security and defense has been held down while the administration tries to control deficits under control.
Advocates also have pressed for money to restore the eroding Louisiana coastline as additional hurricane protection.
In the future, Breaux said, the federal government must think about a system of levees designed for the once-a-century storm.
"They're going to have to be built stronger. They're going to have to be built higher. They're going to have to be maintained," he said.
"It looks like Baghdad underwater out there."
New Orleans Levees Not Designed for StormFC, if you would spend more time reading information, then blaming you would be okay. As you said earlier, theres enough blame for all the local goverment.
Resting in the Lords hands.
Bob
2 Peter 3:14 Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.
