Levees down after funding cuts

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dave Burstein <daveb () dslprime com>
Date: August 31, 2005 4:15:49 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: For IP? Levees down after funding cuts


Dave
This Editor & Publisher article probably oversimplifies how the Iraq  
war cut spending on New Orleans levees, but that budget cuts may  
backfire is worth remembering.

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had  
Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
By Will Bunch
Published: August 30, 2005 9:00 PM ET
PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of  
the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans late on  
Tuesday. 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 it's level with the massive lake.

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 a Feb. 16, 2004,  
article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

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.”

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps'  
project manager Al 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.

...
One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer:  
a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the  
main breach on Monday.

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/