|
Why the Levee Broke
By Will Bunch, Attytood
09/01/05 "AlterNet"
-- -- 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.
Translate
this page
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
