Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?

[GL Schmitt]

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues

By Will Bunch

Published: August 31, 2005

PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans. 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.

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: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

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."

Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be."


Will Bunch (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 when he reported for Newsday. Much of this article also appears on his blog, Attytood, at the Daily News.

 

[Steve French]

RE: Did New Orleans Catas

Yes. Seems it was doomed from the start.
Stupid human tricks set off a whole ecological sequence of events that caused New Orleans to sink - this has been happening for hundreds of years.
As I understand it - could be wrong - way back in the 1700's they found this great port city for shipping - began to drain the "swamps" aka "reclaim the land" (now we call them "wetlands" and they are protected. Swamps are a biological ecosystem, when the water was drained they died, and then sank like all decaying matter. Flood control measures for the growing cities along the Mississippi stopped movement of all the sand and silt that built the area in the first place, and it sank further. So they built a system of breakwalls and levees to hold back the water. The more they built, the more the entire region sank.
FF to 2005 and you have a vast city that started out slightly above sea level thanks to mother nature, now 20-odd ft BELOW sea level due to stupid human tricks.
A disaster waiting to happen.
Man attempts to control nature with technology - man fails again and again. The same scenario plays out over and over, but each time we get a bit smarter.

Of course it doesn't help that Emperor Bush has half the "National Guard" off guarding other nations on a fools mission.

 

[Said1]

RE: Did New Orleans Catas

It's Prophecy. Check this out. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="New+Orleans+faces+destruction"

PS: This is not to be taken seriously.

 

[WildKat]

From www.matthewgood.org:

President Bush cut his vacation short and returned to Washington to address the country, to reassure Americans that the government is doing all that it can in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. What Mr. Bush did not mention was that more than a third of the members of the Mississippi and Louisiana National Guard are either in Iraq or supporting the war effort. These are the men and women who are supposed to be the first available resource with regards to rescue and security operations in disasters such as this. According to National Guard officials in those states affected, the limits of available manpower are already being stretched. It should also come as no surprise that most of those remaining to face this disaster have already done tours in Iraq.

I find this equally disturbing.

 

[mrmom2]

Steve French said

FF to 2005 and you have a vast city that started out slightly above sea level thanks to mother nature, now 20-odd ft BELOW sea level due to stupid human tricks.
A disaster waiting to happen.
Man attempts to control nature with technology - man fails again and again. The same scenario plays out over and over, but each time we get a bit smarter.

Denmark doesn't have a problem and there even farther below sea level 8O The problem is the massive cuts to the levvee systems matinence budget that Bush did .That money was better spent in Homeland defense and Iraq 8O

 

[Ocean Breeze]

The problem is the massive cuts to the levvee systems matinence budget that Bush did .That money was better spent in Homeland defense and Iraq

indeed, bush's "priorities" are having some consequences now.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

New Orleans as a Casualty of Iraq
Juan Cole, Informed Comment


September 31, 2005

Bob Harris's take on the story of how resources for levees and floodworks for New Orleans, along with the Louisiana National Guard, were diverted to Iraq, strikes me as balanced and right. The nation made a decision about priorities. Tax cuts and the Iraq War came first. In a world of finite resources, that decision had real-world consequences.

It is so sad to see a city die. Those poor, poor people. I had earlier hoped New Orleans had been spared, but as Billmon explains in the end Lake Pontchartrain was blown into the city and apparently there is no reason to think it will drain back away any time soon. (Last I knew, Bourbon Street was still largely spared, because being the old part of the city it was built on relatively high ground. The water at Bourbon and Canal street was still only knee deep. But the French Quarter without the rest of the city might soon become more of an antiquarian curiosity than a living set of traditions.)

Now there is looting. Maybe Americans can imagine now what Iraqis felt like when US troops stood aside and allowed massive looting, including of precious national heirlooms and the documentary history of the country in modern times.

Events such as the collapse of some Antarctic ice shelves will contribute to a rising of sea levels over the next century.

Spenser Weart explains:




"At least one thing was certain. If temperatures climbed a few degrees, as most climate scientists now considered likely, the sea level would rise simply because water expands when heated. This is almost the only thing about global change that can be calculated directly from basic physics. The additional effects of glacier melting are highly uncertain (scientists were still arguing over how much of the 20th century’s sea level rise was due to heat expansion and how much to ice melting). The rough best guess for the total rise in the 21st century was perhaps half a meter

While such a rise will not be a world disaster, by the late 21st century it will bring significant everyday problems, and occasional storm-surge catastrophes, to populous coastal areas from New Orleans to Bangladesh. More likely than not, low-lying areas where tens of millions of people live will be obliterated. Entire island nations are at risk. Then it will get worse. Even if humanity controls greenhouse emissions enough to halt global warming, the heat already in the air will work its way gradually deeper into the oceans, so the tides will continue to creep higher, century after century."


Global warming is what is causing the seas to rise. Burning carbon-based fuels adds to global warming as surely as smoking leads to lung cancer. Some of your friendly corporations will deny both things to you.

Science fiction is "good to think with" (in the phrase of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss) on these issues. Look at Kim Stanley Robinson's Forty Signs of Rain, which is reviewed here.

Less elegiac than Robinson's thoughtful novel, and more of an adventure story, John Barnes' Mother of Storms paints a graphic and unforgettable picture of what is likely to happen to the Carribean islands if warming waters produce more and bigger hurricanes.

 

[Said1]

This isn't in defense of anything, just some info about Re-engineering the Mississppi

The budget for fiscal year 2005 proposed by President Bush in February recognized the gravity and exigency of the situation in coastal Louisiana. Although the budget proposal did not expressly endorse a comprehensive restoration program conforming to the Everglades model, it did call for action and recognized that past development efforts have contributed to the loss of land, wetlands in particular. The following items are excerpted from the section of the budget proposal pertaining to the Corps of Engineers:

*

In 2004, the Corps will work to issue a draft report that identifies the most critical ecological needs and proposes a near-term program of highly cost-effective projects to address them. The report will also highlight the key long-term scientific uncertainties and engineering challenges facing the effort to protect and restore the ecosystem, and propose demonstration projects and studies to help answer these questions. The report will focus on the specific coastal areas that require the most immediate attention and on the best way to sequence the proposed work over the next 10 or so years, as we learn what works best.
*

In 2004, the Corps will begin developing studies of potentially promising, long-term ecosystem restoration concepts, with the objective of determining whether they would provide a cost-effective way to create coastal wetlands.
* An existing Federal-State Task Force established under 1990 legislation will increase its efforts to build and evaluate highly cost-effective freshwater and sediment diversion projects.

The budget message summarized the benefits of the approach this way: "This coordinated approach to restoration combines a commitment to address the highest priority needs with a search for innovative solutions [emphasis added]. It also ensures that the coastal Louisiana restoration effort will, in the long-term, be able to adapt and evolve as needed, based on the best available science."

As program development goes, the engineering community is poised for a major new effort in the Mississippi River basin. The problem is well defined: it is to reengineer the Mississippi. The conceptual solutions are clear, but the number of possible combinations of individual projects is daunting. The country needs a program of cost-effective projects to address the most pressing ecological dangers. In short, over the next decade engineers will be called upon to optimize and develop projects that can deliver environmental and economic benefits to coastal Louisiana. Civil engineers must enter the policy discussion and be willing to rub shoulders with biologists, economists, and politicians to ensure that the solutions developed are practical and effective.

Follow link for the rest:

http://www.pubs.asce.org/ceonline/ceonline04/0704feat.html

 

[GL Schmitt]

Lost In The Flood

Why no mention of race or class in TV's Katrina coverage?

By Jack Shafer


I can't say I saw everything that the TV newscasters pumped out about Katrina, but I viewed enough repeated segments to say with 90 percent confidence that broadcasters covering the New Orleans end of the disaster demurred from mentioning two topics that must have occurred to every sentient viewer: race and class.

Nearly every rescued person, temporary resident of the Superdome, looter, or loiterer on the high ground of the freeway I saw on TV was African-American. And from the look of it, they weren't wealthy residents of the Garden District. This storm appears to have hurt blacks more directly than whites, but the broadcasters scarcely mentioned that fact.

Now, don't get me wrong. Just because 67 percent of New Orleans residents are black, I don't expect CNN to rename the storm "Hurricane" Carter in honor of the black boxer. Just because Katrina's next stop after destroying coastal Mississippi was counties that are 25 percent to 86 percent African-American (according to this U.S. Census map), and 27.9 percent of New Orleans residents are below the poverty line, I don't expect the Rev. Jesse Jackson to call the news channels to give a comment. But in the their frenzy to beat freshness into the endless loops of disaster footage that have been running all day, broadcasters might have mentioned that nearly all the visible people left behind in New Orleans are of the black persuasion, and mostly poor.

To be sure, some reporters sidled up to the race and class issue. I heard them ask the storm's New Orleans victims why they hadn't left town when the evacuation call came. Many said they were broke—"I live from paycheck to paycheck," explained one woman. Others said they didn't own a car with which to escape and that they hadn't understood the importance of evacuation.

But I don't recall any reporter exploring the class issue directly by getting a paycheck-to-paycheck victim to explain that he couldn't risk leaving because if he lost his furniture and appliances, his pots and pans, his bedding and clothes, to Katrina or looters, he'd have no way to replace them. No insurance, no stable, large extended family that could lend him cash to get back on his feet, no middle-class job to return to after the storm.

What accounts for the broadcasters' timidity? I saw only a couple of black faces anchoring or co-anchoring but didn't see any black faces reporting from New Orleans. So, it's safe to assume that the reluctance to talk about race on the air was a mostly white thing. That would tend to imply that white people don't enjoy discussing the subject. But they do, as long as they get to call another white person racist.

My guess is that Caucasian broadcasters refrain from extemporizing about race on the air mostly because they fear having an Al Campanis moment. Campanis, you may recall, was the Los Angeles Dodgers vice president who brought his career to an end when he appeared on Nightline in 1987 and explained to Ted Koppel that blacks might not have "some of the necessities" it takes to manage a major league team or run it as a general manager for the same reason black people aren't "good swimmers." They lack "buoyancy," he said.

Not to excuse Campanis, but as racists go he was an underachiever. While playing in the minor leagues, he threw down his mitt and challenged another player who was bullying Jackie Robinson. As Dodger GM, he aggressively signed black and Latino players, treated them well, and earned their admiration. Although his Nightline statement was transparently racist, in the furor that followed, nobody could cite another racist remark he had ever made. His racism, which surely blocked blacks from potential front-office Dodger careers, was the racism of overwhelming ignorance—a trait he shared (shares?) with many other baseball executives.

This sort of latent racism (or something more potent) may lurk in the hearts of many white people who end up on TV, as it does in the hearts of many who watch. Or, even if they're completely clean of racism's taint, anchors and reporters fear that they'll suffer a career-stopping Campanis moment by blurting something poorly thought out or something that gets misconstrued. Better, most think, to avoid discussing race at all unless someone with impeccable race credentials appears to supervise—and indemnify—everybody from potentially damaging charges of racism.

Race remains largely untouchable for TV because broadcasters sense that they can't make an error without destroying careers. That's a true pity. If the subject were a little less taboo, one of last night's anchors could have asked a reporter, "Can you explain to our viewers, who by now have surely noticed, why 99 percent of the New Orleans evacuees we're seeing are African-American? I suppose our viewers have noticed, too, that the provocative looting footage we're airing and re-airing seems to depict mostly African-Americans."

If the reporter on the ground couldn't answer the questions, a researcher could have Nexised the New Orleans Times-Picayune five-parter from 2002, "Washing Away," which reported that the city's 100,000 residents without private transportation were likely to be stranded by a big storm. In other words, what's happening is what was expected to happen: The poor didn't get out in time.

To the question of looting, an informed reporter or anchor might have pointed out that anybody—even one of the 500 Nordic blondes working in broadcast news—would loot food from a shuttered shop if they found themselves trapped by a flood and had no idea when help would come. However sympathetic I might be to people liberating necessities during a disaster in order to survive, I can't muster the same tolerance for those caught on camera helping themselves in a leisurely fashion to dry goods at Wal-Mart. Those people weren't looting as much as they were shopping for good stuff to steal. MSNBC's anchor Rita Cosby, who blurted an outraged if inarticulate harrumph when she aired the Wal-Mart heist footage, deserves more respect than the broadcasters who gave the tape the sort of nonjudgmental commentary they might deliver if they were watching the perps vacuum the carpets at home.

When disaster strikes, Americans—especially journalists—like to pretend that no matter who gets hit, no matter what race, color, creed, or socioeconomic level they hail from, we're all in it together. This spirit informs the 1997 disaster flick Volcano, in which a "can't we all just get along" moment arrives at the film's end: Volcanic ash covers every face in the big crowd scene, and everybody realizes that we're all members of one united race.

But we aren't one united race, we aren't one united class, and Katrina didn't hit all folks equally. By failing to acknowledge upfront that black New Orleanians—and perhaps black Mississippians—suffered more from Katrina than whites, the TV talkers may escape potential accusations that they're racist. But by ignoring race and class, they boot the journalistic opportunity to bring attention to the disenfranchisement of a whole definable segment of the population. What I wouldn't pay to hear a Fox anchor ask, "Say, Bob, why are these African-Americans so poor to begin with?"

 

[gopher]

Nope --- it did not have to happen:


http://www.alternet.org/story/24799/


How Not to Prepare for a Hurricane

The Progress Report. Posted August 30, 2005.


President Bush vacationed while hurricane Katrina ruined homes and lives. This behavior is par for the president's course.

In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked a major hurricane strike on New Orleans as "among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country," directly behind a terrorist strike on New York City.

Yesterday, disaster struck.

One of the strongest storms in recorded history rocked the Gulf Coast, bringing 145 mph winds and floods of up to 20 feet. One million residents were evacuated; at least 65 are confirmed dead. Tens of thousands of homes were completely submerged.

Mississippi's governor reported "catastrophic damage on all levels." Downtown New Orleans buildings were "imploding," a fire chief said. Oil surged past $70 a barrel. New Orleanians were grimly asking each other, "So, where did you used to live?" (To donate to Red Cross disaster relief, call 1-800-HELP-NOW).

While it happened, President Bush decided to … continue his vacation, stopping by the Pueblo El Mirage RV and Golf Resort in El Mirage, California, to hawk his Medicare drug benefit plan.

On Sunday, President Bush said, "I want to thank all the folks at the federal level and the state level and the local level who have taken this storm seriously." He's not one of them. Below, we present "How Not to Prepare for a Massive Hurricane," by President Bush, congressional conservatives, and their corporate special interest allies.

SLASH SPENDING ON HURRICANE PREPAREDNESS IN NEW ORLEANS: Two months ago, President Bush took an ax to budget funds that would have helped New Orleans prepare for such a disaster. The New Orleans branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suffered a "record $71.2 million" reduction in federal funding, a 44.2 percent reduction from its 2001 levels.

Reports at the time said that thanks to the cuts, "major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. … Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now." (Too bad Louisiana isn't a swing state. In the aftermath of Hurricane Frances -- and the run-up to the 2004 election -- the Bush administration awarded $31 million in disaster relief to Florida residents who didn't even experience hurricane damage.)

DESTROY NATURAL HURRICANE PROTECTIONS: The Gulf Coast wetlands form a "natural buffer that helps protect New Orleans from storms," slowing hurricanes down as they approach from sea.

When he came into office, President Bush pledged to uphold the "no net loss" wetland policy his father initiated. He didn't keep his word.

Bush rolled back tough wetland policies set by the Clinton administration, ordering federal agencies "to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands and an untold number of waterways nationwide."

Last year, four environmental groups issued a joint report showing that administration policies had allowed "developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands."

The result? New Orleans may be in even greater danger: "Studies show that if the wetlands keep vanishing over the next few decades, then you won't need a giant storm to devastate New Orleans -- a much weaker, more common kind of hurricane could destroy the city too."

GUT THE AGENCY TASKED WITH DEVELOPING HURRICANE RESPONSES: Forward-thinking federal plans with titles like "Issues and Options in Flood Hazards Management," "Floods: A National Policy Concern," and "A Framework for Flood Hazards Management" would be particularly valuable in a time of increasingly intense hurricanes.

Unfortunately, the agency that used to produce them -- the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) -- was gutted by Gingrich conservatives several years ago.

As Chris Mooney (who presciently warned of the need to bulk up hurricane defenses in New Orleans last May) noted yesterday, "If we ever return to science-based policymaking based on professionalism and expertise, rather than ideology, an office like OTA would be very useful in studying how best to save a city like New Orleans -- and how Congress might consider appropriating money to achieve this end."

SEND OUR FIRST RESPONDERS TO FIGHT A WAR OF CHOICE: National Guard and Reserve soldiers are typically on the front lines responding to disasters like Katrina -- that is, if they're not fighting in Iraq. Roughly 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is currently deployed in Iraq, where guardsmen and women make up about four of every 10 soldiers.

Additionally, "Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators" used by the Louisiana Guard are also tied up abroad. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," Louisiana National Guard Lt. Colonel Pete Schneider told reporters earlier this month. "Recruitment is down dramatically, mostly because prospective recruits are worried about deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan or another country," the AP reported recently. "I used to be able to get about eight people a month," said National Guard 1st Sgt. Derick Young, a New Orleans recruiter. "Now, I'm lucky if I can get one."

HELP FUEL GLOBAL WARMING: Severe weather occurrences like hurricanes and heat waves already take hundreds of lives and cause millions in damages each year. As the Progress Report has noted, data increasingly suggests that human-induced global warming is making these phenomena more dangerous and extreme than ever.

"The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service," science author Ross Gelbspan writes. "Its real name is global warming."

AP reported recently on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis that shows that "major storms spinning in both the Atlantic and the Pacific … have increased in duration and intensity by about 50 percent" since the 1970s, trends that are "closely linked to increases in the average temperatures of the ocean surface and also correspond to increases in global average atmospheric temperatures during the same period."

Yet just last week, as Katrina was gathering steam and looming over the Gulf, the Bush administration released new CAFE standards that actually encourage automakers to produce bigger, less fuel efficient vehicles, while preventing states from taking strong, progressive action to reverse global warming.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0901-04.htm

more to come, folks.


tie in with the serious global warming issue continues......while bush remains in the dark . Just waiting for bush to come out and speak to Global warming ........as if it were HIS idea. (when he wakes up from the comfort/delusional cocoon (bullet proof and people proof) he lives in)

Where is TRUE leadership when one needs it so desperately?? So far he blew two disasters on US proper........and created TWO disasters via his own war wagon out side the US. WHen will the media/ and the American population (a generalization, of course)wake up to all this , as it churns destructively around them......

 

[Said1]

RE: Did New Orleans Catas

Katrina was Bush's fault?

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: Did New Orleans Catas

Katrina was Bush's fault?

that is begging the question......and not allowed in a "court" of law...... :wink:

 

[Said1]

RE: Did New Orleans Catas

No it isn't. Budget cuts in relation to New Orleans protecting themselves two months ago AND Bush's environmental policies probably didn't have much bearing on the severity of the storm or the destruction resulting from the storm.

I would say "no" Katrina isn't Bush's fault.

 

[Reverend Blair]

Katrina was Bush's fault?

He certainly played a roll in the lack of preparation because he was instrumental in cuts to programs that would have minimized the damage.

His insane denial of science arrived too late to blame him for Katrina, but his continued denial of global warming is making future storms more common and more severe.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: Did New Orleans Catas

No it isn't. Budget cuts in relation to New Orleans protecting themselves two months ago AND Bush's environmental policies probably didn't have much bearing on the severity of the storm or the destruction resulting from the storm.

I would say "no" Katrina isn't Bush's fault.

Of course H-Katrina ... a product of nature , that can be explained scientifically is NOT 'bush's "fault". (as such)......sheeesh.... But one has to examine his role , decisions that affected preparedness for such an event. The momentum of hurricanes has been building over the past few years. Weather patterns have changed dramatically.........and yet the stupidity of the bush cabal over rules science . evidence and common sense......as it spends a fortune on WARRING.KILLING and DESTRUCTION while ignoring the potential areas for disaster right at home.

Not to worry ......your hero/pal, idol...... the bush criminal does not have super powers so as to incur the wrath of hurricanes and strong winds/floods (and thank goodness , he never will ......as we have alread seen what he does with the "power " he grants himself. )

One has to wonder just how "hot" it has to get before the brain damaged US Leader will realize his limitations and actually acknowledge that there is such a thing as globabl warming.....and it is affecting lives NOW. ???

 

[Ocean Breeze]

No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"

By Sidney Blumenthal

09/01/05 "Der Spiegel" -- -- In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "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."

The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."

"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.

In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.

On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.

........and then of course there is above.... (bush's misguided , misdirected , irresponsible ....."priorities.")

 

[Said1]

Re: RE: Did New Orleans Catas

No it isn't. Budget cuts in relation to New Orleans protecting themselves two months ago AND Bush's environmental policies probably didn't have much bearing on the severity of the storm or the destruction resulting from the storm.

I would say "no" Katrina isn't Bush's fault.

Of course Katrina -hurricane... a product of nature that can be explained scientifically is NOT 'bush's "fault". (as such)......sheeesh.... But one has to examine his role , decisions that affected preparedness for such an event. The momentum of hurricanes has been building over the past few years. Weather patterns have changed dramatically.........and yet the stupidity of the bush cabal over rules science . evidence and common sense......as it spends a fortune on WARRING.KILLING and DESTRUCTION while ignoring the potential areas for disaster right at home.

What are you talking about? I can see that type of post being made had the storm hit next September, but two months would not have changed what happened. They've had decades of repeated warnings about levees and/or drainage failures, long before Bush decided not to fund proposed projects or give money to the state to do so....or whatever happened exactly.

Not to worry ......your hero/pal, idol...... the bush criminal does not have super powers so as to incur the wrath of hurricanes and strong winds/floods (and thank goodness , he never will ......as we have alread seen what he does with the "power " he grants himself. )

I know "Bush=Hilter" and whatnot.

 

[GL Schmitt]

Re: RE: Did New Orleans Catas

Katrina was Bush's fault?

We know that Incurious George endorses 'Intelligent Design,' unfortunately, he didn’t underwrite intelligent maintainence.

It is that which is the fault of his policies.

 

[missile]

I wouldn't doubt that the Feds gave more than enough funding to louisiana for flood control,but my question is : Did the State spend it on that? Or did they have other priorities in mind?