We've previously detailed the history of how Louisiana pols go up to D.C., present their case for Cat 5 protection, remain hopeful and optimistic, and then get ultimately let down by the powers-that-be. The best the Bush White House would do for us is fund a two year study. Bushco justified this by making an uncharacteristic appeal to science, saying we must abide by whatever "science dictates". I interpreted this maneuver as a fairly transparent attempt to kick the Cat 5 can down the road for another President to handle.
So, the White House released the preliminary report on the Army Corps of Engineers Cat 5 "study", and it only confirmed my long-held suspicions. No one who cares about flood protection in Louisiana was positively impressed. Today's Times-Picayune reports:
The Bush administration issued guidelines Monday for deciding how to protect Louisiana from the most dangerous hurricanes-- plans that state officials said ignore specific fixes that could begin quickly
The much-awaited report, developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, marked the first step in two years of planning how to rebuild New Orleans' levees, bolster Louisiana's coastline and develop other programs to control flooding from Category 5 storms.
But five specific recommendations Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, described as urgently needed to protect the state had been stripped out of the Corps' proposal since a draft was circulated last month.
Instead, Corps officials said they would put off embracing any particular plans to avoid uncoordinated or incomplete safeguards during the process. The rebuilding could take over a decade.
...
No cost estimate for a comprehensive plan was released, and a Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said fiscal concerns were one reason the Corps was directed to develop a careful review process.
...
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., called it "nothing more than another slap in the face of Louisiana" and said the Army "decided to gut the report and remove all substance."
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said she would demand congressional hearings to investigate omission of the five recommendations. "Levee and flood control is a life-or-death situation for the people of coastal Louisiana," she said. "So it is very disappointing that this report fails to do what Congress mandated."
...
The federal aid law called for "information based on the Corps' expertise in a timely manner and unfiltered by the policy goals of the administration."
Remember, this is the same administration that committed to building the "best levee system known in the world". And, in my view, they intentionally sabotaged the study. The editorial board at the Times Picayune interpreted the Administration's interference only slightly more charitably:
The report is not a call to action. Instead, it's a call for a "decision matrix" that will determine how projects will be chosen in the future. The Bush administration removed recommendations for specific projects that officials from Louisiana and the corps had included in an initial draft.
The report, which was substantially rewritten by administration officials, makes clear that even the final report, due in December 2007, won't contain such specifics.
"The purpose of the final report is not to recommend a plan to increase hurricane protection or risk reduction," the draft says. Instead, the purpose is to "inform decision-making" about what risk reduction measures should be considered in formal feasibility studies.
Spending two years figuring out how to figure out what to do isn't exactly a fast track. It's certainly not what Louisiana officials thought they were getting. Sen. Mary Landrieu, who wrote the language requiring the report, said Congress wasn't looking for "another policy paper from the administration."
State officials are understandably dismayed with this nebulous approach. It bears little resemblance to a draft that they and corps officials worked on for six months, and the changes were made without their input.
The state and corps had agreed to recommend authorization for design work on a barrier plan that would use levees and gates to block storm surge from entering Lake Borgne and Lake Pontchartrain. But that was removed.
"The corps and the state at the highest levels had been in agreement on the direction of this report, and now it's all been pushed back," said Sidney Coffee, Gov. Kathleen Blanco's coastal adviser.
The editorial goes on to make an appeal to Bush, calling him a "staunch ally" of Louisiana, and saying that his administration should take a "longer view" of Category 5 protections, "if a restored Gulf Coast is to be [his] legacy."
Those are hopeful words, but any sentient being can look at the evidence and conclude that Category 5 flood protection does not fit into this Administration's intended "legacy".
Instead, the folks who outspent Lyndon Johnson suddenly have "fiscal concerns", and brazenly remove specific proposals from a report, and replace them with a "decision matrix". Actually, I think Bushco is taking the "longer view". They want to see how much "longer" they can put us off. I wonder: who might be the Architect of this "run out the clock" maneuver?
Tejas will get its "flood" wall before you do. 