Sunday, December 07, 2008
Four years to make a menu
The
Times Picayune reports:
A long-delayed Army Corps of Engineers plan for protection against a Category 5 hurricane -- a storm as large as or larger than Hurricane Katrina -- will be delayed until at least June, and maybe longer, the project's manager says.
Further, the final document won't be a plan at all, but rather a menu of about two dozen alternatives for Congress to further study and debate, a recipe for additional delay.
...
Garrett Graves, director of the Louisiana Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration, said state officials don't understand why the corps report is taking so long and has cost more than $23 million, when the state completed its own coastal master plan in 13 months for only about $4 million.
Quite simply, its "taking so long" because the Bush administration wants it to take so long. These delays are by design. The Bush administration never, ever, EVER seriously considered approving Category 5 flood protection for South Louisiana. It was
NEVER on the table. EVER!
Immediately after Katrina the Bushies
decided Louisiana would not get Category 5 flood protection. The Bushies made a commitment to deprive us of Cat 5 flood protection-- the absolute one thing that we needed most. So they appointed a Recovery Czar to smile and be perfectly noncommital about this paramount issue day after day, year after year. Similarly, they directed USACE to "study" the matter in a vague way, and delay, delay, delay... But even that wasn't enough. When a preliminary draft of the study was (finally) ready, it had to be filtered through the White House
editing shop before it could be released. The Bush administration never wanted to consider or approve Cat 5 flood protection for Louisiana-- that was their top, overriding goal throughout this whole saga. To avoid a firm commitment, they would appeal to budgetary constraints and to "the dictates of science". As precious years were wasted, the Bush administration played games with the life-and-death issue of flood control for South Louisiana. They intentionally delayed consideration of the matter-- is there any other interpretation of
the facts that makes sense?
You can't tell me that the same administration that outspent Lyndon Johnson and spent a trillion dollars in Iraq, a trillion on Medicare, and six trillion in bailouts/stimulus really believes that Cat 5 flood protection for S. Louisiana is "too expensive". Nor can you tell me that Bush gives a fig about "the dictates of science". No. The simple truth is that they don't want us to have Cat 5 (or 4) flood control. Why? I don't know, precisely. Perhaps they're evil dog vulvae. Perhaps they want to punish Louisiana for being Louisiana, or for embarrassing them during Katrina, or for having Governor Blanco, or Senator Landrieu, or for being a Democratic region with an expensive problem.
Just don't try to tell me that the Bushies made an honest effort on the Cat 5 issue. They didn't. And don't tell me these delays aren't by design. They are.
Point to one freakin' thing the Bushies did to helpfully advance the goal of Category 5 protection for Louisiana
during their term. Just one freakin' thing, that's all I want. I can point to scores of things they've done to delay and derail the effort toward Cat 5 flood protection, but can you cite one thing they did to advance the cause? Anyone?
Next year-- probably around the FOURTH anniversary of the Federal Flood-- USACE will present us with their "menu of alternatives". I mean: does it get any more pathetic than that?
Remember Fall of 2005? If they had sat you down and told you that four years later, in 2009, the USACE would have a "menu of Cat 5 alternatives" ready for presentation... what would your reaction be?
Something like:
"It takes you four years to make a f**king menu?!! Are you trying to destroy us all?!!" The
T-P article continues with some background:
Congress originally ordered the corps to complete the Category 5 study by December 2007, when it appropriated $20 million for the study as part of appropriations bills that provided money for rebuilding levees after Katrina.
The study was to include higher levees and other structures, combined with coastal restoration features designed to reduce surge height and protect the levees, with a goal of protecting the entire Louisiana coastline from "the equivalent of Category 5" storms.
Labels: ACoE, Bush, flood protection
7 Comments:
ACoE is a useless civilian bureacracy that uses a fig leaf association with the well-respected US Army to hide their scattershot pork approach to infrastructure management. It's time to stop blaming the ACoE and start thinking of a way to replace the ACoE as the controlling body of US ports and waterways.
I don't know if the answer is the National Infrastructure Bank that's been talked about but I do know the ACoE has sucked eggs for a century. No aspect of their organization from engineering to management structure to funding and finance is anywhere close to state of the art.
Landrieu should endorse the National Infrastructure Bank and get CAT 5 levees and coastal restoration pre-scored under the terms of the bill to show the value of rebuilding and protecting LA. CAT 5 levees should be project #1 of the bank.
ACoE is a pork slot machine. Smash them to bits and start fresh.
But Oyster,
in that same Sunday TP the Editorial stated that the Corps is "Protecting New Orleans like a National Treasure"?
Schleifsteins article states that they are not.
Which is it???
Are we Protected Treasure of Booty at Risk?
Both articles carried Corps of Engineers Tax-paid Flash Adverts however which tell us they are Reducing Risk by Building Strong. These expensive (not free PSAs) ads run 24hrs/day 7days/week.
So now ask yourself why Schleifstein's article did not come out Friday, rather than his tourists' piece on the Corps Surge Protector?
Indeed it did not show up on nola.com Sunday until after his editors' glowing appraisal.
And BTW, the Corps will enter Court to present pre-trial "expert evidence" on December 22nd. The trial is scheduled for April 20th with lots of back and forth between now and then.
Doesn't this Apparent Conflict of Interest between the Corps and the TP look at least a little queer?
I have covered this copiously on the Ladder if anyone is interested.
http://noladder.blogspot.com/2008/12/dimanche.html
Time. Time is the Revelator and Maynard Keynes said in the long run we'll all be dead.
Kafkatrina asks, "Who'dat Man In The Red Castle?"
frisky post, i like.
If the ACOE needs to be smashed...I nominate George W. Bush to lead it.
The guy's got a proven track record of turning everything he touches to shit.
Speaking of, I suppose that's what's on the "menu" being prepared by ACOE:
"I recommend Madame and Monsieur try the, how you say, shit sandwich...? Oui, oui."
Anyway--New Orleans, like other perceived "Democratic" areas, has been on the, well, their shit list, for a LONG time. All sorts of issues factor into this: racism, anti-urbanism (urban areas tend to lean Democratic), etc. etc. The flood focused the spotlight on the dire conditions in New Orleans; however, you can go to cities all around the country and find plenty of rot, decay, and neglect.
A while back I was struck by a documentary shot in Detroit and how much parts of it resembled post-flood New Orleans...you can also find some pretty rough areas driving through Chicago (going south and east to the Indiana line and into Michigan City/Gary)...I'm willing to bet certain parts of Philadelphia are badly blighted, and even New York isn't fully a new urban Eden (though NYC managed a pretty big turnaround from the 1970s.)
Hell, even Houston is reeling--still--from Ike...you'd figure Team Shrub would at least make an effort as a point of home team pride.
One thing that doesn't help is that the federal government, with the Electoral College and the Senate, overrepresents rural interests at the expense of cities. Maybe Obama, being from Chicago, will at least try to focus on urban interests.
Additionally, and let's not kid ourselves, New Orleans hasn't exactly been brilliantly and/or aggressively representated in government. Sure, at the State level, the city tends to get ganged up on by the rest of the state, but neither Nagin nor Jefferson-who-won't-be-missed have demonstrated much more than absolute bare competence at best, emphasis on "at best," and, of course, mostly have managed to reinforce the public image of Louisiana politics, with all that it entails.
The fact that plenty of money was/is available to invest in New Orleans--or should the city rename itself to "New Orleans A.I.G."?--is evidenced by the fact that, as you say, hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars are being thrown around like so much Monopoly money, even as "the people," are once again asked to tighten our belts (and to cite/paraphrase Bill Hicks, yeah, I wouldn't mind tightening my belt around a few scrawny chickenhawk necks). Interestingly, this massive outlay of cash hasn't resulted in out-of-control inflation. Dollars remain a safe harbor during the global financial crisis, and, while I'm not an economist, the one I read (Krugman) seems to suggest that these expenditures are still small relative to GDP...which means that, crisis or not, an investment in New Orleans infrastructure was never a question of breaking the bank.
It was always a matter of the government simply not caring (the city that care--and the government--forgot.) That lack of caring has been evident for a LONG time, and not just for New Orleans.
I will agree with one thing here NO has not been well represented nationally. I live in DC and lets face it its hard to take serious a place and a people who send their "best and brightest" one guy likes to wear a diaper and cavort with prostitutes and another likes to ask everyone for a bribe because he likes his cash cold and hard. neither is well respected and what kind of real work have they given you. It seems that you guys need to start over elect some neophytes who will keep their nose to the grindstone and work long and hard and late into the night and not just on NO issues but all issues.
Though I question if you can; as corrupt as the local is to raise up above the muck you have to stand on someones shoulders and they own you and have a hand out to be greased. Good luck.
I truely mean it I hope you all can solve this problem.
Oyster, home run!
Every report/study/recommendation that comes from the Corps must first pass through the Office of Management and Budget, an arm of the White House.
You have it 100% correct: The Current Occupant does not want an actionable recommendation.
Let's hope the next president thinks otherwise.
Peace,
Tim
Thanks for the confirmation, Tim. I appreciate it, and it means a lot coming from you.
