The Army Corps of Engineers spent a half billion dollars on pump stations and related structures for the New Orleans outfall canals with 40 pumps that were supposed to last 50 years, but will have to be scrapped after just 5, according to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC).
And the Corps has apparently been lying about it.
Since 2007, Corps spokespersons have been telling the public that the MWI hydraulic pumps are temporary when records clearly show that the Corps went to Congress in 2006 and requested money for improvements, including pumps that would have a 50-year life, not 5. In addition, the Army Corps' contract with the pump vendor calls for a bearing life of 50,000 hours which represents a "very long life span, likely in excess of 50 years."
Now the Corps is claiming they said from Day One that the pumps were temporary.
But here is the truth. What was temporary from Day One was the housing structures that supported and surrounded the pumps, not the pumps themselves.
If this were not bad enough, the OSC has warned the President in a June 2009 letter that the expensive $40 million dollar pumps likely will not function if needed in a hurricane.
This is disturbing.
And it is one more reason the citizens of Louisiana and the American people deserve the 8/29 Investigation, a truly independent analysis of the levee failures, and the decision making involved, of the flooding on August 29, 2005.
Click here and demand the 8/29 Investigation. http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1625/t/4583/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=2949
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Click here for more on the OSC report about the defective pumps.
Labels: ACoE, flood protection, levees
