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E-mail of the Day II
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Sep 05, 2005 03:08pm |
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| Category | Blog Entry |
| News Date | Monday, September 5, 2005 09:05:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | "I've worked closely with Corps personnel for 6 years in various scientific and regulatory capacities on wetlands issues.
[snip]
And General Strock from HQ had to be brought in to do the real damage control: "I don't see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case," said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the corps. "Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place." (from Chi Trib).
But there are really TWO questions that must be answered:
1) Was the levee complete and at design spec?
2) Would a design-spec levee have withstood Katrina?
1) The truth is that short of a whistleblower, we may never know the condition of that levee on 8/29. My source on its inadequate condition isn't solid enough. But I know the following things:
a) You don't finish levees and walk away. They need regular maintenance - even when you haven't built them on dewatered organic soils that settle every year.
b) A District that had just taken a one-year budget cut of $71 million will have had to make some very hard choices about whether maintenance on this particular levee fell (in Corps parlance) "above the line - priority" or "below the line - optional". Their SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) guidance might tell us, but somebody needs to get a FOIA cookin' on this right now.
c) The question of levee adequacy breaks down at least into "was it at spec height?" [yes!] and "was it structurally sound to spec?" [oops!]. Because of the nature of the levee failure (not overtopped, but burst), watch for Corp HQ to focus on the first question and ignore the second (which might pin the deaths on budget decisions). |
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