[Rhodes22-list] POLITICS - When The Levy Breaks

[Bill Effros]

Levee!

Used as a noun, Levy is an alternate spelling for a tribe of Jews, some 
of whom went on to make excellent blue jeans.  The jeans eventually wear 
out, but they seldom break.

Bill Effros.



brad haslett wrote:

>I've been nursing a nasty sinus infection here in
>China that I haven't been able to will or drug away,
>and have been entertaining myself with $1.20 bootleg
>DVD's and the net.  It was wish full thinking on my
>part to think that we might wait until the waters
>receded and the dead were buried before the "Bush
>Bashing" and finger pointing started, but no.  My copy
>of "Rising Tide", the account of the great flood of
>1926-27, was loaned out several years ago, never to
>return, but it would be 6000 miles away now anyway so
>I'll quote from memory.  New Orleans has always been
>subject to the ravages of the Mississippi.  The New
>Orleans city fathers convinced the Federal government
>to allow them to blow-up the levies south of the city
>in 1927 because they were afraid that "Old Man River"
>would permanently alter its course through the tens of
>thousands  year old natural flood relief course, and
>leave 'Orleans an inland city.  They promised to
>compensate the citizens of the two parishes wiped out
>as a result.  When it turned out that the fur trade
>they eliminated for the next two years generated far
>more revenue than they imagined, they reneged on their
>promise by offering 5 cents on the dollar and paid
>that only if you settled immediately. New Orleans has
>had a long time to plan for the inevitable, but now
>that it has happened, is it ALL W's fault?  The
>Mississippi IS a national resource and we all have a
>vested interest in Delta project funding.  But where
>does responsibility lie with the city of New Orleans
>and the state of Louisiana?  Have they not every run
>simulations or training for this type of event?  I'm
>quite certain that New Orleans, like most Southern,
>predominantly black cities, has a massive school bus
>fleet.  Did anyone give thought to using them to
>evacuate the city?  Did anyone in Louisiana read the
>Army think-tank study from Ft. Riley, Kansas
>(extensively covered by the Atlantic) that if a major
>earthquake hit Memphis, TN (which lies on the New
>Madrid fault, largest in North America), civil anarchy
>would soon follow?  Is it surprising that New Orleans
>would follow a similar pattern after a major
>hurricane?  There are a lot of people to blame,
>including W.  But the President is hardly at fault for
>several centuries of bad civil engineering, social
>engineering, and lax attitudes by local officials. 
>How long HAVE they been serving "hurricane" drinks at
>Pat O'Brians?  OK, a third of the Louisiana Guard is
>in Iraq, doesn't that leave about 8000 behind?  Are
>they not at the governor's disposal?  What shall we
>have them do first?  Shoot looters?  Will they then be
>accused of over-reacting as they were guilty of at
>Kent State?  No one was prepared for this, not the
>local officials, the state, or the Federal government.
> There are plenty of people to blame and a lot of
>self-examination to be done, by people from the last
>several decades.  Right now, let's bury the dead and
>heal the living.
>
>Here is an article regarding the levy system there. 
>If half the Federal budget had been dedicated to lower
>Mississippi levy projects in 2000, we wouldn't have
>prevented this from happening.
>
>Brad
>
>--------------------------
>
>
>Levees not designed for Katrina-strength storm,
>official says By Pete Carey, Knight Ridder Newspapers
>2 hours, 11 minutes ago
> 
>
>
>The levee system that protected New Orleans from
>hurricane-caused surges along Lake Pontchartrain was
>never designed to survive a storm the size of
>Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers said
>Thursday.
>
>The levees were built to withstand only a Category 3
>storm, something projections suggested would strike
>New Orleans only once every two or three centuries,
>the commander of the corps, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock,
>told reporters in a conference call. Katrina was a
>Category 4 storm.
>
>"Unfortunately, that occurred in this case," Strock
>said.
>
>Strock said that the levee system's design was settled
>on a quarter of a century ago, before the current
>numerical system of classifying storms was in
>widespread use. He said that studies had begun
>recently on strengthening the system to protect
>against Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, but hadn't
>progressed very far.
>
>Strock added that despite a May report by the Corps'
>Louisiana district that a lack of federal funding had
>slowed construction of hurricane protection, nothing
>the Corps could have done recently would have
>prevented Katrina from flooding New Orleans.
>
>"The levee projects that failed were at full project
>design and were not really going to be improved,"
>Strock said.
>
>Strock's comments drew immediate criticism from
>flood-protection advocates, who said that the Corps'
>May report was a call for action and a complaint about
>insufficient funding, and that no action took place.
>
>"The Corps knew, everybody knew, that the levees had
>limited capability," said Joseph N. Suhayda, a retired
>director of the Louisiana State University's Water
>Resources and Research Institute. "Because of
>exercises and simulations, we knew that the
>consequences of overtopping (water coming over the
>levees) would be disastrous. People were playing with
>matches in the fireworks factory and it went off."
>
>Suhayda, an expert in coastal oceanography, said, "the
>fact the levee failed is not according to design. If
>it was overtopped, it's because it was lower in that
>spot than other spots. The fact that it was only
>designed for a Category 3 meant it was going to get
>overtopped. I knew that. They knew that. There were
>limits."
>
>Some critics Thursday questioned the usefulness of
>levees, saying that all of them fail eventually.
>
>"There are lots of ways for levees to fail.
>Overtopping is just one of them," said Michael K.
>Lindell, of Texas A&M University's Hazard Reduction
>and Recovery Center. "There's a lot of smokescreen
>about `low probabilities.' Low probabilities just
>means `Takes a long time."'
>
>Strock said that stopping the flow of water over the
>levees has proved to be "a very challenging effort."
>
>Engineers have been unable to reach the levees
>themselves and have had to draw up plans based only on
>observations from the air, he said. "We, too, are
>victims in this situation," he said.
>
>In Louisiana, Army Corps officials said they hoped
>that one break, in what's known as the 17th Street
>Canal, might be closed by the end of Thursday, but
>that a second break in the London Avenue canal is
>proving more intractable.
>
>Short sections of the walls that protected the city
>from the waters of Lake Pontchartrain caved in under
>storm surges, including an area that recently had been
>strengthened.
>
>A fact sheet issued by the Corps in May said that
>seven construction projects in New Orleans had been
>stalled for lack of funding. It noted that the budget
>proposed by President Bush for 2005 was $3 million and
>termed that amount insufficient to fund new
>construction contracts.
>
>"We could spend $20 million if the funds were
>provided," the fact sheet said. Two major pump
>stations needed to be protected against hurricane
>storm surges, the fact sheet said, but the budgets for
>2005 and 2006 "will prevent the corps from addressing
>these pressing needs."
>
>Acknowledging delays in construction, Corps officials
>in Louisiana said that those projects weren't where
>the failures occurred. "They did not contribute to the
>flooding of the city," said Al Naomi, a senior project
>manager. 
>
>"The design was not adequate to protect against a
>storm of this nature," he said. "We were not
>authorized to provide protection to Category 4 or 5
>design." 
>
>
>
>Copyright ?2005 KnightRidder.com
>
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