Engineers: Draining New Orleans Could Take 3 to 6 Months

[quaoar]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-levees1sep01,0,7854368.story?coll=la-home-headlines

By Ralph Vartabedian, Times Staff Writer

Draining the billions of gallons of water that has inundated New Orleans could take three to six months, a substantially longer time than many experts have expected, the Army Corps of Engineers said late Wednesday.

Col. Richard Wagenaar, the Corps' senior official in New Orleans, who is directing the agency's recovery efforts, said in an interview that the estimate was based on planning done in as Hurricane Katrina approached the city and remains the Army's best estimate.

The estimate, moreover, depends on favorable weather conditions. Additional storms, rainfall or other problems could cause even more delays, Wagenaar warned.

< snip >

Public officials, meanwhile, were furious over the Corps' delays. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin blistered officials on television for what he called their inaction. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco scowled in irritation, saying, "I'm extremely upset about it."

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Meanwhile bush claims that this will have an insignificant effect

on the economy.

[NYC]

3. It will have an insignificant effect on Bush.

[AllyCat]

11. Does he have a clue? I mean, any semblance of a freakin' clue??

With gas prices at $3-4/gallon, where are we going to get all that money to buy stuff, huh Georgie boy?

What a complete idiot this man is.

[raccoon]

15. And the gas prices, of course, will ripple thru the economy.

If you lived through the '70's, you know how this works.

Inflation will rear its ugly head and the official inflation figures will WAY UNDERSTATE the case.

[AllyCat]

24. I was only 10 but I remember the lines, the cuts in household

budget (items), and my dad swearing.

Bush* is a nightmare and I wish the country and the godd*&^%! F*&*#$! media would realize it! That this man still has a job astounds me and in the meantime, CNN is broadcasting the top 5 tips for safety in NO? How are they supposed to get the information you dimwits?

[raccoon]

14. Any time der Chimpenfuehrer and his friends say something,

you can pretty much take what was said and believe the opposite.

edited for typo

[NYC]

2. This is the key part.

Public officials, meanwhile, were furious over the Corps' delays. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin blistered officials on television for what he called their inaction. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco scowled in irritation, saying, "I'm extremely upset about it."

[ChairmanAgnostic]

9. they tried with the huge sand bags - as predicted, the bags disappeared

had they been able to fix the breach immediately, (part of the $70 million that Bush cut a couple of months ago) it would have been a different story.
Once the erosion started, simply tossing big sand bags into the breach was guaranteed to fail. It was not the "inaction" - it was the designed inability to react quickly. Thank you Mr. President.

Once the water stopped flowing, trying to find the bottom, plug the huge breaches, and start pumping, well, I agree - in the best of circumstances, maybe 6 months. But one drop of rain, and you got problems increasing. This is hurricane season. Rainy summer. Wet. Windy. Stormy. Humid. - you get the idea.

AND worse, the other levees are now damaged from being so exposed to water. One cannot simply assume that they will hold once the water is removed.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

10. I din't believe they dropped a single sandbag into either breach....

...if I remember correctly, the Mayor was pissed when he discovered that the military helicoptors assigned to that task had been assigned elsewhere.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

12. In today's papers, they describe what happened when they dropped em

the bags disappeared, probably tore, and emptied, and became useless.

A Tulane engineering prof, upon hearing about the 3k sand bags, snorted and predicted precisely that. I wish I had TiVo.

[northzax]

16. ironic, ain't it?

the Army Corps finally found something they couldn't dam.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

29. (You may have mis-spelled it)

The Corpse of Engineers has NEVER found anything they could not damn.

[Igel]

36. The cut was for next year's budget, 2006.

Not a dime of the appropriation it would have been in has been approved yet, and even had it been approved, it wouldn't have been available for disbursement until the next fiscal year begins in October.

I've seen numbers for f/y 2003's reduction from planned expenditures, and proposed reductions in the amount requested for f/y 2004, but nothing about actual appropriations for 2004 and 2005. The first 6 years of the plan apparently went well.

[TrogL]

37. "water stopped flowing"

Um, isn't there like a river or something there?

[BootinUp]

4. They used the Scotty method for estimating

Multiply the real estimate by 4.

How else could they keep their reputaion as miracle workers.

[teryang]

5. NO Corps of Engineers budget slashed $71 million by bushco

Another Terrible Casualty of the Iraq War
How New Orleans was Lost
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

http://www.counterpunch.org



<Distracted by its phony war on terrorism, the US government had made no preparations in the event Hurricane Katarina brought catastrophe to New Orleans. No contingency plan existed. Only now after the disaster are FEMA and the Corp of Engineers trying to assemble the material and equipment to save New Orleans from the fate of Atlantis.

Even worse, articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and public statements by emergency management chiefs in New Orleans make it clear that the Bush administration slashed the funding for the Corp of Engineers' projects to strengthen and raise the New Orleans levees and diverted the money to the Iraq war.

Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune (June 8, 2004): "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Why can't the US government focus on America's needs and leave other countries alone? Why are American troops in Iraq instead of protecting our own borders from a mass invasion by illegal immigrants? Why are American helicopters blowing up Iraqi homes instead of saving American homes in New Orleans?>

New Orleans after Katrina:Cockburn & St. Clair

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08312005.html

<As the war's unpopularity soars, there will be millions asking, Why is the National Guard in Iraq, instead of helping the afflicted along the Gulf in the first crucial hours, before New Orleans, Biloxi, and Mobile turn into toxic toilet bowls with thousands marooned on the tops of houses.

As thousands of trapped residents face the real prospect of perishing for lack of a way out of the flooding city, Bush's first response was to open the spigots of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the request of oil companies and to order the EPA to eliminate Clean Air standards at power plants and oil referiners across the nation, supposedly to increase fuel supplies--a goal long sought by his cronies at the big oil companies.

It didn't have to be this bad. The entire city of New Orleans needed have been lost. Hundreds of people need not have perished. Yet, it now seems clear that the Bush administration sacrificed New Orleans to pursue its mad war on Iraq.

As the New Orleans Times-Picayune has reported in a devastating series of articles over the last two years, city and state officials and the Corps of Enginners had repeatedly requested funding to strengthen the levees along Lake Pontchartrain that breeched in the wake of the flood. But the Bush administration rebuffed the requests repeatedly, reprograming the funding from levee enhancement to Homeland Security and the war on Iraq.

This year the Bush administration slashed funding for the New Orleans Corps of Engineers by $71.2 million, a stunning 44.2 percent reduction from its 2001 levels. A Corps report noted at the time that
"major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to
local engineering firms. . . . Also, a study to determine ways to
protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for
now.">

[TahitiNut]

35. Private global construction companies have hated the Corps for decades.

Virtually all of the lobbying against the Army Corps of Engineers comes from companies that're the first cousins to the bin Laden family's construction company. Bechtel and Halliburton are merely a couple of examples. It's a multi-tiered industy, with subcontractors on top of subcontractors -- each with a "profit margin." The most frequently repeated phrase in the industry is "cost overruns."

[Algorem]

6. if it was oil how long would it take Bushco to suck it up?

[hedgehog]

7. It is oil.....

and petrochemicals

and fertilizers

and raw sewage

and heavy metals

New Orleans just became the world's largest toxic waste site.

[rfkrfk]

8. I've heard that Rio has a nice Carnival

wading boots, not needed.

[Jacobin]

19. Very true

The Rio Carnival makes the New Orleans carnival look like a Sunday school picnic.

:-)

[northzax]

17. sure, where the hell are they going to pump it?

not into Ponchartrain, the Miss. or the gulf without treating it first. Anyone have a rough idea of how many billions of cubic feet we're talking about here?

[Winston702]

23. No treatment

They will pump it out as soon as the leavee breaches are fixed. Every billion gallons would take approxomately 3,000 hour to treat or a little over 4 months/billion gallons. Treatment is not feasible, dilution is.

Edit: Added monthly data

[northzax]

26. so the price is the gulf.

lovely. no more eating fish for me.

[Winston702]

28. Yup

However, the impact will be minimal with all of the rain water flowing through the Mississippi and all water still to reach NO from NO to the headwaters of the Ohio River.

This an emergency where any environmental considerations are trumped by direct human needs.

[northzax]

33. incorrect on the dilution effects

The sludge contains enough heavy metals to make the fisheries in the gulf dead for a decade.

you can dilute it all you want, but mercury and lead are mercury and lead. I'm not sure that the pumping is actually a direct human need, there aren't any lives at stake in the remediation of New Orleans, simply property. Sure, cleaning the water would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but it's a decision that should be discussed.

[mom cat]

13. I was hearind the six month estimate before the storm came in.

The bowl is going to be a bitch to drain.

[Algorem]

18. company hiring 150 engineers for N.O. expects it'll be drained in a month,

apparently-
"We can't even think about going down there until the water is pumped away and the electricity is restored," said Phil Kohari, manager of Integrity Technical Services. "We expect to begin sending people down there in about a month. They'll be there for at least six months, working three weeks on and one week off."-

http://www.cleveland.com/search/index.ssf?/base/ishur/112557573371290.xml?ishur&coll=2

Area firm to hire engineers for South

Thursday, September 01, 2005

...A Tallmadge company is hiring 150 engineers, specializing in structural, electrical, mechanical, heating and air conditioning disciplines to help rebuild the city....


He said the company is recruiting engineers on behalf of NBD International of Ravenna, which is working for various insurance companies. The new employees will augment the company's existing staff.

"Our folks go there and first assess the damage done to buildings, equipment and records," Kohari said...

[northzax]

21. that is overly optimistic

it will take two weeks, minimum just to plug the levees, and another couple of weeks to inspect and repair all the other levees. Plus, the pumps probably need to be replaced...I figure they won't really start pumping until October.

[-..__...]

20. The WTC clean-up was completed well ahead of the original estimate.

Then again; that was 4 years ago meaning 4 more years for incompetency to flourish.

[TahitiNut]

22. What're the chances of another Tropical Storm before they're even close?

Every day of delay merely increases the odds that they'll fall further behind when the next cyclonic comes big-booting up the Gulf. We're nowhere near the end of the hurricane season.

[Parkerfur]

25. That's an excellent and probably a not thought of point

I never even considered that. If another even small non-hurricane storm comes to that area, I don't ever think they would be able to manage. But as I recall I do believe that hurricane season is coming to an end, so maybe they will be alright. I am not sure though and I could be wrong. I always continue to wonder why people build cities and homes in places that should be left to nature in the first place... not that I don't think this is a tragedy because I do, but who thought of building a city below sea level, it just doesn't make sense to me.

[comsymp]

30. Couple things in response

1) Actually, we're just about at the PEAK of hurricane season, not the end, unfortunately.

2) As to why people build homes in places that...
Well, it's hard to argue that building a city below sea level is indeed a bright idea, however, there really aren't that many places in the Contiguous 48 that aren't at significant risk of *some* form of natural disaster. Riverside towns flood, the Midwest / TX / OK record dozens (?) of tornadoes annually, the west coast has regular earthquakes, the entire southeast is subject to hurricanes, wildfires out west.... Granted, there are degrees of risk, but the ones I just mentioned all fall into the higher-than-average category.

Forgot to say, welcome to DU!

[mccoyn]

32. They did not build the city below sea level. It sank.

Originally New Orleans sat on solid land up river from the Gulf. South of New Orleans was all marsh from the river delta. 100 years of trying to control the course of the river has lead to the marsh turning into water, the city is now on the gulf. Without the marsh protecting the city, it began to flood. This was fixed with pumps which remove the water, but takes some soil with it. The removal of the soil is the main reason the city is sinking.

The city is a big port, that is why people live there. If they don't rebuild the city, there is a major economic challenge of replacing the port somewhere else.

[TahitiNut]

34. The hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30. Last year ...

... the total damage is estimated at $42 billion. That was regarded as an unusually active year. I'm guessing we've already exceeded that this year - possibly just with Katrina. It's been my impression that September (followed by October) is the 'peak' of the season over the years, the month when the most damaging storms have hit.

[LeftHander]

27. Earthen Levees waterlogged...

When water gets pumped out the saturated levees and soil will possibly result in new breechs as waterside pressure builds.

Waterlogged levees are worthless. A earthen levee is designed to hold back flood waters long enough for the water to receed and the danger pass.

In the 90's the earthen levees along missippi and misourri rivers exeprienced longs periods of saturation and ulitmatley many failed.

NOLA levees are concrete waterside bulkheads held in place by earthen levees on the landside.

The concrete wall keeps the water off the levee and the levee distributes the load. Water logged earthen levee "toes" are likely not going to be able to hold up and will collapse. I am not an engineer but levee failure and construction it is pretty well documented on the internet.

Right now there is little pressure on the levees as the water is equalized.

The earthen side of the levees will be tottally saturated. it is my understanding that the soil in NOLA is made of layers of clay, sand, silt and organic material (peat?)

Not a stable base for levees. particulaly when the ground will be saturated.

I hope the Corp knows that they are doing. I guess they have to try.

DOn't they?

[rfkrfk]

31. lake entrance to the canals, could be blocked

a canal levee, failed.

the 'lake' levvees, will need to be watched,
as the city is pumped out.