Pointing Fingers in the Wake of the Flood
Posted by: lex on
http://PEJ.org Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - 02:39 PM
"....Early last year, President Bush's budget proposed spending less than a fifth of
the money the Army Corp of Engineers requested for precisely the purpose of
reinforcing the Lake Pontchartrain levee system. In June 2004 Emergency
Mangement Chief for Jefferson Parish remarked on the budget reductions for his
area, saying:
"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."
Likewise, last year, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went begging to a local
agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, saying $2 million was urgently
required because Washington wasn't willing to pony up. He said then:
"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is
sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't
stay ahead of the settlement."
"The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal
funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."
Naomi got his money, only to find the Fed had ducked out of a 15 million dollar
project to shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain in the 2005 budget. And,
just months ago, despite 2004 being the most lively hurricane season in memory,
a further 26 million dollars was being withheld from SELA.
It was the largest budget reduction for preparedness every made.
For New Orleans, the irony couldn't be greater; just last year, recognizing the
growing number and magnitude of hurricanes, a study was proposed by the Corps
that would examine how the city would handle Category 4 and 5 storms. But that
too was shot down by the Bush administration. Again citing the cost of the war
in Iraq, the New Orleans office was ordered to undertake no new studies...."
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