Here is what I sent:
Bush funding cuts cripple emergency mitigation for New Orleans and cut in advance the critical levee repairs and maintaince programs and shelved Category 5 preparedness. In the coming days, Bush will pretend to care and try to look like a hero! He is a hypocrite. His policies directly caused some of the flooding in New Orleans and he should be held accountable for the consequences of his draconian and mean spirited policies that have exacerbated the suffering!
Bush has slashed Clinton's Disaster Mitigation Program. (unbelievable)
"...Among emergency specialists, 'mitigation' -- the measures taken in advance to minimize the damage caused by natural disasters -- is a crucial part of the strategy to save lives and cut recovery costs. But since 2001, key federal disaster mitigation programs, developed over many years, have been slashed and tossed aside. FEMA's Project Impact, a model mitigation program created by the Clinton administration, has been canceled outright. Federal funding of post-disaster mitigation efforts designed to protect people and property from the next disaster has been cut in half. Communities across the country must now compete for pre-disaster mitigation dollars.
As a result, some state and local emergency managers say, it's become more difficult to get the equipment and funds they need to most effectively deal with disasters. In Louisiana, requests for flood mitigation funds were rejected by FEMA this summer. (See sidebar.) In North Carolina, a state also regularly threatened by hurricanes and floods, FEMA recently refused the state's request to buy backup generators for emergency support facilities. And the budget cuts have halved the funding for a mitigation program that saved an estimated $8.8 million in recovery costs in three eastern North Carolina communities alone after 1999's Hurricane Floyd.
Consequently, the residents of these and other disaster-prone states will find the government less able to help them when help is needed most, and both states and the federal government will be forced to shoulder more recovery costs after disasters strike.
In addition, the White House has pushed for privatization of essential government services, including disaster management, and merged FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security -- where, critics say, natural disaster programs are often sidelined by counter-terrorism programs. Along the way, morale at FEMA has plummeted, and many of the agency's most experienced personnel have left for work in other government agencies or private corporations..."
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2004-09-28/cov... usregimechange (1000+ posts)
Mon Aug-29-05 04:25 AM
Original message
New Orleans district, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cut by Bush
In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal funding.
It would be the largest single-year funding loss ever for the New Orleans district, Corps officials said.
I've been here over 30 years and I've never seen this level of reduction, said Al Naomi, project manager for the New Orleans district. I think part of the problem is it's not so much the reduction, it's the drastic reduction in one fiscal year. It's the immediacy of the reduction that I think is the hardest thing to adapt to.
There is an economic ripple effect, too. The cuts mean 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.
New Orleans CityBusiness, Jun 6, 2005, by Deon Roberts
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_200... mikelewis (1000+ posts)
Tue Aug-30-05 03:58 AM
Original message
2004 levee projects Underfunded in hardest hit areas of NO...
Edited on Tue Aug-30-05 04:23 AM by mikelewis
"The water's rising pretty fast," eastern New Orleans resident Chris Robinson told The Associated Press in a cell phone interview at the height of the storm. "I got a hammer and an ax and a crowbar, but I'm holding off on breaking through the roof until the last minute. Tell someone to come get me, please. I want to live."
I can only imagine the horror this must be like and when I read it could have been avoided but wasn't because of a "funding" issue when we are spending billions on a bullshit war, it sort of makes me angry. Here's the snippets...
"Especially hard hit was the Lower Ninth Ward, a poor neighborhood squeezed between a marsh on the north, the river on the south and a shipping canal on the west. In adjoining St. Bernard Parish, local officials estimated that 40,000 homes had flooded. In Jefferson Parish, another county contiguous to New Orleans, authorities had received calls from residents stranded on roofs. Blanco said her office had reports of 20 building collapses in New Orleans.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usnol... More bad news: Late Monday, the first hard evidence emerged of possible gasoline supply disruptions. Valero Energy Corp. said its giant St. Charles, La., refinery was flooded, powerless and shut for at least a week.
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/... All of these areas were struggling to get much needed assistance to fund improvements to their levee system. The problem was, there was no money to give them.
" The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.
The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.
The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink, he said. I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_200... Also, it appears that any further improvements for 2006 were going to be cut as well.
New Orleans district, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cut by Bush
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph... 
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