So the stadium was a great solution to finding safety during the hurricane. If the levees had held, they would have been back to their homes in a day or two.
Showing your [substantial] stupidity again.
Everyone, EVERYONE knew that a C5 storm hitting NOLA could well cause one or more levee breaks. This isn't some accident that just happened out of the blue. It had been researched, brought to the local AND the Fed's attention, and researched some more. And the federal government had allocated the money to fix, or at least improve, the problem. But no. Locals blew it.
If everyone knew, as you say, why did the GOP Congress deny them funding to improve their levees....it was three months before the hurricane. And just to get the background straight, at the time, the GOP Congress was spending like there was no tomorrow:
"For the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans area's east bank hurricane levees, a complex network of concrete walls, metal gates and giant earthen berms that won't be finished for at least another decade.
"I guess people look around and think there's a complete system in place, that we're just out here trying to put icing on the cake," said Mervin Morehiser, who manages the "Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity" levee project for the Army Corps of Engineers. "And we aren't saying that the sky is falling, but people should know that this is a work in progress, and there's more important work yet to do before there is a complete system in place."
mediamatters.org
And apparently, Bush still doesn't get what "everyone" else knows:
Bush shifts $1.3 billion away from levee funding
nola.com;
Bush's levee budget upsets Vitter. He says it undermines pledge of protection
Friday, February 02, 2007
By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- President Bush is expected to shift $1.3 billion away from raising and armoring levees, installing floodgates and building permanent pumping in Southeast Louisiana in order to plug long-anticipated financial shortfalls in other hurricane-protection projects, a move Sen. David Vitter describes as a retreat from the president's commitment to protect the whole New Orleans area.
src="http://ads.nola.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_nx.ads/www.nola.com/xml/story/N/NP1/@StoryAd?x"></A> Vitter, R-La., who unveiled Bush's plans Thursday, condemned the move in a strongly worded letter to the president and called on him to ask Congress for more money to complete work that he promised would be done -- and Congress financed -- in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
"I believe your fiscal 2008 budget proposal would be a step back from that commitment, however unintended," Vitter wrote. "I am deathly afraid that this vital emergency post-Katrina work is now being treated like typical (Army Corps of Engineers) projects that take decades to complete. We will not recover if this happens."
John Paul Woodley Jr., assistant secretary of the Army for Public Works, said the money will go toward critically needed hurricane protection on the West Bank that has left residents vulnerable. Without it, he said, work would have to stop in a matter of months when financing dries up.
"We will come to a point later in the spring when we will have to stop issuing contracts unless the additional funding is made available by some other means," Woodley said. "There is no question, as the senator says, of our commitment. It should not be seen as a step back from that commitment."
It has been anticipated for months that there would not be enough money to finish long-planned hurricane-protection work on the West Bank, including raising levees to withstand a 100-year storm and building floodwalls on the east side of the Harvey Canal. Bush's budget appears to be an attempt to finally complete those projects without asking Congress for additional hurricane-protection money.
Instead, his fiscal 2008 budget is expected to "reallocate" $1.3 billion from what Congress appropriated last year to fix the failings of the region's hurricane-protection system exposed by Hurricane Katrina.
In two emergency supplemental spending bills, Congress earmarked money for armoring levees that crumbled in Katrina's storm surge, installing permanent pumping stations at Lake Pontchartrain to reduce the pressure on outfall canals and raising levees throughout the area.
Old concerns resurface
Tom Jackson, president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority (East), said what Bush is proposing amounts to "playing checkers with the money" while doing little to address clearly identified vulnerabilities.
"This is a system," Jackson said. "Moving money from one project to another doesn't increase your level of protection. A hole in a levee in one place lets water in."
Among those who stand to benefit from Bush's plan are residents of the West Bank who, if the corps' estimates are correct, could finally see the completion of hurricane protection they have been waiting on for years.
But Jerry Spohrer, executive director of the West Jefferson Levee District, was not enthused by the proposal, saying it could pit different parts of the metropolitan area against each other.
"That is what happened to us for so many years prior to Rita and Katrina. Money would be appropriated and they would throw us in a sack like a bunch of cats and fight for what we can get," Spohrer said. "We certainly concur with Sen. Vitter's concerns that federal assistance we need and has been promised shouldn't be given to one area at expense of another."
Moves defended
The reason the West Bank projects are running short of money is that Congress asked the corps last year to hastily pull together estimates. What are normally months-long calculations were reduced in some cases to days. Subsequent increases in the cost of materials and labor further ballooned the price of the projects.
But Vitter's point is that if the shortfalls are now clear, why not ask Congress for more money?
Woodley said it was a strategic decision and didn't rule out coming back to Congress later in the year to ask for additional money.
"We believe that it will be a quicker and easier process for congressional committees to reallocate money that is already appropriated rather than appropriate new money," Woodley said. "If Sen. Vitter can demonstrate that is not the case, it seems to me we would be very interested in hearing that."
Woodley denied suggestions that "reallocating" the money would put residents at risk. He said designs have to be completed -- -- a process that can take many months -- before pumping stations can be built, levees raised or floodgates erected.
'Sense of urgency'
But Vitter charged that the design work should already be under way. "The Corps bureaucracy is as flawed and bogged down as ever," he wrote to the president. "As a result, the Corps is not acting with the appropriate sense of urgency for many vital projects."
Woodley took issue with Vitter's charge.
"We share his urgency and to some degree his frustration," Woodley said. "We are working very, very hard. Everyone should remember that our people themselves are sheltering behind those levees. Corps employees suffered when Katrina struck and levees broke. We have every bit of the urgency that should be on everyone's minds."
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