Is New Orleans is History_ask Bush

In its budget, the Bush administration
proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's
chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth
of what local officials say they need."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313
Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly
Raised Federal Spending Issues
By Will Bunch Published: August 30, 2005 9:00 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the
city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans late on Tuesday.
That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a
two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street
Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the
rising tide may not stop until it's level with the massive lake.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a
direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been
working with state and local officials in the region since the late
1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a
massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the
Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with
carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building
pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250
million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the
Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New
Orleans continued to subside. Yet after 2003, the flow of federal
dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide
the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as
homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was
the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune
from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for
the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The
Times-Picayune web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it
coming....Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious
questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President
Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was
needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in
New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for
Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "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."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps'
project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson
Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work
that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004
Times-Picayune: "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," he
said. "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."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up
another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie
had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher
property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were
also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore
up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that,
the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction
in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history.
Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring
freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4
million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research
was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a
Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As
the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:  "That second study would
take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said
Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in
federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the
state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war
forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office
not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the
needed money, he said. "

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for
2006. But now it's too late.

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a
bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main
breach on Monday.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The
Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to
dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be
opposed by the White House....In its budget, the Bush administration
proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's
chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth
of what local officials say they need." Local officials are now saying,
the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about
the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and
repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad
as it turned out to be."

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@



Ra Energy Fdn.
Raleigh Myers
Worksheet bio
http://raenergy.igc.org/bio.html
Blog
http://raenergy.blogspot.com/

Call to Action blog a virtual seminar for change
http://www.google.com/search?q=Global+Vote+raenergy&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=02Eigc%2Eorg%2Faction%2Ehtml

Newsgroups beginning in the eighties
http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=%22Ra+Energy+Fdn.%22&start=0&scoring=d&ie=UTF-8 &

and web
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GWYA,GWYA:2005-04,GWYA:en&q=%22Ra+Energy+Fdn%2E%22

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - - Margaret Mead


Let us experiment with laws and customs, with money systems and governments, until we chart the one true course - until we find the majesty of our proper orbit as the planets above have found theirs& And then at last we shall move all together in the harmony of our sphere under the great impulse of a single creation - one unity, one system, one design.
                                                                                                               Roger Bacon

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (C ) material the use of which
has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such
material is made available for educational purposes, to advance
understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and
social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair
use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C.
section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without