Could The Effects of Katrina Have Been Less Catastrophic to Louisiana?
Editor & Publisher had an article yesterday asking the question of whether or not the Katrina catastrophe in New Orleans could have been avoided. While I don’t agree that it could have totally been avoided, I do agree that more could have been done to protect the city from the ammount of devestation that was wrought.
The fact is that the current levee and pump system was only built to handle a Cat 3 hurricane. It has long been known that a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane would do catastrophic damage to the city, direct or indirect hit. Trust me, I sat through many hours of televised animated scenarios of what would/could/did happen. After the May 8th Flood of 1995 killed 6 people and crippled the city and surrounding areas for a short time, Congress authorized SELA — Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. Since then the Army corps of Engineers have been shoring up levees and building pumping stations, but after spending $430 million, at least $250 million in crucial projects remained. (And I thought at the time that the May 8th Flood was bad…I should have imagined bigger and worse.)
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.” [“Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? ‘Times-Picayune’ Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues” (Editor & Publisher)]
tags: Hurricane Katrina, Conspiracy Theories
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on August 31, 2005 at 10:37 am
bgfay said:
Yeah, I believe that the effects could have been at least in part reduced, but in order to have done that it seems like enormous amounts of money would have had to have been spent. Here’s the thing: that sounds great right now, with New Orleans and so many other places devastated. However, if the money for all these improvements was included in an appropriations bill, my guess is that it would have been labeled pork.
The tough sell with New Orleans is that it’s already below sea level. It’s like those houses on the beach in the Carolinas or the high rise hotels on the Florida coast or even all those houses in the desert out west. It’s easy for those of us who don’t live there to say, simply, people shouldn’t live in those places and then go on to say that we shouldn’t have to pay for the dangers faced by those who live where we don’t think they should live.
There’s a balance here. We aren’t going to pack up all of the areas along the coast and leave them uninhabited nor are we going to protect them completely. It would be great if our leaders (both political and in the media) could help the population move toward the simple notions of helping each other and exercising common sense.
I like your blog. It’s nicer than mine.
on August 31, 2005 at 4:20 pm
Big Dog said:
I would like to know how any of that would have helped since the bulk of the damage was already done prior tot he levees failing. If it was 4 feet higher there would have still been such a quantity of water that it would make little difference.
Also seems to me that LA should be happy that federal tax money, or money from people who do not live there, is pating for these projects. Seems the state could pay for some of it. Perhaps add a surcharge to all the bills in New Orleans so that travelers would foot the bill for repair. Hell, Mardi Gras would probably pay for the repairs with money left over.
I feel badly for the people there but more money and a firmed up levee would not have helped and if it were not for a last minute puff of warm air they would really have problems. I have mixed feelings about Federal money paying for state projects. A surcharge would make the users pay for it, not the majority of people who will probably never visit there.
on August 31, 2005 at 5:31 pm
n. mallory said:
If the Fed money isn’t supporting the states in it’s care, then less money should go to the Fed and more to the State.
on August 31, 2005 at 11:16 pm
Big Dog said:
I believe that is why you pay federal tax and state tax.
There are certain things the fed is supposed to do and the states are supposed to do the rest.
on September 1, 2005 at 8:08 am
Dave said:
Of course it could have been less catastrophic. The US Army Corps Of Engineers had a spokesman on a news show yesterday and he admitted that the decision on the level of protection when building the levees was an economic one. It had little to do with the fact that a Category 5 hurricane would wipe out the entire area. He said it was decided for cost reasons, the levees would only be built to withstand a Category 3 hurricane.
Once again the government has failed to use common sense. So common in government agencies. This is what we end up with when decisions are made using dollars and cents instead of common sense.
Certainly there is no reason why New Orleans was not totally evacuated days before the hurricane came ashore. They knew for at least a week it was likely it was coming, yet the Mayor waited until the morning of the hurricane to order a mandatory evacuation. They claim there was not transportation yet they also showed car lots with hundreds of vehicles now all under water.
So many things that have happened could have been avoided or reduced damage. Yet we failed to plan and planned to fail. FEMA mat last year in New Orleans to discuss this very same thing and yet this year, when it happened, they are so unprepared and total chaos.
Guess they should have spent less time in the casinos and more time meeting and working out the logistics of all of this.
on September 1, 2005 at 9:55 pm
Big Dog said:
I think you must mean New Orleans was unprepared. FEMA was activated prior to the hurricane landing because the President declared an emergency. FEMA had hundreds of thousands of items pre-placed and it is moving in. This does not happen in an instant. The stuff has to be staged and moved in to a very hazardous area.
How long ago did they build that levee and decide to make it only withstand a Cat 3?
on September 1, 2005 at 11:27 pm
Leighsong said:
For the life of me, I canNOT understand why the government did not act…Local, State, and Federal.
Crying out loud! I helped evacuate many from Florida during hurricanes…I’m just one individual.
Where’s the love? LOOTING? (With the exception of food). If you’re standing in chest deep water, what in the world can one do with fifty pairs of jeans?
The human condition continues to inspire and perplex me.
Good thoughts are my saving grace.
To my bothers and sisters in the Gulf Coast Katrina area, please know my love is with you and yours.
on September 13, 2005 at 4:15 pm
BadTux said:
For the record: The issue with the levees was that they were only designed to withstand a Cat 3 storm surge, and were instead subjected to a Cat 4 storm surge. They were in the best shape they’d ever been in, and were simply overwhelmed. All the rest of the stuff in the article is what-if stuff that would have happened in the future.
As for those criticizing the evacuation plan, I’m not sure what to say there. I see a lot of people who’ve never sat in the continuous traffic jam from New Orleans to Baton Rouge pulling a lot of BS out of their bungholes. There was no way in **** that New Orleans could be fully evacuated in less than 72 hours. That’s reality. No mayor in the known universe could have done better, except maybe God Himself, and as far as I know, He didn’t file His candidacy in the last election.
Regarding why New Orleans is where it is: New Orleans was built where it is because it is a NATIONAL asset — the biggest port, by volume, in the United States. The whole point of the Louisiana Purchase was to buy New Orleans. Napoleon threw in the rest of Louisiana “for free”. Unfortunately, New Orleans is not allowed to collect taxes on the goods that flow through its port, the goods that are its entire reason for being. Governor Dave Treen (a Republican, BTW) tried, and was resoundedly rebuffed by the federal courts. This is one reason why the upkeep of the Port of New Orleans and the levees protecting it and its workforce are a *national* responsibility — it’s not just New Orleans that benefits from the port there, it’s the entire nation (or at least the central 1/3rd of the nation that is the Mississippi Valley).
And finally, regarding the NOLA government, how can you prepare for 80% of your city being underwater as well as virtually 100% of your usable assets destroyed? No mayor in the universe can prepare for something like that.
In short, while there is a lot of blame to go around, I can’t really blame the city government of New Orleans for not being able to cope with a catastophe of this magnitude. No mayor could have done better. And don’t talk to me about Mayor Rudy. Two (2) buildings fell in his city, and the whole city virtually crashed to a halt for days. That’s hardly a recommendation for dealing with a city that is almost totally underwater!