The Facts

Fact 1
The flooding of New Orleans and nearby St. Bernard parish was a civil engineering disaster, not a weather event. According to a 2007 study by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the majority of the damage from the flooding is due to the levees failing (page 39). “The failure of the levees was the worst engineering disaster in the world since Chernobyl” says Dr. Ray Seed, Geotechnical Engineering, University of California Berkeley.

Fact 2
Responsibility for the design and construction of the flood protection in metro New Orleans belongs solely to the US Army Corps of Engineers as mandated in the Flood Control of 1965.

Fact 3
To look to Congress and the Army Corps to fix what it broke does not reflect on the last administration. The failure of the federally engineered levees was 40 years in the making. The Army Corps squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on a levee system they knew by their own calculations was inadequate.

Fact 4
More than 98% (ninety-eight percent) of the US Army Corps of Engineers are civilian employees. Thus to look to the Army Corps and Congress to fix what it broke does not disparage our young soldiers fighting in foreign wars.

view all - rss

Miami Herald’s Leonard Pitts Jr. earns LeveesOrg seal of approval

Sunday, March 7, 2010

May 2006, a FEMA trailer in Lakeview New Orleans adorned with an American flag

It’s a very good sign that the mission of Levees.org is being fulfilled when reporters far far from New Orleans resist harmful inaccurate Katrina ’shorthand.’

Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald didn’t even use the word Katrina in his piece about Warren Buffet and New Orleans. Excellent.

Inaccurate Katrina ’shorthand’ is harmful to metro New Orleans’ recovery. Katrina ’shorthand’ is describing the flooding of regional New Orleans as caused by Katrina rather than the truth, that poorly built levees gave way before the water reached design and construction specs.

Had the Army Corps of Engineers given metro New Orleans the levees that Congress authorized, the region would have had little more than some lost shingles, soggy carpets and wet ankles, said Bob Bea co-chair of one of the Independent Levee Investigation Team (ILIT) done after Katrina.

Leonard Pitts Jr. hereby has earned the Levees.org Seal of Approval. Here’s hoping that more reporters follow suit and resist harmful inaccurate Katrina ’shorthand.’

Until the American people see that the flooding of regional New Orleans was a man-made event, we cannot expect them to see that rebuilding makes much sense.

Blog post by Sandy Rosenthal, founder of Levees.org www.levees.org 3-7-10

LeveesOrg founder Sandy Rosenthal to be panelist at Loyola Law Conference

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Sandy Rosenthal, founder of Levees.org

On Friday March 5, Sandy Rosenthal, founder of Levees.org will be a guest panelist at the National Association of Environmental Law Societies Annual Conference.

Other panelists include Oliver Houck, professor of law at Tulane and Craig Colten, professor of Anthropology at LSU. The panel discussion will focus on the settlement, rebuilding and future foot print of the City.

  PANEL: Know What it Means to be New Orleans: A Geographical, Historical, and Realistic Examination of the Big Easy

WHEN: Friday, March 5 from 3-4:30

WHERE: Audubon Room, Danna Center, main campus of Loyola University, 7214 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70118

Click here for more info about the conference.

1 comment