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.

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John Barry, ambassador to New Orleans, gets the Levees.org seal of approval

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Citizens gather next to New Orleans Corps of Engineers building Jan 21, 2006 for Levees.org kickoff rally

Thanks to our beloved Saints, New Orleans and south Louisiana is enjoying some attention by the national spotlight.

John Barry, normally an excellent ambassador for south Louisiana, outdid himself on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show today.

Barry, author of Rising Tide, did not let himself be distracted by questions that bring focus to the wrong place. In response to Maddow’s well meaning but off track question “Was Katrina more than a 100 storm?” Barry quickly drew attention to the fact that, in New Orleans, the flooding was due to engineering mistakes, not a weather event. Here’s his response:

“…Katrina was a great storm but what flooded New Orleans was actually simply design failures by the Corps of Engineers when the flood wall collapsed on the drainage canals. They weren’t even overtopped; (the water) was 2 feet below the top and they just gave way. That was a design issue. …”

The water was actually 5 feet below the top of the floodwall, but Mr. Barry got his point across. He also shared some extremely interesting information about the Louisiana wetlands:

“…One of the things that gives (New Orleans) a good chance against rising sea level is the fact that this (wetlands) is a live living dynamic system. The marsh is alive. And if you give the marsh sediment from the river and fresh water, it will actually rise as sea level rises. That buffer will continue and come back….”

Army Corps denying information under FOIA unless Levees.org pays

Friday, February 5, 2010

Levees.org's kick off rally on Jan 21, 2006 at the New Orleans Corps building on Leake Ave (photo by Stanford Rosenthal)

The Army Corps of Engineers has denied our waiver and is making us pay for information we are entitled to see under federal law. Thanks to you and your speedy ourpouring of funds, we can quickly request our information and not give the Corps another reason to delay giving us the data we seek.

Thank you supporters of Levees.org for digging into your pockets and quickly contributing $1,674 to help us pay for information we requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

After Levees.org exposed the Army Corps of Engineers $5 million contract with a PR company Outreach Process Partners (OPP) to improve and beef up the Corps image after the flooding of 2005, Levees.org requested more details about this PR contract.

Click here for CBS National News story on the Corps’ $5 million contract with OPP.