The flooding of New Orleans and nearby St. Bernard parish was not a natural disaster. The flooding was due to failures of man-made levees and floodwalls. "The failure of the levees was the worst engineering disaster in the world since Chernobyl."
Dr. Ray Seed, Geotechnical Engineering, University of California Berkeley
The flooding was a federally-directed disaster. 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. The levees in metro New Orleans were poorly designed and constructed by the Corps of Engineers and under-funded by Congress.
To look to Congress and the Army Corps to fix what it broke does not reflect on the current 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.
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.
Responsibility for the levee failures on August 29, 2005 in metro New Orleans rests squarely on the US Army Corps of Engineers and ultimately, on Congress. The federal government bears primary responsibility for the flooding of metro New Orleans and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of homes and livelihoods and tens of billions of dollars in damage.
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