COMING SOON: MYTH BUSTER NUMBER 1

Myth Buster Number 2
The drive-by levee inspections administered by the Corps of Engineers pre-Katrina did not contribute to the levee failures or resulting flooding.
As required by federal law, the Corps of Engineers administers Annual Levee Inspections for federally built flood protection projects in New Orleans. Pre-Katrina, these inspections – designed to insure that the local levee boards were complying with their levee maintenance activity – were quick drive-by affairs that ended with lunch at a local restaurant.  However, haphazard or not, according to the preeminent post-Katrina disaster study, the Corps’s annual inspections of maintenance activity were not designed to uncover potential problems with the ability of the levees and floodwalls to protect against hurricane surge.
Source:  Regulation No. 1130-2-530, USACE Flood Control Maintenance Policy

Myth Buster Number 3
Half of New Orleans is at or well above sea level.
Data from a joint study by Tulane and Xavier Universities’ Center for Bioenvironmental Research reveals that 50% of New Orleans is either at or well above sea level.
Source: New Orleans Times Picayune

Myth Buster Number 4
The concerns of conservationists in the 1970s played no role in the New Orleans Flood of 2005
In the political aftermath of the Flood, commentators fed a myth that conservation-minded groups blocked the Army Corps of Engineers’ original plans for peripheral barriers and forced the agency to choose a second inferior design that could not protect the city. In his latest book, Robert Verchick tells the true story, concluding that “it is unfair and destructive to cast responsibility for the failure of the New Orleans levee system on this small band of activists…” Furthermore, Verchick reveals another “broken link in the causal chain,” namely that Corps officials interviewed by the GAO office a month after the storm “believe that flooding would have been worse if the original (barrier) plan had been adopted” due to Katrina’s surge.
Source: Facing Catastrophe

Myth Buster Number 5
Pre-Katrina, New Orleans residents did not know the hurricane levees could breach and fail.
Even the most insistent appeals from public officials to New Orleans area residents to evacuate for Katrina did not warn that the levees could breach and fail. Painstakingly researched by veteran journalist Carol Forsloff, this article was the launchpad for a 6-part series.
Source: The Digital Journal

Myth Buster Number 6
More than half the United States population lives in counties protected by levees.
Levees.org discovered in a Request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that 54.83% of the nation’s population lives in counties protected by levees.  That translates to approximately 157 million people.
Source: PDF of Cover letter from FEMA and table of statistics.

Myth Buster Number 7
U.S. counties protected by levees are wealthier and unemployment is lower.
A front page article by Mark Schleifstein of the New Orleans Times Picayune reported on a study for Levees.org by hazard mitigation geographer Dr. Ezra Boyd.  The study concludes that the levees more than pay for themselves when their cost is compared to the investment they protect.
Source: New Orleans Times Picayune

Myth Buster Number 8
Pre-Katrina, more New Orleans residents had flood insurance than the rest of the nation.
After Katrina, public officials and insurance experts predicted that the vast majority of property losses would be insured.  Then members of Congress scolded New Orleans residents.  Ironically, according to data painstakingly worked up by Donald Powell, the Bush administration’s disaster czar, per capita, more New Orleans residents had flood insurance, even if it wasn’t required, than the rest of the nation, on the day the federal hurricane protection failed.
Source: New Orleans Times Picayune

Myth Buster 9
New Orleans was the first in the nation to place experts on its local levee boards.
When Louisiana passed legislation requiring experts on its levee board, the state had to write it from scratch because there were no other models in the entire nation. California followed suit and in 2006, voted on a historic package of flood bills that required professional backgrounds of its board members, as Louisiana had done.
Source: New Orleans Times Picayune

Myth Buster Number 10
Greater New Orleans’s rate of subsidence (sinking) is only 1mm/yr or about 4 inches by the end of this century.
If sinking at a rate of 1 mm/year were a potential danger, billions of people around the world should be packing their bags. The majority of major metropolitan areas on this planet – and 39 out of 50 major cities in the United States – are in flood plains. Historically that’s because towns and cities have historically developed on rivers to supply daily water needs and also for affordable transportation of commerce. And in more recent times, the trend is for people to locate near rivers and coastal areas for recreational reasons and it continues to be popular.