Always an optimist and never missing a reason to celebrate, I was delighted to find a good “sign” in the Times Picayune’s letters-to-the-editor (LTEs).

Two days in a row, on unrelated subjects, writers punctuated their points by drawing parallels to the “failure of the federal levees.”

One of the LTEs was about the theft of copper tubing from public school buildings. The other was about UNO’s questionable handling of a mass firing.

Both writers were angry over their respective issues and both closed by comparing their gripes to the failure of the Army Corps’ flood protection. So why are these signs of success?

Here’s why. At Levees.Org’s kick-off rally on January 21, 2006, we said, “…our mission is to send America the facts about the metro New Orleans flood and we will not stop until this information becomes mainstream….”

That the US Army Corps of Engineers is primarily at fault for the flooding of metro New Orleans on August 29, 2005 may not be fully mainstream nationally, but it certainly appears mainstream in New Orleans!

If you want to help, go to www.levees.org and join us. Don’t we all deserve levees that work?

Sandy Rosenthal
Founder and Executive Director, Levees.Org