Ground zero of the 17th Street Canal in Lakeview New Orleans
“The public deserves to know if the federal government and Congress was asleep at the wheel as it appears they were, ” he tweeted.
Where was Congressman Brady when the federal levees broke in New Orleans?
Giving the benefit of the doubt, I called his office and asked the aide how long Rep Brady has represented District 8 in Texas, which suffered significantly from Katrina and Rita. The fellow who answered said Brady had been Congressman since 1996.
Had Congress shown one tenth the vigor it’s showing now with the BP oil gusher in investigating the deadly levee failures during Katrina, heads would have rolled at the Army Corps of Engineers.
But Congress and the White House looked away even though over 1,000 people died. Congress and the White House looked away even though 55% of the American people lives in counties protected by levees.
And Congress has virtually ignored Levees.org’s demand since January 2007 for the 8/29 Investigation, a truly independent bipartisan analysis, and the decision making involved, in the flood protection failures.
The deaf ears may be because responsibility for the design and construction of the levee protection system in New Orleans was solely federal, and an investigation might have revealed some painful and inconvenient truths.
Click here for the very short list of the members of Congress who supported Levees.org’s demand for an independent post disaster analysis.
https://levees.org/investigation-home/who-currently-supports-the-investigation/
1. give the corps a realistic budget so they can fix the levees!
2. make the government responsible for insufficient designs and the damage those designs do, after all, private companies would be held responsible if something they designed failed and cause the loss of human life
3. give us a fair share of our wealth and we can build our own system. The guy who fishes and hunts in our wetlands knows how that water moves under any given circumstance better than anyone else. Use that knowledge.
4. My father left the our house in our boat from our driveway after Betsy and took people off of their roofs across the river in Chalmette. Had anyone in a position of power listened to the people who knew the waterways, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) wouldn’t have been built. THEY KNEW IT WOULD ALLOW A STORM SURGE INTO NEW ORLEANS AND WOULD FLOOD CHALMETTE, THE 7TH AND THE 9TH WARDS.
NO ONE LISTENED, THEY WERE JUST IGNORANT FISHERMEN WHAT THE HECK DID THEY KNOW. It flooded for Betsy (a direct hit, the eye went over our house in Algiers, LA) and then again for Katrina, a storm that hit 65 miles to the east of New Orleans.
Intelligence comes in all kinds of packages, it seems to me, we as the human race should start using it to our advantage for all of us.
Louisiana provides 35% of the oil and gas sold in this country. We are a national asset and a national necessity.
If it can happen to us, it can happen to you. Think about it and support the investigation into the aftermath of Katrina.