With the anniversary of the worst engineering disaster in US history just around the corner, decorated reporter Jim Schutze has departed from his field of expertise to try his hand at reinforcing myths about why New Orleans and St. Bernard drowned 2 years ago.
In a recent editorial, Schutze, an investigative reporter specializing in racial politics has moved into new territory – engineering. He begins with this false statement,
“. . .by statute and by political reality, the (US Army) Corps can’t come into New Orleans or Dallas and build what it wants to build.”
Oh yes, the Corps can. It has and it still is. Because by federal mandate in the Flood Control Act of 1965, the responsibility for the design and construction of New Orleans’ flood protection belongs to the US Army Corps of Engineers. The historic and the new levee board’s role is maintenance and visual inspections.
This is federal law, public record and you can read it yourself in Government Accountability Office (GAO) testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on September 29, 2005.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d051050t.pdf
If a building full of people crashed to the ground, you wouldn’t blame the janitor, and you certainly wouldn’t blame the survivors. You would grab the torches and go looking for the architect, the contractor and the engineer. In the case of New Orleans and the levees, the Army Corps is all three.
Please go to www.levees.org and join us. Don’t we all deserve levees that work?
Sandy Rosenthal
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