On this Thanksgiving day, we at Levees.org are grateful that @NolaTreeProject donated an oak tree to the Flooded House Museum! And thank you Connie Uddo and your nephews for planting the tree!
New Orleans benefitted from Dr. J. David Rogers’ courage
Dr. J. David Rogers, Missouri University of Science and Technology (1954-2025)
You may not know that Dr. J. David Rogers was an important person to you personally.
If not for him, the nation would still be stuck on the wrong-headed idea that the pre-Katrina Orleans Levee Board (OLB) had a causal role in the Hurricane Katrina flooding.
Dr. Rogers passed away a few days before the 20th anniversary of the levee breaches.(#1)
He was a great man who did something that few people, especially someone of his national stature, do. He admitted a mistake, and corrected it publicly. Here’s what happened.
In 2005, Dr. Rogers led an academic team in the very first levee investigation post Katrina (ILIT funded by the NSF). Their report concluded that the OLB pressured the Army Corps of Engineers to build the system that failed.
Years later, Dr. Rogers learned that he had relied on wrong information and that new information had become available.(#2)
In response, Dr. Rogers lead a team to write a whole new report and set the record straight.(#3)
The New York Times ran an above-the-fold news story about it in the Sunday paper on May 24, 2015. It was titled: Decade After Katrina, Pointing Finger More Firmly at Army Corps. (#4)
Justin Chopin features Sandy Rosenthal on Above the Legal Limit
This week, I had a great conversation with Justin Chopin on his show: Above the Legal Limit podcast! Check it on your favorite platform! Or watch it here on YouTube.
