Sandy Rosenthal is guest of Hillary Clinton at U.S. Department of State

Monday, November 28th, 2011

Levees.org founder Sandy Rosenthal. Photo/Craig Kraemer

The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mount Holyoke College President Lynn Pasquerella has invited Sandy Rosenthal founder of the flood protection advocacy group Levees.org to attend the launch of The Women in Public Service Project and Colloquium in Washington DC next month.

The 4-hour colloquium will take place at the U.S. Department of State on December 15, 2011 followed by lunch and a program at the John F. Kennedy Center to discuss how the legacy of leadership at Bryn Mawr, Barnard, Mount Holyoke, Smith and Wellesley Colleges can inspire women in public service worldwide.

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Levees.org to state its case in Baton Rouge for levee breach sites

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

With Lower Ninth Ward as backdrop, Levees.org announced its intention August 4, 2010 to list two major levee breach sites to National Register of Historic Places. Photo/Stanford Rosenthal

On Thursday at the Louisiana State Capitol, Levees.org will defend its quest to list two major levee breach sites to the National Register of Historic Places.

The group will state its case, again, before the Louisiana Advisory Board to nominate the breach site of the 17th Street Canal and the east side north breach of the Industrial Canal.

Levees.org will do a repeat performance after being wrongly tabled this past August when a Corps of Engineers representative showed up minutes before the quarterly meeting and announced the corps did not own the breach site of the Industrial Canal. Subsequent record checking showed that the corps did, in fact, own the site just as Levees.org’s attorneys had stated.

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Federal lawyers seek to overturn ruling on Corps of Engineers’ liability for levee failure during Katrina

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Homeowner Wade Frey of Chalmette, Louisiana spent a week on his roof after Hurricane Katrina. The town of Chalmette is considered part of the basin which federal Judge Stanwood Duval ruled was flooded due to the Corps of Engineers’ improper maintenance of a nearby navigation channel known as the MRGO. Photo/Wade Frey

Yesterday in New Orleans, federal lawyers attempted to overturn a November 2009 ruling that found the Army Corps of Engineers guilty of shoddy maintenance of a shipping channel in eastern New Orleans and thus financially liable for damages that occurred during Hurricane Katrina.

Justice Department lawyers argued before a three-judge panel from the 5th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals that the federal government is entitled to sovereign immunity as stipulated in the Flood Control Act of 1928.

The federal government sought for the appeals court to reverse a decision by federal Judge Stanwood Duval who ruled that flooding in St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans was a man-made disaster caused by the corps’ negligence.

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