Boston Globe reporter gets Levees.org “seal of approval”

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Reporter Julian Benbow of the Boston Globe gets the Levees.org “seal of approval” for resisting harmful Katrina shorthand, for not saying inaccurately that Katrina flooded New Orleans.

“…The storm hit Monday, the levees broke Tuesday….”

Indeed, saying Katrina flooded New Orleans would be like saying traffic broke the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis. Both Katrina and the traffic exposed structural flaws. Both revealed blatant civil engineering mistakes.

And in New Orleans those mistakes were made by your Army Corps of Engineers.

Storming the court: Time has finally come for patient Paris at BC

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Levees.org launches book review series starting with Catastrophe in the Making

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Shirley Laska at Book Signing for Catastrophe in the Making. Photo by Hubie Vigreux 9-22-09

Shirley Laska at Book Signing for Catastrophe in the Making. Photo by Hubie Vigreux 9-22-09

Levees.org today released its first in a series of book reviews on books that address the metro New Orleans flooding.

The series debuts with “Catastrophe in the Making: The Engineering of Katrina and the Disasters of Tomorrow” (Island Press, 2009). The opinions expressed below are those of Sandy Rosenthal on behalf of Levees.org.

Authors William R. Freudenburg, Robert Gramling, Shirley Laska and Kai Erikson tell a fascinating story of what they consider the most dangerous project undertaken in the history of Louisiana’s lower delta — the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO). And as the title implies, this project serves as a warning call to us all.

The authors, one a professor of environmental studies (Freudenburg), and the others in sociology, describe how the MRGO, an obscenely expensive wetlands-killing navigation channel constructed and maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers was obsolete on the day it opened.

Intended as a shortcut for ships to reach the Gulf of Mexico, the MRGO was also a shortcut for salt intrusion (there was no flow) which killed buffering cypress trees and plants.

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Times Picayune food editor gets Levees.org seal of approval

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Judy Walker, food editor for the New Orleans Times Picayune gets the Levees.org “seal of approval” for her characterization of the metro New Orleans flooding on August 29, 2005.

In describing how a house behind hers flooded, Ms. Walker wrote, “…after the levees failed and four feet of water washed in and out of the house…”

Properly attributing the flooding to levee failure by the media takes 2 or 3 more words, but it’s the best way the rest of the nation will understand that the flooding was a manmade disaster.

Indeed, saying Katrina flooded New Orleans is like saying traffic broke the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis. Both Katrina and the traffic exposed structural flaws. Both revealed blatant civil engineering mistakes.

As John McQuaid, author of Path of Destruction has noted, using Katrina ‘shorthand’ carries “…underlying associations of “natural disaster swamps city below sea level – what the heck are those people doing living down there?”

Katrina shorthand is harmful to our region’s recovery, and hopefully all journalists and reporters in metro New Orleans will join Ms. Walker in resisting Katrina shorthand.

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