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An engineer paid by the US Army Corps of Engineers to peer review the federal study of the levee failures in New Orleans recently told a reporter that his panel’s scope was limited by rules placed on it by the Corps.

Thomas Jackson, past national president of ASCE and member of the External Review Panel (ERP) recently told Mark Schleifstein of the New Orleans Times Picayune,

“Our agreement with the corps was to do technical oversight of the investigation,” he said. “In the very beginning, we tried to get the corps to change our scope to include soft issues, such as organizational issues, and the infamous ‘drive-by’ inspection trips, and water leaking in the yards of homes adjacent to the 17th Street Canal. The corps specifically told us that was outside of our scope.” he said.

The peer reviewers were forbidden by the Corps to address non-technical issues yet when ASCE staffers conduct their power point presentations on what the experts found and lessons learned, ASCE repeatedly blames local and organizational dysfunction (albeit without basis) for much of the destruction.

Levees.Org believes the Corps controlled the federal investigation and also the peer review so that the Corps and ASCE could re-write history without a document that conflicted with their story.

Most obvious and egregious in the hour-long ASCE power points is failure to state that responsibility for the design, construction and performance of the metro New Orleans flood protection belongs exclusively to the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Please contact your members of Congress and demand the 8/29 Investigation Act, a truly independent analysis of the flood protection failures. Click here.

Sandy Rosenthal
Founder, Levees.Org

Today, Levees.Org revealed new information found in records we obtained under the Freedom of Information Act on the official federal government’s levee study (IPET) after Hurricane Katrina.

These records show that as early as October 2005, the US Army Corps of Engineers directed the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and later paid the group more than $1.1 million for their peer review of the IPET and for giving power point seminars which contained at least 10 falsehoods, 4 significant omissions and numerous misrepresentations.

We strongly feel these power points presented by ASCE staffers at engineering colleges, universities, and conferences both nationwide and abroad were essentially ‘spin campaigns’ cleverly crafted to understate and minimize the US Army Corps’ role in the disastrous flooding on August 29, 2005.

Members of the ASCE are forbidden from making false or exaggerated statements and also from making statements for an interested party unless this is disclosed.

Don’t take our word for it. Watch the power point, and decide for yourself.

Then please click here and demand the 8/29 Investigation Act. Don’t we all deserve levees that work?

Sandy Rosenthal
Founder, Levees.Org
www.levees.org

Today Levees.Org dispatched a letter to the President of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) urging the organization to do a speedy and thorough ethics investigation into allegations of wrongdoing charged by Dr. Ray Seed, a civil engineer and ASCE member at the University of California Berkeley.

Dr. Seed turned in a letter on October 30, 2007 to ASCE detailing an intentional plan by the US Army Corps of Engineers to hide their mistakes immediately after the New Orleans flooding, and to intimidate anyone who tried to intervene. This was done, according to Dr. Seed, with the complicity of the ASCE.

The March 5 letter was signed by Levees.Org’s board as well as 3,760 citizens all across America. The sign-on letter is part of Levees.Org’s goal to expose collusion between the two giant civil engineering groups.

Sandy Rosenthal
Founder, Levees.Org

Click here for Dr. Seed’s ethics complaint.

Click here for Levees.Org’s letter to President Mongan with over 3,760 signatures.