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A report detailing the New Orleans levee failures was released today by an expert engineering panel of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) .

The 84-page report, “The New Orleans Hurricane Protection System: What Went Wrong and Why,” targets the public and policymakers, and supplements the 6000-page IPET report sponsored by the US Army Corps of Engineers after Katrina sideswiped the port city.

In the ASCE report, the panel estimated that despite the levees and floodwalls, New Orleans residents’ pre-Katrina risk was at a 1,000-fold higher rate than considered minimally acceptable for a major U.S. dam.

The responsibility for the design, construction and performance of the New Orleans’ flood protection system belongs by federal law and Congressional mandate to the US Army Corps of Engineers. This means that the primary responsibility for the New Orleans flooding belongs with the Army Corps, and ultimately with Congress.

If you want to help New Orleans, go to www.levees.org and join us. Don’t we all deserve levees that work?

Sandy Rosenthal
Founder, Levees.Org

Click here for the whole article in Science Daily.

June 1, 2007

Donald Powell, recovery czar for the Gulf Coast and one of the President’s men, didn’t retract his statement last week that the federal government has a duty to help metro New Orleans due to the failure of the federally built levees.

Today, the Washington Post reports this statement by Mr. Powell in a recent conversation standing atop one of the city’s Mississippi River levees.

“In my view, you should be able to trust the United States. People thought they were protected, and the levees breached. We need to bridge that trust gap. That’s what these levees are about.”

It’s becoming conventional wisdom that New Orleans was destroyed by federal engineering failures, not a hurricane.

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

Click here for the Wash Post story.

People listen when one of the President’s men speaks.

So it got noticed last week when Donald Powell, recovery czar for the Gulf Coast said

“…the federal government is responsible for this hurricane damage (to New Orleans) because of the failure of the levee system…”

Powell said this before the Senate Disaster Recovery Subcommittee.

It took almost exactly one year, but it finally happened. The White House acknowledged that it was the failure of the federal government’s levee system that caused the flood damage in metro New Orleans. This comes one year after Lt. Gen Carl Strock, commander of the US Army Corps of Engineers accepted responsibility for the August 29, 2005 catastrophic failure of the levee system that protects metro New Orleans.

And rather than retract the statement, Mr. Powell even softened his stance regarding bailing out Louisiana’s Road Home program designed to help homeowners rebuild after the double whammy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Powell’s spokesperson said, he

“is not opposed to additional funding — if the state can make a clear case for more funds.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the Louisiana Road Home’s problem of having a shortfall of money has “reinforced the fears of many in New Orleans that they are being abandoned by the federal government, even as it acknowledges that its levee system failed during Hurricane Katrina.”

It took almost a year, but Donald Powell, one of the President’s men, and the New York Times are saying it like it is; that New Orleans was destroyed not by a hurricane but rather by federal flood protection that should have held and didn’t.

Please go to www.levees.org and join us. Don’t we all deserve levees that work?

Sandy Rosenthal
Founder, Levees.Org