Awful, like the failure of the federal levees in New Orleans

Saturday, May 19th, 2007

Always an optimist and never missing a reason to celebrate, I was delighted to find a good “sign” in the Times Picayune’s letters-to-the-editor (LTEs).

Two days in a row, on unrelated subjects, writers punctuated their points by drawing parallels to the “failure of the federal levees.”

One of the LTEs was about the theft of copper tubing from public school buildings. The other was about UNO’s questionable handling of a mass firing.

Both writers were angry over their respective issues and both closed by comparing their gripes to the failure of the Army Corps’ flood protection. So why are these signs of success?

Here’s why. At Levees.Org’s kick-off rally on January 21, 2006, we said, “…our mission is to send America the facts about the metro New Orleans flood and we will not stop until this information becomes mainstream….”

That the US Army Corps of Engineers is primarily at fault for the flooding of metro New Orleans on August 29, 2005 may not be fully mainstream nationally, but it certainly appears mainstream in New Orleans!

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

Sandy Rosenthal
Founder and Executive Director, Levees.Org

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PoP: YouTube and Hurricane Katrina

Tuesday, May 8th, 2007

Hello, my name is Babatunde A……. and I am currently a junior at UCLA’s film school studying documentary filmmaking. I recently took a trip this past February to visit my best friend who attends HBCU Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans. While I was there, my friend and his Uncle–a native of New Orleans–took me on a car tour of the city, including the devastated 9th Ward. Using the only camera available to me–my camera phone–I was compelled to capture still and video footage of the 9th ward and other areas of the city. Below is a link to a short documentary that I made using the footage; it could possibly be used to further your campaign in regards to Levees.org. Please let me know what you think. The film has not yet been fully color corrected, but I hope that it can be of use for your organization. I want to help in anyway that I can. Thank you for your time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIp8P48Vkls

Babatunde is an activitist, film student, who acts from his heart. Please take a moment to check out his video. You’ll find some other amazing and shocking footage of the Katrina devastation along the New Orleans and Mississippi Gulf Coast. Some of this stull will take your breath away as you watch the wave surges take over entire neighborhoods.

California: Complacency can kill. If you think this can’t happen to us in the Golden State, think again. We are vulnerable, and we need to be vigilant regarding the Delta levee system.

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NEWS: The Delta Initiative: What is it?

Tuesday, May 8th, 2007

The Delta Initiative is a multi-year research and planning effort the University of California – Berkeley, dealing with the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region of California. The fate of the Delta is crucial to California’s future — it is the hub of the state’s water supply system…

The Delta is also home to more than half a million people and a large agriculture industry, and is facing dramatic urbanization pressure from the Bay Area, Central Valley and Sacramento housing markets.

The Delta is also at extraordinary risk of disaster. Much of the land in the region has subsided below sea level, and is protected only by an aging system of levees. River floods, earthquakes, and climate changes all pose grave threats to the levees, the land, and the state’s freshwater supply. A mass failure of the levee system (similar to that which struck New Orleans) could have immense consequences for the economy of the entire state, and even the nation.

For the complete document with maps, opinion pieces, related books, and aerial images of the Delta, go to: http://landscape.ced.berkeley.edu/~delta/

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