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Go Ahead, Sue Me; 3rd of 4 Excerpts from ‘Words Whispered in Water’ by founder Sandy Rosenthal

Tuesday, July 14th, 2020

Levees.org founder Sandy Rosenthal has released the third of four excerpts from her upcoming book, Words Whispered in Water: Why the Levees Broke in Hurricane Katrina (Mango Publishing, August 2020).

The excerpt is called Go Ahead, Sue Me. It comes from Chapter 7; Figuring out the Allies.

———-

Saturday, November 10, 2007, dawned sunny and cold, but windless. I put on my tennis clothes and headed to a tennis match with Debbie Cobb. Even during busy weeks, I refused to give up my precious exercise. After I returned, showered, and ate some lunch, I got back to my desktop computer and the ever-present incoming emails.

I noticed an email with the subject heading, “Cease and Desist Letter,” which was sent from an attorney representing the ASCE. The headmaster of Newman School was also copied. I opened the attachment and discovered that the ASCE didn’t like the Levee Spin 101 video very much and were ordering me to take it down from YouTube. After a lengthy description of the history of the ASCE, the letter ended with this: “… should you ignore this letter and continue to disseminate this defamatory material, please be advised that ASCE intends to take appropriate legal action to protect its interests.”^[i]

This was a technical way of saying, “If you don’t stop, we will sue you.”

My initial reaction to this letter was that we must be on the right track! I thought it was quite remarkable that an in-house counsel attorney felt fine about harassing a fledgling grassroots group and a bunch of high-school kids. This was likely the first time in ASCE’s history that the society had to deal with negative press of this magnitude.

Thank you Gov John Bel Edwards; Words Do Matter

Thursday, July 9th, 2020

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, Rep Patrick Connick and Sandy Rosenthal shown in 2017. Photo/Ralph Madison

Every anniversary of the worst civil engineering disaster in US history is worth full observance.

We are surprised that we missed this story about Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco published a year ago.

But we are glad the story by the Associated Press was brought to our attention.

In the story, which marked the passing of Governor Blanco, we are drawn to this statement by current Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards:

“She [Kathllen Blanco] led Louisiana through one of our darkest hours, when hurricanes and the failure of the federal levee system devastated much of our state,” Edwards said in a statement Sunday.

Just Seven Weeks; 2nd of 4 Excerpts from Words Whispered in Water by founder Sandy Rosenthal

Monday, June 29th, 2020

Levees.org founder Sandy Rosenthal has released the second of four excerpts from her upcoming book, Words Whispered in Water: Why the Levees Broke in Hurricane Katrina (Mango Publishing, August 2020).

The excerpt is called Just Seven Weeks. It comes from Chapter 3; The Fairy Tale.

———-

Seven weeks after the 2005 flood, despite four different investigating teams, the surface had yet to be scratched on the who, what, where, and why of the levee-breach event. If one were to count the breaches on a graphic map created by the Army Corps, they would find a total of 52 breaches in the region.[i] It was simply not possible for any human being or group of human beings to explain what happened in so complex a scenario. Communication lines were still down, breaches needed to be plugged, and roads were impassable. Truth be told, it would be many years before all the facts were laid out for everyone to see.

Yet, just seven weeks after the 2005 flood, a small group of business people had decided where the fault lay. They called themselves the Business Council of New Orleans. On the day the floodwalls broke, this group had no phone number, no staff, no meeting minutes, no list of expenses, and no membership list. But, with the city barely dewatered, they had apparently already decided that blame belonged to local officials — people whose chief responsibility regarding floodwalls and levees was maintaining them after the Army Corps built them. By October 20, while some souls were yet to be discovered in their attics, this group had already devised a plan to reorganize the way levee officials (the Orleans Levee Board) were selected.[ii]