Register today for our New & Better Levee Breach Bike Tour!
WHEN: Sat, April 22, 2017
TIME: 9:30 to 11 a.m.
WHERE: Tour departs from City Park
NOTE: You must provide your own bike.
The 90-minute guided tour is a healthy way to find out more about the worst civil engineering disaster in U.S. history.
Levees.org founder Sandy Rosenthal speaks to visitors from Indonesia
This week, Levees.org Founder Sandy Rosenthal gave a presentation to an Anti-Corruption Efforts Group from Indonesia.
Rosenthal spoke about Levees.org’s grassroots role in an effective public campaign to hold the Army Corps accountable for the levees’ failure.
The group visited the Levee Exhibit Hall and Garden at 5000 Warrington Drive in Gentilly.
The New Orleans Citizen Diplomacy Council is a nonprofit organization that arranges professional appointments and cultural activities for over 500 international leaders sent to New Orleans annually by the U.S. Department of State International Visitor Leadership Program and other programs. As one of approximately 90 councils nationwide, and the only council in Louisiana, the NOCDC aims to promote cross-cultural relationships and mutual understanding.
Updated May 2, 2017 at 13:00 hours.
Mere weeks after the levee breaches during Katrina – while New Orleans was still underwater – a small group of business-people had a plan crafted and ready. Using full-page newspaper ads and paid-media releases, the group quickly convinced a traumatized populace that it needed “levee board reform.”
In the chaotic environment of February 2006 – years before levee investigators concluded that the US Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for the flooding – the Louisiana legislature approved this reform followed by the passage of a Constitutional Amendment by voters in September of that same year. And it turns out that the two new authorities, the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority (SLFPA) East and West, have no authority to oversee or directly influence the Corps.
However, the SLFPA East and West do control how more than $60 million of taxpayer money gets spent every year.*
And this committee – at the end of the day – controls who is appointed to spend upward of $60 million of taxpayer dollars annually. And are at least indirectly responsible for protecting multiple parishes from flooding.
This doesn’t sound like good governing to Levees.org. So we support Rep Patrick Connick’s HB266 that would require term limits for all members of the SLFPA Nominating Committee. To contact your legislators, click HERE.
