http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11627394/?GT1=7850

 

Video shows Bush got explicit Katrina warning

President, Chertoff were clearly told of storm?s dangers numerous times

 

 

Other officials expressed concerns about the large number of New Orleans residents who had not evacuated.

 

?They?re not taking patients out of hospitals, taking prisoners out of prisons and they?re leaving hotels open in downtown New Orleans. So I?m very concerned about that,? Brown said.

 

Despite the concerns, it ultimately took days for search and rescue teams to reach some hospitals and nursing homes.

 

Brown questioned Superdome safety

Brown also told colleagues one of his top concerns was whether evacuees who went to the New Orleans Superdome ? which became a symbol of the failed Katrina response ? would be safe and have adequate medical care.

 

?The Superdome is about 12 feet below sea level.... I don?t know whether the roof is designed to stand, withstand a Category Five hurricane,? he said.

 

Brown also wanted to know whether there were enough federal medical teams in place to treat evacuees and the dead in the Superdome.

 

?Not to be (missing) kind of gross here,? Brown interjected, ?but I?m concerned? about the medical and mortuary resources ?and their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe.?

You can look at this two ways:

 

 

One: Bush is more incompetent than we originally thought.

 

Two: Brown is trying to save as much face as possible.

Can't it be both?

 

Obviously Brown has spent the last 2 weeks or so trying to save his image, and put the blame on Chertoff, who certainly made mistakes as well.

 

However, I think the ultimate mistake was putting the manager of a horse group in charge of our country's disaster relief program. The guy doesn't know the first thing about it. That appointment falls squarely on the man who gave him the job, the President.

 

Anyone think that Bush's approval rating can go below 30%?

Darnit, that's not the whole article, let me fix this in a bit.

Anyone think that Bush's approval rating can go below 30%?

 

No, because that 30% really wants to have a beer with Bush. He is their boy.

 

 

Is there any doubt that this administration really has no frikkin clue?

so the whole meeting was about Brown warning everyone "this is the big one" and there's Max Mayfield from the National Hurricane Center saying it was going to be a disaster and there is no telling whether the levees can hold or not.

 

and then there's good ole W saying that he didn't think anyone could've predicted the levees would fail.

 

:blink:

Now there's apparently video of Blanco saying the levees were safe, if it should end up meaning anything.

 

 

 

WASHINGTON - In the hectic, confused hours after Hurricane Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast, Louisiana's governor hesitantly but mistakenly assured the Bush administration that New Orleans' protective levees were intact, according to a new video obtained by The Associated Press showing briefings that day with federal officials. "We keep getting reports in some places that maybe water is coming over the levees," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said shortly after noon on Aug. 29, according to the video that was obtained Thursday night. "We heard a report unconfirmed, I think, we have not breached the levee. I think we have not breached the levee at this time."

 

In fact, the National Weather Service received a report of a levee breach and issued a flash-flood warning as early as 9:12 a.m. that day, according to the White House's formal recounting of events the day Katrina struck.

 

The timing of the levees breach has been a key issue in exhaustive reviews of failures to respond to Katrina and highlights miscommunication about the scope of the storm's damage at all levels of government.

 

The new video, which runs 45 minutes, details uncertainty and despair among state and local emergency response officials as they began chronicling the disaster that swept across 90 square miles in the Gulf Coast.

 

Blanco is not shown in the video but is heard as a disembodied voice speaking from an emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, La., to 11 people sitting around a table at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington. She sounds uncertain about the reliability of her information and cautioned that the situation "could change."

 

She reported that floodwaters were rising in parts of the city "where we have waters that are 8 to 10 feet deep, and we have people swimming in there."

 

"That's got a considerable amount of water itself," the governor said. "That's about all I know right now on the specifics that you haven't heard."

 

Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher said Thursday that "our people on the ground were telling us that there could be over-topping and breaching, but it was hard to tell" by the noon briefing.

 

Another official who was heard but not seen on the video was then-FEMA Director Michael Brown, who was also at the federal emergency operations center in Baton Rouge. He implored officials to "push the envelope as far as you can," noting that he had already spoken to President Bush twice that day and described the president as "very, very interested in this situation."

 

"He's very engaged, and he's asking a lot of really good questions I would expect him to ask," Brown said of Bush. "I say that only because I want everyone to recognize ... how serious the situation remains."

 

Brown has criticized the White House for miscommunication that led to some delays but said in an interview Thursday that he never directly blamed Bush.

 

"I think the president was confident in the ability of FEMA to respond to this, and what I should have done was go to them earlier and say, 'Let's not wait to see how it unfolds. Let's bring everything and go overboard.'"

 

He also said there was confusion among officials over whether levees were breached at the time of the noon video conference call. But he said he was convinced of the breach by 1 p.m.

 

Delays in confirming the levee breaches held up repair efforts and allowed flooding to worsen. The White House was alerted about breach reports by 6 p.m., but the administration confirmed the damage the next morning.

 

The video shows weather forecasters predicting the storm's path and also briefly cuts to White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin asking Blanco about the status of the levees and the situation at the Superdome in New Orleans.

 

By that time, an estimated 15,000 evacuees had gathered at the stadium, where food and water was beginning to run out, said Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana's emergency preparedness deputy director. Smith also reported up to 10 feet of flooding in neighboring St. Bernard Parish and that there were 45 patients on life-support at one area hospital that lost its power.

 

 

 

Still, "the coordination and support we are getting from FEMA has just been outstanding," Smith said.

 

Mississippi officials were less complimentary, reporting significant damage to hospitals, flooded and collapsed emergency operations centers and people trapped on the roofs or in the attacks who were begging for help.

 

"It certainly looks like it is a catastrophic event that we all expected," said one Mississippi official, who was not identified. "I could tell you that the preliminary reports coming off of our Gulf Coast are not good, not good at all.

 

The Homeland Security Department played down the new video. Spokesman Russ Knocke said it "reveals nothing new because the transcript had previously been released."

 

The new video came to light a day after the AP obtained footage of an Aug. 28 briefing ? the day before Katrina hit ? that showed officials warning the storm might breach levees, put lives at risk in the Superdome and overwhelm rescuers. Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff were among those on the videotaped call.

 

Lawmakers from both parties said the pre-Katrina briefing for Bush and top administration officials raised new questions about government response to the storm that flooded New Orleans and killed more than 1,300 people.

 

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said the Aug. 28 video "makes it perfectly clear once again that this disaster was not out of the blue or unforeseeable. It was not only predictable, it was actually predicted. That's what made the failures in response ? at the local, state and federal level ? all the more outrageous."

 

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said it "confirms what we have suspected all along," charging that Bush administration officials have "systematically misled the American people."

 

Reid and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California renewed their calls for an independent commission to investigate the federal response to the hurricane.

 

The House and Senate have conducted separate investigations of the federal response, and the White House did its own investigation. House Democrats for the most part refused to participate in the House probe, insisting since last fall that an independent commission should be created to handle the probe. The White House did not immediately respond Thursday to the renewed Democratic calls for an independent investigation.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060303/ap_on_...h/katrina_video

Im curious as to why the louisiana and new orleans govts didnt use the federal funds that were given to them to fix the dekes. This is the baltant idiocy of the media in this country. Its assine to believe that the federal govt in the katrina incident supercedes the respnsibility of local govts. Everyone dropped the ball, but the ppl with the msot chance to hurricane proof that city years before katrina was the lousisian govt and the new orleans local govt. So this is just utter stupidity. The media is letting those local govts use the feds as a scapegoat

Very well said!! No one is even questioning the Governor of Louisiana Blanco who herself has stated that the levees were safe!!

Im curious as to why the louisiana and new orleans govts didnt use the federal funds that were given to them to fix the dekes. This is the baltant idiocy of the media in this country. Its assine to believe that the federal govt in the katrina incident supercedes the respnsibility of local govts. Everyone dropped the ball, but the ppl with the msot chance to hurricane proof that city years before katrina was the lousisian govt and the new orleans local govt. So this is just utter stupidity. The media is letting those local govts use the feds as a scapegoat

 

What makes you think they didnt use the funds that were given to them? What makes you think the money given, as opposed to the amount requested, was even enough?

Im curious as to why the louisiana and new orleans govts didnt use the federal funds that were given to them to fix the dekes. This is the baltant idiocy of the media in this country. Its assine to believe that the federal govt in the katrina incident supercedes the respnsibility of local govts. Everyone dropped the ball, but the ppl with the msot chance to hurricane proof that city years before katrina was the lousisian govt and the new orleans local govt. So this is just utter stupidity. The media is letting those local govts use the feds as a scapegoat

 

What makes you think they didnt use the funds that were given to them? What makes you think the money given, as opposed to the amount requested, was even enough?

 

 

the problrm is that there is now a philosophical debate over whether the feds should be financing any of this at all. Oh and by the way the local govt admitted to not using the funds to fix the levees. ill try to look for a source soon when i have the time

Im curious as to why the louisiana and new orleans govts didnt use the federal funds that were given to them to fix the dekes. This is the baltant idiocy of the media in this country. Its assine to believe that the federal govt in the katrina incident supercedes the respnsibility of local govts. Everyone dropped the ball, but the ppl with the msot chance to hurricane proof that city years before katrina was the lousisian govt and the new orleans local govt. So this is just utter stupidity. The media is letting those local govts use the feds as a scapegoat

 

What makes you think they didnt use the funds that were given to them? What makes you think the money given, as opposed to the amount requested, was even enough?

 

 

the problrm is that there is now a philosophical debate over whether the feds should be financing any of this at all. Oh and by the way the local govt admitted to not using the funds to fix the levees. ill try to look for a source soon when i have the time

And we are talking about pre-Katrina use of funds here right?

 

Regardless, everyone knows the local New Orleans system is corrupt and inefficient. The problem here is that the president of the United States was aware that a major disaster was a distinct possibility right before the storm hit. The storm hit, the flooding started, and Bush still reacted horribly. And what was his defense? Um...there was no way I could have known this was going to happen. Come on legacy. He was told it could happen! How is that not bad leadership? How is that not lying? How can the man who claims to be a great leader when a disaster strikes defend this? Um...don't look at me...look at the idiotic local government?

 

Moreover, this is an issue on the performance of a nationally elected official. Thats why the national media is discussing it as such. Thats why we are commenting on it from other parts of the country. The most effective form of punishment is about to come to the local and state officials. Nagin is in a battle for his political life in his election. Blanco wont get reelected when her time comes.

 

What exactly would we do if this was a terrorist attack, but we were not initially aware of this? Always leave it up to the locals as death and destruction occurs?

Since when is the Federal Government responsible for selecting, staffing and provisioning hurricane shelters? Since when are they responsible for evacuating local municipalities ahead of a hurricane? And why is the Federal Government responsible to ensure the low lying areas of New Orleans are safe in the evet of a hurricane.

 

The City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana are 100% responsible for this disaster.

Im curious as to why the louisiana and new orleans govts didnt use the federal funds that were given to them to fix the dekes. This is the baltant idiocy of the media in this country. Its assine to believe that the federal govt in the katrina incident supercedes the respnsibility of local govts. Everyone dropped the ball, but the ppl with the msot chance to hurricane proof that city years before katrina was the lousisian govt and the new orleans local govt. So this is just utter stupidity. The media is letting those local govts use the feds as a scapegoat

 

What makes you think they didnt use the funds that were given to them? What makes you think the money given, as opposed to the amount requested, was even enough?

 

 

the problrm is that there is now a philosophical debate over whether the feds should be financing any of this at all. Oh and by the way the local govt admitted to not using the funds to fix the levees. ill try to look for a source soon when i have the time

And we are talking about pre-Katrina use of funds here right?

 

Regardless, everyone knows the local New Orleans system is corrupt and inefficient. The problem here is that the president of the United States was aware that a major disaster was a distinct possibility right before the storm hit. The storm hit, the flooding started, and Bush still reacted horribly. And what was his defense? Um...there was no way I could have known this was going to happen. Come on legacy. He was told it could happen! How is that not bad leadership? How is that not lying? How can the man who claims to be a great leader when a disaster strikes defend this? Um...don't look at me...look at the idiotic local government?

 

Moreover, this is an issue on the performance of a nationally elected official. Thats why the national media is discussing it as such. Thats why we are commenting on it from other parts of the country. The most effective form of punishment is about to come to the local and state officials. Nagin is in a battle for his political life in his election. Blanco wont get reelected when her time comes.

 

What exactly would we do if this was a terrorist attack, but we were not initially aware of this? Always leave it up to the locals as death and destruction occurs?

 

 

I don't completey disagree that bush deserves some fault for the management of the post-katrina response. However, the damage would have been significantly less had the local govts reacted as they should have. To me the issue here is not if bush is at fault, its that the role of the federal govt in natural disasters should be a secondary emergency help function, the local govts have to make their cities hurricane proof, have to map out the best evacutaion routes and so forth. And by the way the same way you say that the local govts can be punished for corruption or doign a terrible job, so can the executive federal govt. Next election, people can go out and vote against the republican party.

Im curious as to why the louisiana and new orleans govts didnt use the federal funds that were given to them to fix the dekes. This is the baltant idiocy of the media in this country. Its assine to believe that the federal govt in the katrina incident supercedes the respnsibility of local govts. Everyone dropped the ball, but the ppl with the msot chance to hurricane proof that city years before katrina was the lousisian govt and the new orleans local govt. So this is just utter stupidity. The media is letting those local govts use the feds as a scapegoat

 

What makes you think they didnt use the funds that were given to them? What makes you think the money given, as opposed to the amount requested, was even enough?

 

 

the problrm is that there is now a philosophical debate over whether the feds should be financing any of this at all. Oh and by the way the local govt admitted to not using the funds to fix the levees. ill try to look for a source soon when i have the time

And we are talking about pre-Katrina use of funds here right?

 

Regardless, everyone knows the local New Orleans system is corrupt and inefficient. The problem here is that the president of the United States was aware that a major disaster was a distinct possibility right before the storm hit. The storm hit, the flooding started, and Bush still reacted horribly. And what was his defense? Um...there was no way I could have known this was going to happen. Come on legacy. He was told it could happen! How is that not bad leadership? How is that not lying? How can the man who claims to be a great leader when a disaster strikes defend this? Um...don't look at me...look at the idiotic local government?

 

Moreover, this is an issue on the performance of a nationally elected official. Thats why the national media is discussing it as such. Thats why we are commenting on it from other parts of the country. The most effective form of punishment is about to come to the local and state officials. Nagin is in a battle for his political life in his election. Blanco wont get reelected when her time comes.

 

What exactly would we do if this was a terrorist attack, but we were not initially aware of this? Always leave it up to the locals as death and destruction occurs?

 

 

I don't completey disagree that bush deserves some fault for the management of the post-katrina response. However, the damage would have been significantly less had the local govts reacted as they should have. To me the issue here is not if bush is at fault, its that the role of the federal govt in natural disasters should be a secondary emergency help function, the local govts have to make their cities hurricane proof, have to map out the best evacutaion routes and so forth. And by the way the same way you say that the local govts can be punished for corruption or doign a terrible job, so can the executive federal govt. Next election, people can go out and vote against the republican party.

I think thats pretty much what is going on here. He is being criticized and his approval is going down. His ability to campaign in 2006 is being shot to hell.

Im curious as to why the louisiana and new orleans govts didnt use the federal funds that were given to them to fix the dekes. This is the baltant idiocy of the media in this country. Its assine to believe that the federal govt in the katrina incident supercedes the respnsibility of local govts. Everyone dropped the ball, but the ppl with the msot chance to hurricane proof that city years before katrina was the lousisian govt and the new orleans local govt. So this is just utter stupidity. The media is letting those local govts use the feds as a scapegoat

 

What makes you think they didnt use the funds that were given to them? What makes you think the money given, as opposed to the amount requested, was even enough?

 

 

the problrm is that there is now a philosophical debate over whether the feds should be financing any of this at all. Oh and by the way the local govt admitted to not using the funds to fix the levees. ill try to look for a source soon when i have the time

And we are talking about pre-Katrina use of funds here right?

 

Regardless, everyone knows the local New Orleans system is corrupt and inefficient. The problem here is that the president of the United States was aware that a major disaster was a distinct possibility right before the storm hit. The storm hit, the flooding started, and Bush still reacted horribly. And what was his defense? Um...there was no way I could have known this was going to happen. Come on legacy. He was told it could happen! How is that not bad leadership? How is that not lying? How can the man who claims to be a great leader when a disaster strikes defend this? Um...don't look at me...look at the idiotic local government?

 

Moreover, this is an issue on the performance of a nationally elected official. Thats why the national media is discussing it as such. Thats why we are commenting on it from other parts of the country. The most effective form of punishment is about to come to the local and state officials. Nagin is in a battle for his political life in his election. Blanco wont get reelected when her time comes.

 

What exactly would we do if this was a terrorist attack, but we were not initially aware of this? Always leave it up to the locals as death and destruction occurs?

 

 

I don't completey disagree that bush deserves some fault for the management of the post-katrina response. However, the damage would have been significantly less had the local govts reacted as they should have. To me the issue here is not if bush is at fault, its that the role of the federal govt in natural disasters should be a secondary emergency help function, the local govts have to make their cities hurricane proof, have to map out the best evacutaion routes and so forth. And by the way the same way you say that the local govts can be punished for corruption or doign a terrible job, so can the executive federal govt. Next election, people can go out and vote against the republican party.

I think thats pretty much what is going on here. He is being criticized and his approval is going down. His ability to campaign in 2006 is being shot to hell.

 

true, the media has done a great job of ignoring the truth in this during the whole katrina thing. By the way, the feds response took much longer after Andrew if you remember.

Here are a few excerpts from the New Orleans City Charter:

 

As established by the City of New Orleans Charter, the government has jurisdiction and responsibility in disaster response. City government shall coordinate its efforts through the Office of Emergency Preparedness.

...

The authority to order the evacuation of residents threatened by an approaching hurricane is conferred to the Governor by Louisiana Statute. The Governor is granted the power to direct and compel the evacuation of all or part of the population from a stricken or threatened area within the State, if he deems this action necessary for the preservation of life or other disaster mitigation, response or recovery. The same power to order an evacuation conferred upon the Governor is also delegated to each political subdivision of the State by Executive Order. This authority empowers the chief elected official of New Orleans, the Mayor of New Orleans, to order the evacuation of the parish residents threatened by an approaching hurricane.

...

The City of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas. Those evacuated will be directed to temporary sheltering and feeding facilities as needed. When specific routes of progress are required, evacuees will be directed to those routes. Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific life saving assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedures as needed.

...

Evacuation procedures for small scale and localized evacuations are conducted per the SOPs of the New Orleans Fire Department and the New Orleans Police Department. However, due to the sheer size and number of persons to be evacuated, should a major tropical weather system or other catastrophic event threaten or impact the area, specifically directed long range planning and coordination of resources and responsibilities efforts must be undertaken.

 

Also, the "new" video offers nothing new. Mayfield, in this video which was made just several hours prior to the eyewall making landfall, says he's worried about the levies being topped, and nobody ever mentions breaches or failures as what did occur. Don't going changing the words in order to suit your own agendas, that is, unless you enjoy being a liar.

 

The local authorities are responsibile for the evacuation. New Orleans, Nagin, and Blanco were utterly unprepared. I received a call at 11:30 am the Friday prior to landfall (which was Monday) from an Assistant Director of Finance from New Orleans Parish Schools. I asked her was the heck she was doing at work as the 11:00 am report had them just inside the western edge of the cone of what was then a Cat 3. The city had absolutely no idea what they were facing. Indeed, the NHC never mentioned LA in its "discussions" until the 11:00 pm report on Saturday. Even then, it called for a 2-4 foot surge. So, in fairness to Nagin and Blanco, NHC has to take some responsibility.

As for the money flows:

 

Money Flowed to Questionable Projects

State Leads in Army Corps Spending, but Millions Had Nothing to Do With Floods

By Michael Grunwald

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, September 8, 2005; A01

 

Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.

 

Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.

 

In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.

 

Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.

 

For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations. The Corps also spends tens of millions of dollars a year dredging little-used waterways such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the Atchafalaya River and the Red River -- now known as the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, in honor of the project's congressional godfather -- for barge traffic that is less than forecast.

 

The Industrial Canal lock is one of the agency's most controversial projects, sued by residents of a New Orleans low-income black neighborhood and cited by an alliance of environmentalists and taxpayer advocates as the fifth-worst current Corps boondoggle. In 1998, the Corps justified its plan to build a new lock -- rather than fix the old lock for a tiny fraction of the cost -- by predicting huge increases in use by barges traveling between the Port of New Orleans and the Mississippi River.

 

In fact, barge traffic on the canal had been plummeting since 1994, but the Corps left that data out of its study. And barges have continued to avoid the canal since the study was finished, even though they are visiting the port in increased numbers.

 

Pam Dashiell, president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, remembers holding a protest against the lock four years ago -- right where the levee broke Aug. 30. Now she's holed up with her family in a St. Louis hotel, and her neighborhood is underwater. "Our politicians never cared half as much about protecting us as they cared about pork," Dashiell said.

 

Yesterday, congressional defenders of the Corps said they hoped the fallout from Hurricane Katrina would pave the way for billions of dollars of additional spending on water projects. Steve Ellis, a Corps critic with Taxpayers for Common Sense, called their push "the legislative equivalent of looting."

 

Louisiana's politicians have requested much more money for New Orleans hurricane protection than the Bush administration has proposed or Congress has provided. In the last budget bill, Louisiana's delegation requested $27.1 million for shoring up levees around Lake Pontchartrain, the full amount the Corps had declared as its "project capability." Bush suggested $3.9 million, and Congress agreed to spend $5.7 million.

 

Administration officials also dramatically scaled back a long-term project to restore Louisiana's disappearing coastal marshes, which once provided a measure of natural hurricane protection for New Orleans. They ordered the Corps to stop work on a $14 billion plan, and devise a $2 billion plan instead.

 

But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects. Strock has also said that the marsh-restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina's storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands.

 

"The project manager for the Great Pyramids probably put in a request for 100 million shekels and only got 50 million," said John Paul Woodley Jr., the Bush administration official overseeing the Corps. "Flood protection is always a work in progress; on any given day, if you ask whether any community has all the protection it needs, the answer is almost always: Maybe, but maybe not."

 

The Corps had been studying the possibility of upgrading the New Orleans levees for a higher level of protection before Katrina hit, but Woodley said that study would not have been finished for years. Still, liberal bloggers, Democratic politicians and some GOP defenders of the Corps have linked the catastrophe to the underfunding of the agency.

 

"We've been hollering about funding for years, but everyone would say: There goes Louisiana again, asking for more money," said former Democratic senator John Breaux. "We've had some powerful people in powerful places, but we never got what we needed."

 

That may be true. But those powerful people -- including former senators Breaux, Johnston and Russell Long, as well as former House committee chairmen Robert Livingston and W.J. "Billy" Tauzin -- did get quite a bit of what they wanted. And the current delegation -- led by Landrieu and GOP Sen. David Vitter -- has continued that tradition.

 

The Senate's latest budget bill for the Corps included 107 Louisiana projects worth $596 million, including $15 million for the Industrial Canal lock, for which the Bush administration had proposed no funding. Landrieu said the bill would "accelerate our flood control, navigation and coastal protection programs." Vitter said he was "grateful that my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee were persuaded of the importance of these projects."

 

Louisiana not only leads the nation in overall Corps funding, it places second in new construction -- just behind Florida, home of an $8 billion project to restore the Everglades. Several controversial projects were improvements for the Port of New Orleans, an economic linchpin at the mouth of the Mississippi. There were also several efforts to deepen channel for oil and gas tankers, a priority for petroleum companies that drill in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

"We thought all the projects were important -- not just levees," Breaux said. "Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but navigation projects were critical to our economic survival."

 

Overall, Army Corps funding has remained relatively constant for decades, despite the "Program Growth Initiative" launched by agency generals in 1999 without telling their civilian bosses in the Clinton administration. The Bush administration has proposed cuts in the Corps budget, and has tried to shift the agency's emphasis from new construction to overdue maintenance. But most of those proposals have died quietly on Capitol Hill, and the administration has not fought too hard to revive them.

 

In fact, more than any other federal agency, the Corps is controlled by Congress; its $4.7 billion civil works budget consists almost entirely of "earmarks" inserted by individual legislators. The Corps must determine that the economic benefits of its projects exceed the costs, but marginal projects such as the Port of Iberia deepening -- which squeaked by with a 1.03 benefit-cost ratio -- are as eligible for funding as the New Orleans levees.

 

"It has been explicit national policy not to set priorities, but instead to build any flood control or barge project if the Corps decides the benefits exceed the costs by 1 cent," said Tim Searchinger, a senior attorney at Environmental Defense. "Saving New Orleans gets no more emphasis than draining wetlands to grow corn and soybeans."

Washington Post

 

and

 

Louisiana Officials Could Lose the Katrina Blame Game

By Jeff Johnson

CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer

September 07, 2005

 

The Bush administration is being widely criticized for the emergency response to Hurricane Katrina and the allegedly inadequate protection for "the big one" that residents had long feared would hit New Orleans. But research into more than ten years of reporting on hurricane and flood damage mitigation efforts in and around New Orleans indicates that local and state officials did not use federal money that was available for levee improvements or coastal reinforcement and often did not secure local matching funds that would have generated even more federal funding.

 

In December of 1995, the Orleans Levee Board, the local government entity that oversees the levees and floodgates designed to protect New Orleans and the surrounding areas from rising waters, bragged in a supplement to the Times-Picayune newspaper about federal money received to protect the region from hurricanes.

 

"In the past four years, the Orleans Levee Board has built up its arsenal. The additional defenses are so critical that Levee Commissioners marched into Congress and brought back almost $60 million to help pay for protection," the pamphlet declared. "The most ambitious flood-fighting plan in generations was drafted. An unprecedented $140 million building campaign launched 41 projects."

 

The levee board promised Times-Picayune readers that the "few manageable gaps" in the walls protecting the city from Mother Nature's waters "will be sealed within four years (1999) completing our circle of protection."

 

But less than a year later, that same levee board was denied the authority to refinance its debts. Legislative Auditor Dan Kyle "repeatedly faulted the Levee Board for the way it awards contracts, spends money and ignores public bid laws," according to the Times-Picayune. The newspaper quoted Kyle as saying that the board was near bankruptcy and should not be allowed to refinance any bonds, or issue new ones, until it submitted an acceptable plan to achieve solvency.

 

Blocked from financing the local portion of the flood fighting efforts, the levee board was unable to spend the federal matching funds that had been designated for the project.

 

By 1998, Louisiana's state government had a $2 billion construction budget, but less than one tenth of one percent of that -- $1.98 million -- was dedicated to levee improvements in the New Orleans area. State appropriators were able to find $22 million that year to renovate a new home for the Louisiana Supreme Court and $35 million for one phase of an expansion to the New Orleans convention center.

 

The following year, the state legislature did appropriate $49.5 million for levee improvements, but the proposed spending had to be allocated by the State Bond Commission before the projects could receive financing. The commission placed the levee improvements in the "Priority 5" category, among the projects least likely to receive full or immediate funding.

 

The Orleans Levee Board was also forced to defer $3.7 million in capital improvement projects in its 2001 budget after residents of the area rejected a proposed tax increase to fund its expanding operations. Long term deferments to nearly 60 projects, based on the revenue shortfall, totaled $47 million worth of work, including projects to shore up the floodwalls.

 

No new state money had been allocated to the area's hurricane protection projects as of October of 2002, leaving the available 65 percent federal matching funds for such construction untouched.

 

"The problem is money is real tight in Baton Rouge right now," state Sen. Francis Heitmeier (D-Algiers) told the Times-Picayune. "We have to do with what we can get."

 

Louisiana Commissioner of Administration Mark Drennen told local officials that, if they reduced their requests for state funding in other, less critical areas, they would have a better chance of getting the requested funds for levee improvements. The newspaper reported that in 2000 and 2001, "the Bond Commission has approved or pledged millions of dollars for projects in Jefferson Parish, including construction of the Tournament Players Club golf course near Westwego, the relocation of Hickory Avenue in Jefferson (Parish) and historic district development in Westwego."

 

There is no record of such discretionary funding requests being reduced or withdrawn, but in October of 2003, nearby St. Charles Parish did receive a federal grant for $475,000 to build bike paths on top of its levees.

 

Earlier this year, the levee board did complete a $2.5 million restoration project. After months of delays, officials rolled away fencing to reveal the restored 1962 Mardi Gras fountain in a four-acre park featuring a new 600-foot plaza between famous Lakeshore Drive and the sea wall.

 

Financing for the renovation came from a property tax passed by New Orleans voters in 1983. The tax, which generates more than $6 million each year for the levee board, is dedicated to capital projects. Levee board officials defended more than $600,000 in cost overruns for the Mardi Gras fountain project, according to the Times-Picayune, "citing their responsibility to maintain the vast green space they have jurisdiction over along the lakefront."

 

Democrats blame Bush administration

 

Congressional Democrats have been quick to blame the White House for poor preparation and then a weak response related to Hurricane Katrina. U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, joined two of his colleagues from the Transportation and Infrastructure and Homeland Security committees Tuesday in a letter requesting hearings into what the trio called a "woefully inadequate" federal response.

 

"Hurricane Katrina was an unstoppable force of nature," Waxman wrote along with Reps. James Oberstar (D-Minn.) and Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). "But it is plain that the federal government could have done more, sooner, to respond to the immediate survival needs of the residents of Louisiana and Mississippi.

 

"In fact, different choices for funding and planning to protect New Orleans may even have mitigated the flooding of the city," the Democrats added.

 

But Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) suggested that Waxman "overlooks many other questions that need to be asked, and prematurely faults the federal government for all governmental shortcomings; in fact, local and state government failures are not mentioned at all in [Waxman's] letter."

 

Davis wrote that Waxman's questions about issues such as the lack of federal plans for evacuating residents without access to vehicles and the alleged failure of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure basic communications capacity for first responders might "prematurely paint the picture that these are solely, or even primarily, federal government responsibilities.

 

"This is not the time to attack or defend government entities for political purposes. Rather, this is a time to do the oversight we're charged with doing," Davis continued. "Our Committee will aggressively investigate what went wrong and what went right. We'll do it by the book, and let the chips fall where they may."

 

The House Government Reform Committee will begin hearings on federal disaster preparations and the response to Hurricane Katrina the week of Sept. 12. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is schedule to hold hearings on the economic recovery from Katrina beginning Wednesday morning.

CNS

Then there is Blanco, herself. A fews after the storm, Nagin, Blanco, and Bush were on Airforce One. Nagin pissed off, yelling at Bush and Blanco to do whatever it is they need to do. Bush informs Blanco that she can have whatever she needs. She responded that she wanted 24 hours to think it over, and, as Nagin said, while more people died. CNN has discontinued publishing the video where Nagin goes ballistic Blanco's response to Bush (http://www.cnn.com/video/partners/clickability/index.html?url=/video/us/2005/09/05/obrien.nagin.walk.talk.cnn).

 

She also refused the Red Cross access to the Superdome, saying she didn't want to attract people there.

 

It took Blanco an unforgivable 71 days to call an "emergency" session of the legislature.

 

Also, the head of the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness was in jail when Katrina hit, and Blanco failed to assign the duties of acting director. That office went into the storm with its head cut off. Due to incompetence at the state level, Louisana went into Katrina with almost no chance of survival.