[Ninong]

The levees in New Orleans failed during Hurricane Katrina. The Army Corps of Engineers is investigating to find out why their levees failed.

This brief video clip explains how that process works.

[zhenya]

" So who's responsible for keeping us safe?"... asks the old man and after hearing the answer puts on his face mask. That says it all...

[SPasse]

Ninong,

OK, just to reiterate:

1 Army Corps of Engineers paid the American Society of Civil Engineers more than one million dollars for an “independent” study of the failure analysis of the levies?

2 Or is the video postulating that the Army Corps of Engineers bribed the American Society of Civil Engineers to the tune of more than one million dollars to produce a skewed failure analysis report.

3 If you did not create a “blue ribbon panel” from amongst experts from the American Society of Civil Engineers, from where would/should you have gotten them? Certainly a review group that was internal to the Army Corps of Engineers would likely be even less independent.

I am curious because as an engineer, I can imagine retaining the services of an independent review “engineering group” for a failure analysis project and this would involve paying for these services. For a project of the complexity that I can envision for the analysis of a levy failure, a “million dollars” seems very plausible.

Regards,

Scott

[Ninong]

Scott,

I posted that clip because it's funny!

You'll have to do your own research to figure out the answers to your questions. All I know is that most of the problems down here were caused by the Corps of Engineers and the oil companies over the past fifty or sixty years. Between them, they destroyed the freshwater marshes and cypress forests with a whole bunch of new canals and passageways through the freshwater swamps that allowed saltwater to come in and kill off all the freshwater species.

Just this past week the Corps agreed to seal off the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MR-GO). It's going to cost $25 million to dam it with stones. When there is a hurricane, the saltwater storm surge comes up the MR-GO and floods New Orleans and the lower ninth ward and St. Bernard Parish.

The oil companies have been cutting passageways through the swamps for decades and that has allowed saltwater to come way inland. Louisiana has lost thousands of square miles of wetlands over the past forty years or so because of all of that stuff.

As you know, the levee systems nationwide have been the responsibility of the Corps of Engineers since the 1920's. The design of the levees that failed down here was fundamentally flawed. They did not take into consideration the nature of the soils they were dealing with. So the levees were designed to fail. It was inevitable that they would fail even if they hadn't been overtopped. In fact, some of the sections that failed following Katrina, failed before being overtopped. They failed by being undercut. The concrete walls moved, opening up gaps, because the soil beneath them turned to soup. Most of the levees down here are not built like the Mississippi River levee. That thing will never fail unless it is blown up by terrorists.

With all the money that has been spent in the past two years "fixing" the levees, they're still not any better than they were before Hurricane Katrina. They cannot withstand a Category 4 storm much less a Cat 5. The Corps says it will take them 10 years to complete the upgrades to make the levee system (the part of it they have chosen to upgrade) capable of withstanding a minimum Cat 5 storm.

This topic is a big mess but let's just say that the Corps of Engineers shares a lot of the blame for what went wrong. And the Bush Administration cut back the Corps' budget as soon as they took office. In fact, they had just slashed the budget again the week before Katrina hit.

As it stands right now, the lower areas of Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes probably should not be rebuilt. They cannot be protected. And, according to some reliable computer projections, most of south Louisiana will be under water in another 50 years anyway unless they build a system similar to what they have in the Netherlands. If global warming speeds up, it really won't matter. All of this area will have to be abandoned, along with most of the state of Florida, by the end of this century if not sooner.

[SPasse]

Ninong,

”All I know is that most of the problems down here were caused by the Corps of Engineers and the oil companies over the past fifty or sixty years. Between them, they destroyed the freshwater marshes and cypress forests with a whole bunch of new canals and passageways through the freshwater swamps that allowed saltwater to come in and kill off all the freshwater species.”

Well I am guessing that the Army Corps, being part of the army, just “followed orders”. Granted, orders based on bad policy.

IMO, the levees failed because (at their best) they were capable of dealing with a Category 3 hurricane. Living in New Orleans is based on calculated risk. IMO, that is what the government has no business providing insurance against. When the government does so, it actually encourages the environmental issues that you mentioned. Not to mention the financial exposure of paying out against at catastrophe like Katrina.

If I lived in San Francisco or LA, I would be betting that a major earthquake will not visit me during my stay. But the federal government certainly has no business writing insurance policies against that eventuality either.

“As it stands right now, the lower areas of Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes probably should not be rebuilt. They cannot be protected.”

And I am not sure that they should ever be. Encouraging people to rebuild when you know that their neighborhoods will someday be inundated by another CAT4 or CAT5 hurricane is downright criminal.

“If global warming speeds up, it really won't matter. All of this area will have to be abandoned, along with most of the state of Florida, by the end of this century if not sooner.”

Oh well, at least you did not say “Man Made Global Warming”

Regards,

Scott

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by SPasse

IMO, the levees failed because (at their best) they were capable of dealing with a Category 3 hurricane.

Actually some of the failures that did take place would have taken place eventually regardless of the strength of the hurricane. Their design was inherently flawed. They were not entrenched deep enough for the type of soil.

When we talk about the ability to withstand a Category 4 or 5 storm, we're mainly talking about the attendant storm surge, not the wind speed. The levees have to be raised higher than they are to withstand a stronger hurricane because it will bring with it a higher storm surge.

Living in New Orleans is based on calculated risk. IMO, that is what the government has no business providing insurance against. When the government does so, it actually encourages the environmental issues that you mentioned. Not to mention the financial exposure of paying out against at catastrophe like Katrina.

By that logic, we should abandon San Diego, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, Seattle... In fact, we should abandon the entire West Coast. All of the West Coast is subject to catastrophic earthquakes that will cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, it's just a matter of when.

Eventually Yellowstone will blow up again and devastate at least one-third of the country. Should we begin evacuating now for that eventuality? What about the New Madras fault? When should we begin evacuating St. Louis and Memphis?

New York City is liable to be hit by a Category 3 or 4 hurricane again sometime in the next 50 years. Should we abandon it now or wait until rising sea level takes it out sometime in the next 60 or 70 years? BTW, all of Florida will probably have to be abandoned before the end of this century, too. All of the East Coast is liable to be wiped out by a tidal wave sometime in the next few hundred years, too. And the West Coast, especially near Seattle, could be wiped out by a tidal wave if there is a large enough slip in the Cascade fault, which is a subduction fault like the one that keeps causing so much trouble for Indonesia.

If I lived in San Francisco or LA, I would be betting that a major earthquake will not visit me during my stay. But the federal government certainly has no business writing insurance policies against that eventuality either.

There is a major earthquake on the Hayward fault approximately every 140 years on average. A major earthquake on that fault will do at least $200 billion in damage and possibly cost more than 15,000 lives. The last major quake on that fault was in 1868, 139 years ago.

And I am not sure that they should ever be.

I don't think they should rebuild those areas either but people built on barrier islands off the Carolinas, too. All of the Gulf Coast and all of the Atlantic Coast as far north as North Carolina is really subject to repeated threats from hurricanes. In fact, you might say that the entire state of Florida is a disaster waiting to happen because they are being hit by strong hurricanes almost every year lately. Should we abandon Florida?

Oh well, at least you did not say “Man Made Global Warming”

"Human activity is largely responsible for warming."

www.ipcc.ch


Predictions

Some key findings from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
-- Global warming is unequivocal. Temperatures have risen 1.3 degrees in the last 100 years. Eleven of the past 12 years are among the warmest since 1850. Sea levels have gone up by an average 0.07 of an inch per year since 1961.
-- About 20 to 30 percent of all plant and animal species face the risk of extinction if temperatures increase by 2.7 degrees . If the thermometer rises by 6.3 degrees, between 40 and 70 percent of species could disappear.
-- Human activity is largely responsible for warming. Global emissions of greenhouse gases grew 70 percent from 1970 to 2004. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is much higher than the natural range over the past 650,000 years.
-- Climate change will affect poor countries most, but will be felt everywhere. By 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water.

Here.

[SPasse]

Ninong,

”By that logic, we should abandon San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle... In fact, we should abandon the entire West Coast. All of the West Coast is subject to catastrophic earthquakes that will cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, it's just a matter of when.”

No, by this logic, people live there because they accept a calculated risk. However that imparts no responsibility whatsoever for the federal government to back up that risk. All of the potential disaster scenarios that you mention are known to be possible.

I am not advocating “abandoning” anything/anywhere. We just should not encourage people to build in these areas and certainly government has no business guaranteeing property via insurance.

"Human activity is largely responsible for warming."

I could have a lot of fun throwing out statistics supporting the claim that we are simply coming out of the “Little Ice Age” and that the man made contribution to Global Warming is insignificant.

A comprehensive approach for energy independence would have the biggest potential impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We should do this because it is in our strategic national interest to do so. This allows you to completely avoid the whole “Man Made Global Warming Issue”

Going after green house gas emissions for any other reason really bothers me if we are just wasting precious public & private treasure, trying to cure the wrong illness. It would be really sad if we are trying to cure cancer when the patient is really ill from a drug addiction.

Man Made Global Warming also has all of earmarks of a religious cause. So who would benefit from casting it as one?

1 The Democratic Party. (and their allies) They have been shown a great object lesson by the Religious Right about what is possible when you characterize a policy issue as a religious “world views” struggle. The Democrats need a religion so they latched on to/created one.

2 The United Nations. Man Made Global Warming is a tailor made Robin Hood “religious” rallying point for the socialist elements in the UN to use for the redistribution of wealth.

So in summary, Go for energy independence, and plan for the consequences of naturally occurring global warming.

Regards,

Scott

[Ninong]

The influence of the so-called Religious Right in national politics is history. We should be grateful to them for aiding in the downfall of the current ruling wing of the Republican party.

The recent rash of public corruption and sex scandals involving both the Republican party and the Religious Right have been complementary. Both the GOP and the Religious Right have been exposed as nothing but a bunch of whacked out hypocrites.

[Ninong]

...certainly government has no business guaranteeing property via insurance.

Should we abolish the FDIC?

[Ninong]

"We've Made Some Corrections"

A new report by the Army Corps of Engineers shows that a new flood control system in New Orleans — which was intended to reduce flooding by 5.5 feet — is only guaranteed for up to six inches.

P.S. -- Let's not forget that the Corps of Engineers paid tens of millions of dollars for defective pumps in a no-bid contract awarded to a company with ties to Jeb Bush.

FEMA is another matter but FEMA won't even allow their own employees to enter FEMA trailers, even for brief visits, because of the dangerous levels of toxic pollutants. Some of these FEMA trailers are testing at 70 times the allowable level of formaldehyde fumes two years after they were turned over to thousands of hurricane victims to live in. Many people, especially the elderly and young children, have come down with all sorts of respiratory illnesses. These trailers were defective, they were purchased by the Bush administration under no-bid contracts, they emit way too much toxic fumes from formaldehyde when exposed to Gulf Coast summers.

Here's another hilarious example of FEMA preposterousness: FEMA bought thousands of trailers (mobile homes) that retail for $29,000 each but FEMA's cost over the past two years is more than $220,000 each after adding in the cost of setting up locations and maintenance. One contractor billed FEMA $1.8 million for the cost of cleaning the septic tanks in a small trailer park of only a few dozen trailers. It was a no-bid, cost plus contract, so he cleaned the septic tanks every other week whether they needed it or not and billed FEMA. The septic tanks could have been maintained under a normal contract for the past two years for no more than about $100,000. That reminds me that FEMA paid on average $3,000 per home to out-of-state contractors to install blue tarps over damaged roofs. It takes no more than two hours for a crew of three or four guys to install these tarps. The tarps were provided FREE by FEMA. Local contractors were willing to do this for $350 per house but FEMA hired huge companies out of Texas who subcontracted it out to independent contractors who employed illegal immigrants and paid them $8/hour.

FEMA paid a company in Alaska (with ties to Alaska's corrupt GOP hierarchy) $88,000 each for converted trailers (mobile homes) to use as temporary school classrooms. This company had absolutely no prior experience in doing this work. A local Mississippi company that does have experience doing this work bid $55,000 per trailer but the contract was awarded on a no-bid basis to the Republican-connected company in Alaska, because Alaska is so much closer to the Gulf Coast.

And I'm sure it's because Mississippi's governor is a Republican, but Mississippi has received much more federal aid per victim than Louisiana. That could be a combination of things because Louisiana's governor and New Orleans' mayor are both Democrats and both are incompetent.

Here's another interesting statistic: Approximately 320 million trees were destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Approximately 75% of the trees in New Orleans died as a result of marinating in a toxic stew for weeks.