[Rhodes22-list] POLITICS - When The LEVEE Breaks

[brad haslett]

Bill,

Right you are, again. My apologies to Led Zepplin. 
You would think Yahoo spell check would catch that. 
Now what exactly was Mr. Levi's story?  Did he
actually follow the forty-niners to look for gold or
was his plan to make pants all along?  And speaking of
Jewish tribes, wouldn't Moses have come in handy
during this flood?

Brad

--- Bill Effros <bill at effros.com> wrote:

> Levee!
> 
> Used as a noun, Levy is an alternate spelling for a
> tribe of Jews, some 
> of whom went on to make excellent blue jeans.  The
> jeans eventually wear 
> out, but they seldom break.
> 
> Bill Effros.
> 
> 
> 
> brad haslett wrote:
> 
> >I've been nursing a nasty sinus infection here in
> >China that I haven't been able to will or drug
> away,
> >and have been entertaining myself with $1.20
> bootleg
> >DVD's and the net.  It was wish full thinking on my
> >part to think that we might wait until the waters
> >receded and the dead were buried before the "Bush
> >Bashing" and finger pointing started, but no.  My
> copy
> >of "Rising Tide", the account of the great flood of
> >1926-27, was loaned out several years ago, never to
> >return, but it would be 6000 miles away now anyway
> so
> >I'll quote from memory.  New Orleans has always
> been
> >subject to the ravages of the Mississippi.  The New
> >Orleans city fathers convinced the Federal
> government
> >to allow them to blow-up the levies south of the
> city
> >in 1927 because they were afraid that "Old Man
> River"
> >would permanently alter its course through the tens
> of
> >thousands  year old natural flood relief course,
> and
> >leave 'Orleans an inland city.  They promised to
> >compensate the citizens of the two parishes wiped
> out
> >as a result.  When it turned out that the fur trade
> >they eliminated for the next two years generated
> far
> >more revenue than they imagined, they reneged on
> their
> >promise by offering 5 cents on the dollar and paid
> >that only if you settled immediately. New Orleans
> has
> >had a long time to plan for the inevitable, but now
> >that it has happened, is it ALL W's fault?  The
> >Mississippi IS a national resource and we all have
> a
> >vested interest in Delta project funding.  But
> where
> >does responsibility lie with the city of New
> Orleans
> >and the state of Louisiana?  Have they not every
> run
> >simulations or training for this type of event? 
> I'm
> >quite certain that New Orleans, like most Southern,
> >predominantly black cities, has a massive school
> bus
> >fleet.  Did anyone give thought to using them to
> >evacuate the city?  Did anyone in Louisiana read
> the
> >Army think-tank study from Ft. Riley, Kansas
> >(extensively covered by the Atlantic) that if a
> major
> >earthquake hit Memphis, TN (which lies on the New
> >Madrid fault, largest in North America), civil
> anarchy
> >would soon follow?  Is it surprising that New
> Orleans
> >would follow a similar pattern after a major
> >hurricane?  There are a lot of people to blame,
> >including W.  But the President is hardly at fault
> for
> >several centuries of bad civil engineering, social
> >engineering, and lax attitudes by local officials. 
> >How long HAVE they been serving "hurricane" drinks
> at
> >Pat O'Brians?  OK, a third of the Louisiana Guard
> is
> >in Iraq, doesn't that leave about 8000 behind?  Are
> >they not at the governor's disposal?  What shall we
> >have them do first?  Shoot looters?  Will they then
> be
> >accused of over-reacting as they were guilty of at
> >Kent State?  No one was prepared for this, not the
> >local officials, the state, or the Federal
> government.
> > There are plenty of people to blame and a lot of
> >self-examination to be done, by people from the
> last
> >several decades.  Right now, let's bury the dead
> and
> >heal the living.
> >
> >Here is an article regarding the levy system there.
> 
> >If half the Federal budget had been dedicated to
> lower
> >Mississippi levy projects in 2000, we wouldn't have
> >prevented this from happening.
> >
> >Brad
> >
> >--------------------------
> >
> >
> >Levees not designed for Katrina-strength storm,
> >official says By Pete Carey, Knight Ridder
> Newspapers
> >2 hours, 11 minutes ago
> > 
> >
> >
> >The levee system that protected New Orleans from
> >hurricane-caused surges along Lake Pontchartrain
> was
> >never designed to survive a storm the size of
> >Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers said
> >Thursday.
> >
> >The levees were built to withstand only a Category
> 3
> >storm, something projections suggested would strike
> >New Orleans only once every two or three centuries,
> >the commander of the corps, Lt. Gen. Carl A.
> Strock,
> >told reporters in a conference call. Katrina was a
> >Category 4 storm.
> >
> >"Unfortunately, that occurred in this case," Strock
> >said.
> >
> >Strock said that the levee system's design was
> settled
> >on a quarter of a century ago, before the current
> >numerical system of classifying storms was in
> >widespread use. He said that studies had begun
> >recently on strengthening the system to protect
> >against Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, but hadn't
> >progressed very far.
> >
> >Strock added that despite a May report by the
> Corps'
> >Louisiana district that a lack of federal funding
> had
> >slowed construction of hurricane protection,
> nothing
> >the Corps could have done recently would have
> >prevented Katrina from flooding New Orleans.
> >
> >"The levee projects that failed were at full
> project
> >design and were not really going to be improved,"
> >Strock said.
> >
> >Strock's comments drew immediate criticism from
> >flood-protection advocates, who said that the
> Corps'
> >May report was a call for action and a complaint
> about
> >insufficient funding, and that no action took
> place.
> >
> >"The Corps knew, everybody knew, that the levees
> had
> >limited capability," said Joseph N. Suhayda, a
> retired
> >director of the Louisiana State University's Water
> >Resources and Research Institute. "Because of
> >exercises and simulations, we knew that the
> >consequences of overtopping (water coming over the
> >levees) would be disastrous. People were playing
> with
> >matches in the fireworks factory and it went off."
> >
> >Suhayda, an expert in coastal oceanography, said,
> "the
> >fact the levee failed is not according to design.
> If
> >it was overtopped, it's because it was lower in
> that
> >spot than other spots. The fact that it was only
> >designed for a Category 3 meant it was going to get
> >overtopped. I knew that. They knew that. There were
> >limits."
> >
> >Some critics Thursday questioned the usefulness of
> >levees, saying that all of them fail eventually.
> >
> >"There are lots of ways for levees to fail.
> >Overtopping is just one of them," said Michael K.
> >Lindell, of Texas A&M University's Hazard Reduction
> 
=== message truncated ===


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