Levee Failures Due to Incompetence and Corruption?

And this is a surprise to anyone who has been following the New Orleans Katrina aftermath? Everywhere you turn, you realize just how poorly run Louisiana has been for decades, and that New Orleans safety - and that of its residents - was always a distant concern for everyone involved in the process. According to the New York Times:

"These levees should have been expected to perform adequately at these levels if they had been designed and constructed properly," said the expert, Raymond Seed, a professor of civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Not just human error was involved," Professor Seed said. "There may have been malfeasance."

Professor Seed, whose team was financed by the National Science Foundation, did not offer hard evidence to back up his accusation. But he said after the hearing that the team had been contacted by levee workers, contractors and, in some cases, widows of contractors who told stories of protective sheet pile being driven less deeply than plans called for and corners cut in choosing soils for construction, among other problems.

There are concerns that inadequate materials were used in the levees. And the concern now is that the repairs that were made thus far to the levees are inadequate to protect against another Category 3 storm, and that there is still significant damage to the system that needs to be mitigated.

Solomon's House has been the go-to source on tracking the levee problems. Among the links he provides, is one to the Army Corps of Engineers Hurricane Protection Projects in the New Orleans. That should prove to be an interesting site to see just where and how the levees failed, and what the Corps is going to do about it.

Oh, and New Orleans forefathers knew best how to stay dry in the unpredictable Mississippi River delta - they stuck to the high ground.

Meanwhile, no one is quite sure where and how all that Congressional appropriation aid has been spent on hurricane relief. That's comforting. Also comforting is the fact that all the Louisiana politicians are on the same page about keeping the Saints in New Orleans. They've arranged meetings with NFL officials and have gotten assurances, but wouldn't it be nice if the Louisiana officials were on the same page regarding actual rebuilding - the kind that gets Louisiana residents back into their homes, rebuilds the levee system properly, and does everything else that is needed to rebuild the infrastructure. Fat chance of that happening as long as Whiplash Nagin and Gov. Blanco are in charge.

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