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I have a question (it's not loaded). It has been reported that a levee or levees failed. Much of the talk about the cuts deals with the levees not being completed. If the levees had been finished would it have prevented the failure? It is known that the scheduled work on the levees was designed to increase capacity, but was the structural integrity of the levees to be improved if all of the funding had been granted? Is the failure of the levee the specific problem here? Would all of the hoped for work on the levees actually have prevented this?
We do know that the proposed improvements to the levees was aimed at increasing capacity...to deal with a greater rise in water levels than was actually seen in and around New Orleans this past week.
Is it possible that the problem here is not that the levees were not completed but that the levees that were in place were poorly formed?
Opinions are always appreciated. But I would really like to know the truth of this. Links would be much appreciated.
Edited to keep it simple.
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We do know that the proposed improvements to the levees was aimed at increasing capacity...to deal with a greater rise in water levels than was actually seen in and around New Orleans this past week.
Is it possible that the problem here is not that the levees were not completed but that the levees that were in place were poorly formed?
Opinions are always appreciated. But I would really like to know the truth of this. Links would be much appreciated.
Edited to keep it simple.
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. . . Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA (Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project) spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
. . .
In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.
On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313
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