August 30, 2005

Bush Administration Responsible for Levee Failure in New Orleans?

Armand sent this disturbing link to me. It quotes a (now archived) New Orleans Times Picayune article about federal budget cuts to levee programs in New Orleans. The author of the blog is William Bunch, "the senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and its former political writer." The blog he cites (which in turns references the T-P article) is Library Chronicles.

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.

-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.

snip

That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount.

But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said.

Bunch also cites New Orleans City Business:

The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7 million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay salaries but little else.

"We'll do some design work. We'll design the contracts and get them ready to go if we get the money. But we don't have the money to put the work in the field, and that's the problem," Naomi said.

snip

The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.

"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."

And he cites another article from the Times Picayune on June 18:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don’t get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can’t stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn’t that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can’t raise them."

Bunch says "The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late. One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer was a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach. The levee failure appears to be causing a human tragedy of epic proportions."

And he leaves us with this question: "The president told us that we needed to fight in Iraq to save lives here at home, and yet -- after moving billions of domestic dollars to the Persian Gulf -- there are bodies floating through the streets of Louisana. What does George W. Bush have to say for himself now?"

If you have access to Lexis-Nexis I urge you to read the Times Picayune article of September 22nd, which portrays the fear but also forward thinking of public officials in New Orleans after Hurricane Ivan. The close brush with Ivan really got them thinking about how to fix, in a timely fashion, the chinks in New Orleans' armor that have led to the disastrous consequences of Karina. The article also shows their frustration at their pursuit of public safety being rebuffed for a priority on the war in Iraq.

Posted by binky at August 30, 2005 07:06 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics


Comments

Bro,
Have you considered another culprit here? How about the Saints, and owner of the Saints Tom Benson? They've taken millions and millions from the state citizens, without our having much say in the matter. Without those millions being taken away, there would have been money for the state to cover the tab for these projects.
Do you think I'm reaching, that I'm as desperate to blame something other than Bush as you are to blame Bush? Do you know what isn't a reach? Louisiana civil service, government employees apparently who chose to use their entire budget to pay their own salaries rather than fire some people so that they could actually accomplish something with the money our state's citizens are paying them. It says it right in the article, they're going to "do some design work," but put nothing in the field, when it already said in the article they have the next batch of projects ready to go. This kind of attitude wouldn't cut it in the private sector.
They could have gotten the other money from the state, but it's easier for a liberal paper to blame Washington than a liberal state government that has had millions and millions to throw away on the Saints. They could blame themselves for not even doing their most desperate project and losing a few employees, or blame a civil service system that's so bent that kind of attitude actually makes sense, but their going to blame Bush. This is nothing but CYA, the usual stuff from a city whose residents feel entitled to other people's money and belongings (witness the looting).

Posted by: Morris at August 31, 2005 08:45 AM | PERMALINK

Morris:

Re: paragraph 1 - I loathe Tom Benson, and I think government supported pro sports teams are ridiculous. That said, I think the scale of the missing expenditures we are talking about here is considerably higher than the money that the Saints get - particularly as a good chunk of the "money" they get isn't exactly money (services, rents, etc.).

Re: paragraph 2 - Huh? You don't think people should be paid for their work? You don't think they deserve salaries? The reason they designed "plans", it would appear, is that that's all they had the money to do. They could design it, but with local tax increases or federal assistance they couldn't afford to implement all of those plans. The Bush administration had better uses for that money (giant gobs of it going to their "private sector" friends at Halliburton and defense firms; creating an Islamic government in Iraq ...) than protecting the people of New Orleans from a readily identifiable grave threat.

Hmmmm - the Bush team standing idly by in the face of a grave threat ... that sounds familiar somehow ...

There's a simple fact here - Washington was alerted to the threat, the state planned for it, and Washington declined to help. Could the state have raised taxes and paid for this work themselves - sure. But show me evidence of Republicans in the state government who'd have backed that. Or conservative Democrats.

Posted by: Armand at August 31, 2005 09:09 AM | PERMALINK

First of all, I think you meant "Binky."

Second, if you're saying this is CYA for what happened today, recall that these quoted articles are from a year ago.

Third, Morris, as a local, maybe you can give me some guidance. What are the average salaries for the workers you are talking about laying off, and how many of them would have had to be fired to produce the millions needed to complete the projects? Would there then be a sufficient number of employees to take that money and do the work? Or would it be paid to private contractors, where by being in the private sector workers interested in getting paid doesn't "cut it.".

Fourth, I would love for someone with more familiarity (time and resources as well) than I have to come up with figures showing the following for the work on levees and responsible agencies:

Staffing over the last 5-10 years

Spending on/results of planning over the last 5-10 years

Federal state and local budget allocations over the last 5-10 years

I've also seen the allegation that "cutting this budget didn't matter anyway as the work would not have been completed on time." I'm sure would play well in Louisiana right now.

As to slamming the Saints' ownership, I don't know much about that. I have read that Governor Blanco (D) was trying to get them to renegotiate the $186 million deal that her predecessor Mike Foster (R) set up, on the grounds that the state couldn't afford it.

Posted by: binky at August 31, 2005 09:31 AM | PERMALINK

As to your last point Binky, yes, Gov. Blanco (D) has been playing hardball with Tom Benson and the Saints. She's trying to renegotiate the deal made by Gov. Foster (R), and if that doesn't work out ... well, the Saints could be leaving New Orleans b/c she doesn't seem remotely inclined to letting Benson feed off the public tax rolls like he did when there was a Republican governor.

Posted by: Armand at August 31, 2005 10:35 AM | PERMALINK

It says it right in the article, they're going to "do some design work," but put nothing in the field, when it already said in the article they have the next batch of projects ready to go. This kind of attitude wouldn't cut it in the private sector.

Forgive me if I'm either stating the obvious, or missing something obvious, but what indications are there that the private sector, in the aggregate, could have done this for less money than has been spent or than should have been appropriated (by federal or state government). One doesn't do this without money, and where we're talking about a government project the money has to come from somewhere before it can go into private sector hands.

And as for the putative ruthless efficiency of private markets, I offer you the airlines, Halliburton gouging U.S. taxpayers on fuel deliveries into Iraq, not to mention the multi-million-dollar executive salaries to wet ends with M.B.A.'s and little experience or history of success (for examble, a failed oil man named George W. Bush), which the public sector surely wouldn't tolerate.

Private markets are perforated to the breaking point with hand-outs to corporate tycoons, evidently like Benson. I know of no tycoon declining on free market principles to accept such largess, nor have I heard much about any companies that aren't prepared to twist local government's arm to squeeze every dime out of taxpayer coffers they can.

Ah, laudable free enterprise. Where you can find it.

Posted by: joshua at August 31, 2005 02:00 PM | PERMALINK

Bro,
Here it is in black and gold: Cuts to the budget for lake ponch are 5.7 plus 2.9 million, equalling 8.6 million. The annual money paid by the state to the Saints is 12.4 million.
http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/USATODAY/2005/07/06/932789
And I'm not sure I agree with you about our esteemed and sometimes intoxicated governor, because she went ahead with paying Benson 12.4 million dollars, and if that's not letting Benson feed off the Louisiana taxpayers, I really wonder what is.

Now, Binky's right in that we really don't have the individual budgets for the departments involved and the individual salaries, it's just the notion that a government agency set up to accomplish a project would prefer to keep a full staff instead of accomplish even a small project--I'll say it--it irks me. Of course, most of our discussion loses sight of the fact that even if the levee project were 100% complete, it was only conceived to protect against a category 3 hurricaine, and the plans were made back in the 40's, and they'd been going on since the 60's.
http://www.nola.com/printer/printer.ssf?/newsstory/e_storm10.html

The cost for protection against a hurricaine like Katrina is estimated at 1-2 billion dollars, and the feasibility studies for it haven't even been done. So calling this the fault of a President who took office more than 50 years after Washington was alerted of the problem and a plan was made by the state seems...I'll say it, it seems something of a stretch.
My mistake Binky, I did mean Binky. And my mistake on the CYA thing too. I'm so absent minded lately.

Posted by: Morris at August 31, 2005 02:18 PM | PERMALINK

As long as we're being nice to each other, I will say, yes Morris you are right about the datedness of the project. At all levels there has been a great deal of hoping going on...hoping that this isn't "the" year for the problem that needs billions and years to resolve.

Posted by: binky at August 31, 2005 03:37 PM | PERMALINK

I still generally have this little thing about holding the officials who are currently running the government accountable for the choices it makes and both what it does and does not do. Call me crazy, but I thought this president approved of "accountability".

And Morris, your comment about Kathleen Blanco is totally out of bounds. I hope you apologize for it. Unless you are ready to announce that you don't think anyone who ever lets liquour cross their lips isn't fit for high office - and are ready to decry known giant drunken failures like say Winston Churchill and many of the founding fathers while you are at it - you are simply flailing about in the realm of mean-spirited diversions. Whether or not she's sipped a little wine has nothing to do with her ability to serve capably as governor.

Oh, and yeah, the Saints have gotten money on her watch - because her predecessor created a contract with the Saints. She's trying to renegotiate that to get taxpayers a better deal. So is it the trying to save some money that you don't like - or the fact that she's not simply breaking existing contracts that obligate the state to make certain payments?

Posted by: Armand at August 31, 2005 03:48 PM | PERMALINK

And I totally missed Joshua's post, and this that he quoted:

"It says it right in the article, they're going to "do some design work," but put nothing in the field, when it already said in the article they have the next batch of projects ready to go. This kind of attitude wouldn't cut it in the private sector."

There were several articles quoted from varying dates ranging over a year. My fault for not being more clear about that. I claim exhaustedness and pissedness as an excuse.

Posted by: binky at August 31, 2005 04:55 PM | PERMALINK

Bro,
There is a time and a place for all things under heaven, but showing up to give an acceptance speech for governor is not the time to show up three sheets to the wind and slur all those words carefully crafted by someone's cousin. And showing up on GMA this morning looking like you've tied one on the night before is not a really good time either.
I find it interesting that you suggest accountability for those currently in office when it comes to someone a thousand miles from the problem, but when it comes to the mayor or the governor within a hundred miles, you say anyone criticizing them should apologize. And as far as her capability as governor goes, it does strike me that New Orleans falling into lawlessness and looting was a problem she was a lot closer to and might have considered having a plan for, at least between doing shots with Kitty Dukakis. That is, of course, only if this problem was as obvious as you say it was--unless that standard just applies when a conservative is involved.
Maybe I'm not completely hip on contracts made by democracies, but it seems most people employed by government agencies have their jobs dependant on whether funding is approved for their job by the elected officials for that particular year. I seem to recall vast orders placed for weapons systems that never came to fruition at the federal level, and no big deal was made about broken contracts. Maybe Joshua can clue me into the law, but I say break the contract now, especially as Benson didn't exactly hesitate to use this crisis to try out his team in front of a San Antonio audience, despite the fact that 12.4 million for their funding came from the taxpayers of Louisiana.
Binky,
I'm sorry I wasn't more clear, but after reading the second article I cited, I found that the plans have been their for more than fifty years.
Joshua,
You're absolutely right, this isn't as cut and dried as private sector v public sector or east coast v west coast rappers. Schooly D is the bomb! Hell yeeah! My frustration is that in most cases people will get fired for accomplishing nothing in the private sector, at least eventually, even if they have golden parachutes, while the civil service system in our great pelican state makes this almost impossible. I admit this is more of an aesthetically grounded feeling based on the ugliness of injustice, though I do think it makes policy sense to have a mechanism that allows for state employees to be fired for not doing their jobs.

Posted by: Morris at August 31, 2005 09:23 PM | PERMALINK

So let's see - 1) you are surprised that Tom Benson is an ass 2) you continue to make amazingly tasteless comments about the governor (and the only event you cite is the night she won her election - a circumstance in which, you know, people celebrate), 3) you want the state to unilaterally break its financial commitments and 4) you berate me for not holding the mayor and governor accountable, while you show no interest in holding the presidential administration accountable.

1) You are hopelessly naive - he's been an ass for ages, and has been shopping around the team for years.
4) It may well be that the governor and mayor could have done more, I'm not saying that's not true. But I think it's abundantly clear that DC could have done more and did not. If I grant that local and state officials are partially at fault over preparedness, will you say Bush deserves some blame too? I'm not going to hold my breath for that. But as to why I'm hitting DC and Bush on this - it strikes me that on something of this magnitude, with such a high, known risk, that serious money should perhaps have gone toward the city - and that kind of money is much more easily supplied by the feds than it is by the state or localities. How about we blame the Louisiana Republican Party which has long railed against any tax increase for anything ever (that's barely an exaggeration). With extra funds, perhaps the state could have prevented this. But you know state politics well enough to know the virtually impossibility of getting anything that looks like a revenue increase approved.
3) Silly me, I think it's generally appropriate to honor your contracts no matter how much you dislike them. Hell, I'd like not to make a car payment, but I can't just stop doing it.
2) You are wallowing in scum, just b/c you seem to have some personal issue with drinking (in, seemingly, all circumstances). How about stopping with the childish name calling and foisting your own personal issues on the rest of us in such insulting ways? And of course it should go without saying at this point that nothing in your appalling personal attack says anything at all about Gov. Blanco's performance in office either before or after this tragic event.

Posted by: Armand at August 31, 2005 09:51 PM | PERMALINK

"And showing up on GMA this morning looking like you've tied one on the night before"

Or perhaps like you've been up for three days doing emergency management. Christ, Morris, you really have a knack for being cruel.

"I found that the plans have been their for more than fifty years"

At this point, I'm even more confused what you are talking about. What is about the connection between the plans that have been there for fifty years and the ones that they were going to draw up in lieu of having funds to draw up and implement?

You know what, never mind.

Posted by: binky at August 31, 2005 09:55 PM | PERMALINK

"There is a time and place for all things under heaven." Hmmm. When I think about all of the disasters that have befallen us under Bush's presidency I wonder if God isn't sending us a message. Maybe having blind, self-righteous Christians running the country is upsetting him.

Posted by: John at September 1, 2005 12:01 PM | PERMALINK

i'm with you, john.

morris, if a government breaks a contract that doesn't have an ironclad escape clause to which both parties subscribed at contract formation, the government is on the hook for damages just like it was a private party in breach. the more complex the contract, the more likely it has a "liquidated damages" clause, which endeavors to fix in advance the damages of breaking the contract, and often avoids litigation -- i.e., goverment breaks a $12B defense contract, quietly (read, buried in the saturday paper) pays the contractor $750M to get out of the contract pursuant to the contract's liquidated damages clause, and voila! -- no more contract.

also, if governments could just walk away from their financial obligations with the same impunity as, say, major airlines, there would be no need for a court of claims, which the federal government and many (if not all) states have in one form or another. that's a court dedicated to hearing contract-based claims concerning agreements to which the government is a party.

if blanco wanted to walk out on the deal and hasn't, it's a safe bet that her predecessor negotiated a deal that didn't provide an adequate escape hatch.

and yeah, i'm with binky about how blanco looked this morning. i doubt the woman has slept, and i'm all but certain she hasn't slept well or for long, since saturday or sunday. you'd probably look that bad if there were a Dynasty marathon the night before. or dallas. or the 21 club. or whatever it is unrepentant objectivist theocrats watch for fun.

Posted by: joshua at September 1, 2005 01:57 PM | PERMALINK

and as though this weren't enough, majikthise is reporting that DHS has declined the assistance of Canada's world-class search and rescue teams. It's probably the only time you'll ever see her type "WTF?" and it's entirely called for.

Posted by: joshua at September 1, 2005 02:35 PM | PERMALINK

Joshua,
For the record, I'm not an objectivist or a theocrat. The fact is with regard to Armand's comment, she may be capable but she didn't show it--she provided no vision or even determination for the victims of this disaster. What she said sounded to me like, New Orleans is screwed, maybe forever. Maybe she thought that was her best way to get money flowing her direction, but I think the survivors need some positive reframing of what they've just gone through and what they'll be going through for a long time.
Thanks for the information on the contracts. For everyone who thinks I support republicans no matter what, let it be known I think former governor Foster is a schmuck too, and this is just one more reason.
John,
If floods are a sign of God's hatred, then God must hate China ten times more than he hates us. And you're assuming the target for this message is Bush, when it's to me much more likely the city that lives for addiction, be it sex, drugs, gambling, and/or drinking, was the target. Of course, if you believe the old testament, once the bowl is empty, God's vengeance is complete.
Bro,
My fault for not giving the "governor" a chance to celebrate. You're right, I do have issues about drinking, you don't, and neither do the 15,000 people now dead who die every year in alcohol related accidents, nor all the others who die from failed livers, gout, and alcohol poisoning. I'm sure you want to ignore all the studies about how people learn behavior through watching others, so see how that works for you.

Posted by: Morris at September 1, 2005 02:48 PM | PERMALINK

"Mayor Ray Nagin said last night that the feds "don't have a clue" about what's happening." He also did some cussing, which was kind of refreshing to hear, honestly. "Excuse my French -- everybody in America -- but I am pissed." (from WWLTV.

Another local official:

"This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control," Ebbert told the Associated Press as he watched refugees evacuate the Superdome yesterday. "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans. We have got a mayor who has been pushing and asking, but we're not getting supplies."

Of course, it's not just the locals complaining:

Rep. Charles W. Boustany Jr., (R-La.), said he spent the past 48 hours urging the Bush administration to send help. "I started making calls and trying to impress upon the White House and others that something needed to be done," he said. "The state resources were being overwhelmed, and we needed direct federal assistance, command and control, and security -- all three of which are lacking."

Last two quotes from WaPo

For the less inflammatorally minded, WWLTV has a short question and answer about preparedness.

And then there is Krugman who reminds us:

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.
Posted by: binky at September 2, 2005 09:16 AM | PERMALINK

Binky,
I just find it amusing you argue that hurricanes hitting New Orleans was this huge blind spot, when despite having a blog up for more than a year and criticizing Bush for hundreds of things, you failed to mention this huge blind spot before this week. If it was such a big issue, why didn't you talk about it before it became a problem, since you have your own forum right here to draw attention to it. The answer I believe is the obvious one, that a plan to build Category 5 levees in New Orleans had as much priority as a tsunami warning system had before tens of thousands of people died for the lack of one, as much priority as terrorist attacks had before 9/11. Is it any accident the levee construction that started in the 60's (when hurricanes betsy and camille hit) was still incomplete 40 years later? No, of course not. We're human, and if something isn't affecting us today, for most of us it's not a big deal. I saw a news report months ago about a comet that may hit the earth two hundred years from now. Are we rushing into action? Of course not, because the threat isn't imminent, so politicians would rather put their own people to work building bridges to nowhere, because that matters today. You can do all the monday morning quarterbacking you want to, but if it was as important to you, as you suggest it should have been to the president, why wasn't it mentioned in one of the previous 654 political blogs?

As far as getting command and control up in New Orleans, until the day before Ebbers said that, the water was still rising, and nobody knew if it was going to stop. Was he expecting some kind of Waterworldesque floating command and control center? He's tired, stressed, and frustrated, so he's choosing to blame others for his problems, for the horrible things over which he has no control.

Posted by: Morris at September 2, 2005 02:43 PM | PERMALINK

I have not argued it was a blind spot. I have argued that it was a deliberate part of budget prioritizing. It doesn't mean the administration was blind, it means they didn't care.

There are many things I have not blogged about that still concern me, as time is short and only the most salient (to me) fire me up to write at the time.

"you failed to mention this huge blind spot before this week"

Gee Morris, I wonder why. It took the complete fucking breakdown of civilization after a colossal failure of emergency management and hundreds if not thousands of people dying and millions homeless after the most damaging hurricane of the whole damn century to make me blog about it. This is called "blogging in response to major world events." IRL I have a deep personal history with hurricanes and a personal and professional interest climate events, as well as a tendency toward ranting about government response to natural disaster. That I don't inflict that on everyone every day at the blog has fuck all to do with whether or not I am allowed to talk about it now. And by the way, why don't you cc me the copies of your letters to Townhall, Rush, Boortz, CBS, NBC, CNN, and FoxNews criticizing them for the same thing, since I don't recall them ever discussing this before either and I'm sure you are equally upset that they are devoting so much time to the issue too. Obviously, the Weather Channel and National Geographic get a pass, since they have been talking about this for years.

Stop the presses. This means that my nine million estimate was way off. It must be much higher if we count the people who have watched the disaster shows on those last two channels. Plus today I found out one of my colleagues who teaches statistics has been using the high probablility of levee failure in New Orleans as an example for over a decade. Poor Bushie. Even couch potatoes know more than he does.

And just so you feel satisified that you have provoked me into responding to your taunt, if you check the fucking archive you might see that I've blogged about my worry over hurricane damage before (last year), and referenced one of those posts this very week. And if you check the tags of the posts I've been doing this week, they are not part of the "654 political blogs" either.

The criticism you could levy of my revulsion at the administration could rightly be called old wine in new bottles (same criticism different package), but coming up with a "you didn't criticize him before on the blog so you can't criticize him now" nonsense doesn't hold water.

And let's talk about those priorities. "as much priority as terrorist attacks had before 9/11." The funny thing is, it is after 9/11 and we have a brand new Cabinet level agency to deal with this. One that is sponsoring national preparedness month to respond to major crises, whether terrorist or natural. They dropped the fucking ball. Dropped. The. Fucking. Ball. The sales job that was done on the American people in the creation of Homeland Security included response to national disasters. The reorganization was supposed to make our response better. It's worse. Way worse. What, you're going to tell me the refugee crisis would have been different in NO if it had been a chemical weapons attack? Or that the government would have cared more and responded more quickly if it was a terror attack? How about that it was only the first disaster, and they'll do better next time. Hey, I should send that line to Bush so he can consider it for a speech on Iran.

Posted by: binky at September 2, 2005 02:51 PM | PERMALINK
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