Katrina
POSTED BY: SevenPercent
UPDATED: Friday, August 29, 2025 14:39
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Oh, I've got one:Quote:
Senate shores up La. flood control
Money would allow new construction
Saturday, June 18, 2005
By Sheila Grissett
East Jefferson bureau
The tug-of-war that is the appropriations process on Capitol Hill has, for now, restored enough money to allow some new flood- and hurricane-protection construction in southeast Louisiana during the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 -- but it's only Monopoly money until the budget game ends.
This week, the Senate Appropriations Committee returned about $31 million to the proposed 2006 budget that the Bush administration and House Appropriations Committee took away from flood and hurricane work during their first bite at the budget apple earlier this year.
Later this summer, the House and Senate committees will sit down as a single conference committee to reconcile the differences in the spending recommendations for the Army Corps of Engineers, which supervises and underwrites hurricane-protection work for the Lake Pontchartrain and West Bank areas and flood-control projects under the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control program, known as SELA.
The conference bill that results will go to the president for signing, and the numbers will make a world of difference to residents who live in the geographical bowl that is the New Orleans area, according to corps supervisors and a phalanx of elected and appointed officials who have made repeated trips to Washington in recent months to plead for money.
"Today was a really good day for" us, Jefferson Parish Council Chairman Tom Capella said of the successful push Tuesday by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., to get the Senate Water and Natural Subcommittee to restore money slashed by the administration and House appropriations members. On Thursday, the full Senate Appropriations Committee followed suit.
"We feel pretty certain that it will stay through the full Senate," Capella said. "But we can't let up."
SELA contracts
If the additional $31 million remains, local corps officials said the agency should be able to award four new SELA contracts this year in Orleans and Jefferson parishes and continue project planning in St. Tammany Parish. The new contracts would likely include the final contract needed to complete the new Dwyer Road Pump Station system in New Orleans, improvements to the Soniat Canal between Veterans Memorial Boulevard and Canal No. 3 on the East Bank, installation of a diesel engine at the Westwego Pump Station, and modifications to the Cross Canal at Lapalco Boulevard on the West Bank.
"It's possible that the money would even allow us to award two contracts on Florida Avenue projects, but it's too soon to know about that," said corps' SELA project manager Stan Green.
"But if the money doesn't stick, it's unlikely that we could award any new contracts," he said. "And we'd probably have to talk to our contractors on existing (projects) about how to keep them going."
Levee work could continue
Congress gave the corps $32.7 million for the SELA program this year, but the Bush administration House appropriations panel sliced that to $10.5 million for the upcoming fiscal year. The Senate Appropriations Committee has restored SELA to $37 million.
Marcia Demma, chief of the corps' Programs Management Branch, said she believes the conference committee will settle on a figure somewhere between the two extremes.
"Of course, we hope it's closer to the Senate version because it would provide more safety during hurricanes, more flood control and be good for the New Orleans economy," said Demma, who doesn't expect the conference committee to act before July at the earliest.
There also has been money restored for more Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity hurricane protection work.
In this budget year, that program got $5.1 million, originally reduced to $2.97 million for the 2006 fiscal year, but now reset by the Senate to $7.5 million.
"This would probably allow us to do some levee work in Jefferson and St. Charles parishes and maybe get a new contract o
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It's not a question of "prevented it from happening", it's a question of reducing the number of times such dramatic environmental events happen.
Hurricanes, ice ages, droughts, etc, etc have and will always occur in our eco-system. However the damage we've done to the environment has bumped up the frequency and power of such events. If Bush had immediately put the Kyoto protocol into effect in January 2001, would that have stopped this storm? Well, no (unless you subscribe to the butterfly effect theory).
However he's taking actions (like your previous Presidents) that will ensure these disasters continue to happen with greater and greater regularity. It's not even a Republican thing that I'm criticising here; it's an American thing. When it comes to the environment, you're probably the most selfish nation on the planet and definitely the most destructive.
There is a very broad consensus that you're doing terrible damage to the planet (obviously we are too but less so and we're at least trying to minimise it). Nobody can say whether Katrina was a direct result of our collective pollution from the last fifty years or not. What we can say is that it made it that much more likely.
'The fault lies not within the stars' as they say.
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Yep, Geezer- that's all I'm interested in is bashing Bush and corporations. Has nothing to do with the fact that this entirely predicted disaster was fumbled from the moment it was predicted, and that thousands may have died. I think it's MUCH more important to feel fuzzy and warm about "the system" than to ackonwledge mistakes and deficiencies. Apparently you feel the same way... everything went well... you would have changed nothing, and Bush did entirely the right thing by showing up in San Diego in the midst of an unfolding crisis to push is war in Iraq and get another photo op in front of an aircraft carrier.
BTW- if you think I'm stupid enough to be suggesting that resources be forwarded into the path of the hurricane, then you are entirely mistaken. But there are rescue groups being moblized from California and all over the nation, just maybe they should have been in Texas already?.
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I will give Shrub this much: at least this time when he learned of the disaster he didn't just sit on his ranch, invite a bunch of schoolchildren in, and read them a story. Even a clod like him can learn some small things.
----
I can see you.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Spinland:
I will give Shrub this much: at least this time when he learned of the disaster he didn't just sit on his ranch, invite a bunch of schoolchildren in, and read them a story. Even a clod like him can learn some small things.
I've always been proud of how the President handled the 9/11 news. He was sitting in a room, surrounded by schoolchildren and the Press Corps. Jumping up and running from the room would have been the worst possible reaction.
Instead he was calm and deliberate so as to avoid panicing the kids, the press, and the nation. It was one of many islands of sanity in the midst of the chaos of that September morning.
This disaster is far, far worse. And its going to keep getting worse even while it gets better. After all, its September, I live in Ohio, that means I need to be thinking about heating oil in another month or so. My humble suggestion is we find the most beautiful, pristine, stretch of coastline in California and we build the biggest, stinkiest, uggliest, dirtyiest oil refinery the world has ever seen. We can start tomorrow. I'll bring a shovel, you bring the refining equipment. We'll make a bundle and save the nation all at the same time.
H
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And then when The Big One comes and the refinery that everyone depends on is a smoking ruin, and we are just as unprepared for emergencies as we were the last time, then we'll all be back to where we started or worse. Way to go, Hero. Nice job saving the nation! 
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BTW- I'm not sparing the local government from criticism either. I know that you want to save evacuation to the last possible minute, but I thought it was delayed about a half-day too long. And when I saw those long lines of idling cars on the outbound freeways and three lanes empty in the other direction I thought... Geee, can't they just re-route traffic and designate 5/6 lanes "outbound"? Or do they have magic one-way concrete that runs in the wrong direction?
Here's another thought that came to me during the evacuation: Why not commandeer city buses and school buses to get people out of harm's way? Maybe involve the National Guard or the military to do a house to house? I mean, evacuation is tough but rescue is much tougher are far less successful. And some people didn't want to leave because they didn't have any place to go. So how about setting up tent cities, or even opening up out-of-harm's way bases, or even commandeering some hotels?
That's what I mean by fumbling. I'll admit I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but if I can think of stuff like that, why couldn't anyone else?
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This from Biloxi:
"...our reporters have yet to find evidence of a coordinated approach to relieve pain and hunger or to secure property and maintain order.
"People are hurting and people are being vandalized.
"Yet where is the National Guard, why hasn't every able-bodied member of the armed forces in South Mississippi been pressed into service?
"On Wednesday reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics.
"Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!
"When asked why these young men were not being used to help in the recovery effort, our reporters were told that it would be pointless to send military personnel down to the beach to pick up debris.
"Litter is the least of our problems. We need the president to back up his declaration of a disaster with a declaration of every man and woman under his command will do whatever is necessary to deal with that disaster."
Anyone, ANYONE! who thinks Bush is a leader has his head jammed up his rectum so far he's looking out his own mouth. I suggest such heroes get their heads out NOW, and accept the truth in front of them. Otherwise they're part of the problem, not the solution.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
And then when The Big One comes and the refinery that everyone depends on is a smoking ruin, and we are just as unprepared for emergencies as we were the last time, then we'll all be back to where we started or worse. Way to go, Hero. Nice job saving the nation!
One crisis at a time. This is the big one. We rarely see two historically signifigant natural disasters happen so close together either temporally or geographically.
By the time the big one hits the refineries in Louisiana will be working again. Plus we can build a few cleaner, nicer refineries in Washington or Oregon (or Ohio if the pipeline is long enough). The oil industry could be great for America. All that pipe being made here in Ohio and PA, all the steel and tools coming from Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois. The refineries themselves each represent hundreds of good jobs that can't be exported to Mexico. Lower gas prices benefit everyone and we can all feel better buying and driving SUVs and buying goods sold without a markup reflecting the high prices of transportation.
I don't see a downside.
Seems to me we could have started building one or two new refineries in 1999 when it became obvious we needed them, or 2000, when we really needed them, or 2001, when we'd just elected somebody who knew how much we needed them, or 2002, when we saw that the war on terror was going to make global oil imports less secure, or 2004 when the price spiked, or even today in 2005 when we really, really need them.
H
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Or (and this is one of those crazy wacky European ideas so bear with me) reduce your dependence on oil altogether.
You know, instead of going for the shortest term possible fix, actually try and solve the problem.
Like I said, wacky European idea but have a think about it.
Oh and I'm still laughing about the idea that having President Bush continue to read kids a story when his country was burning around him was an effective calming measure. What was Rudy then, a dangerous overreactor who just got people panicked by doing his job and running the city in full public view? Bush continued to sit there because he didn't have a clue what to do next and there was nobody there to tell him what to do next. So he carried on reading My Pet Goat.
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