Brewing controversy:

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.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: “No one can say they didn’t see it coming. … Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.”

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.

“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.”

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

“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.”

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: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

More than 3,000 — or about 35% — of Louisiana’s National Guard troops are in Iraq right now, too. Forty percent of Mississippi’s are. Gone too are many of the guard’s generators, high-water vehicles, and refuelers.

The federal government has again failed at the one thing it’s actually supposed to do: Protect us from outside threats. Perversely, this failure is the direct result of a fool’s errand carried out in response to the massive failure of four years ago.

Shoring up the levees and water pumps would have cost a mere $250 million, about a day-and-a-half of wartime operations in Iraq. Or just one of those two ostentatious bridges Rep. Don Young just secured federaling funding to build in Alaska (perhaps we can now rename the one slated to be called “Don Young’s Way” something more appropriate, like “The New Orleans Bridge”). If my math is right, it would have cost just .008 percent of the $286 billion highway bill. Given that a Category 4 or higher hurricane hit on New Orleans was identified in 2001 by FEMA as one of the three most likely natural disasters to hit the United States, that doesn’t seem like much to ask, does it?

Now’s not the time to score petty political points. But it’s certainly time to start demanding some accountability.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 31st, 2005 at 11:01 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.