The recent big projects on the levee had nothing to do with flood control

Last week I said to a friend that I bet that the famous funds which had been requested for improvements in the levee system around New Orleans and which were cut by the federal government, and which were said to prove that President Bush was responsible for the disaster, had probably not been directed at disaster prevention at all, but at some other, most likely unnecessary and even frivolous purpose (perhaps, I said jokingly, the enhancement of diversity in the Army Corps of Engineers).

Well, according to the Washington Post:

Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.

Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.

Further, as I’ve discussed previously, the much smaller amount which had been requested by Louisiana’s congressional delegration for shoring up the Lake Ponchartrain levee against flooding, $27.1 million, which Congress had reduced to $5.7 million, would have had no effect in preventing the disaster, since the levee system was only designed to protect New Orleans against a Category 3 storm, and no further work was requested for the parts of the levee system that failed during the hurricane.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 08, 2005 02:30 PM | Send