What was Mr. Bush thinking?

[floydian slip]

Originally Posted by spinner

These cuts went into effect 2 months ago, it has nothing to do with the situation going on in New Orleans right now. Two months is not enough time to see a monster storm coming and re-enforce the levees and improve pumps.

well... maybe 2 years is enough then

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. (Much of the research here is from Nexis, which is why some articles aren't linked.)

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 this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:

[Sinner]

Originally Posted by floydian slip

well... maybe 2 years is enough then

So does this mean the left is done with the grieving mother for political gain?

A quote “We haven't even buried the dead yet, and they're trying to pin the untold lives and livelihoods lost on an opponent for political gain.”

And No two years is not enough, the levees are 15 feet high. The storm surge was about 22 feet high, do the math, are you having me believe that the Bush Administration purposefully underfunded the levees, and that this underfunding directly caused the catastrophe in New Orleans?

Now do some research and you learn New Orleans has spent $450,000,000 on the levees over the last ten years, that leaves at least $250,000,000 in crucial projects which has not been spent. They are spending about $45,000,000 per year, that gives them almost six years worth of crucial projects yet to be done. The money was reduced starting in 2004, so in fact no more than 1.5 years of the remaining six years worth of projects was incomplete due to funding cuts. All the rest wouldn't have been done yet anyway. But somehow, finishing 25% of the crucial projects remaining would have saved the city.


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3332317

Engineers developed several possible scenarios for what might have caused the catastrophic breach in a levee, which is essentially an earthen berm topped by several feet of concrete.

Corps of Engineers officials said their analysis indicated that a limited amount of water washed over the top of the levee in waves, scouring and weakening the foundation on the levee's dry side.

Suhayda said that's possible. But another possibility is that, during the half-day floodwaters built up in Lake Pontchartrain and the canal, water may have percolated through the earthen part of the berm, undermining it.

That effect, combined with the cumulative pressure over time, may have caused a breakthrough.

"There's no question that those kind of conditions might have just reached the limit of what that particular levee could handle," said James "Bob" Bailey, a flood and wind hazard risk expert with ABS consulting in Houston.
It's also possible the levee was older and had degraded as all earthen and concrete structures do, he said.

A final possibility is that an unknown, massive chunk of debris struck the levee at some point during the night, causing a breach.

Today's breach came after New Orleans had, almost miraculously, survived a hurricane many engineers feared would send water gushing over the long, 15-foot levee that protects the city's north shore from Lake Pontchartrain."

In other words, even if the Federal government had sent trillions of dollars, it wouldn't have made a difference. A 15-foot wall doesn't contain a 22-foot surge. Once the water is over the levee in any quantity, it starts scouring the levee from the face of the earth.

Cont later…