WP: Money Flowed to Questionable Projects (in LA)
State Leads in Army Corps Spending, but Millions Had Nothing to Do With Floods
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Those that are asking about why anyone would vote against disaster relief in New Orleans and the area may find some of their answer in this news article from the Washington Post. The details are nice and juicy on just where a pile of money was going before -- certainly not into flood control efforts that might have helped avoid the problems after Katrina.
Enjoy the info. Headline is linked.
Largess in Louisiana
Money Flowed to Questionable Projects
State Leads in Army Corps Spending, but Millions Had Nothing to Do With Floods
By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 8, 2005; Page A01
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.
In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.
Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.
For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations. The Corps also spends tens of millions of dollars a year dredging little-used waterways such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the Atchafalaya River and the Red River -- now known as the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, in honor of the project's congressional godfather -- for barge traffic that is less than forecast.
The Industrial Canal lock is one of the agency's most controversial projects, sued by residents of a New Orleans low-income black neighborhood and cited by an alliance of environmentalists and taxpayer advocates as the fifth-worst current Corps boondoggle. In 1998, the Corps justified its plan to build a new lock -- rather than fix the old lock for a tiny fraction of the cost -- by predicting huge increases in use by barges traveling between the Port of New Orleans and the Mississippi River.
... more at linked article
So, let me ask the stupid question here -- just how much was needed to fix those damned levees in advance? About as much as Mary Landrieu and her friends helped divert elsewhere by tacking it on to other bills??
Not that I'd excuse anyone for not voting for Katrina relief, but if the bill included any of this sort of unnecessary expense, I wouldn't blame someone for standing up and saying HELL NO.
Yup, not fixing the problem in advance was all Bush's fault. And Katrina in general, yup, all his fault. He turned on that gub'ment weather machine, caused a big old nasty Hurr'cane to smack around New Orleans, wreck the levees, and kill hundreds of Black people because he just don't care about Blacks and the poor. (Dontcha just love moronic conspiracy theories?)
Enjoy the info. Headline is linked.
Largess in Louisiana
Money Flowed to Questionable Projects
State Leads in Army Corps Spending, but Millions Had Nothing to Do With Floods
By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 8, 2005; Page A01
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.
In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.
Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.
For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations. The Corps also spends tens of millions of dollars a year dredging little-used waterways such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the Atchafalaya River and the Red River -- now known as the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, in honor of the project's congressional godfather -- for barge traffic that is less than forecast.
The Industrial Canal lock is one of the agency's most controversial projects, sued by residents of a New Orleans low-income black neighborhood and cited by an alliance of environmentalists and taxpayer advocates as the fifth-worst current Corps boondoggle. In 1998, the Corps justified its plan to build a new lock -- rather than fix the old lock for a tiny fraction of the cost -- by predicting huge increases in use by barges traveling between the Port of New Orleans and the Mississippi River.
... more at linked article
So, let me ask the stupid question here -- just how much was needed to fix those damned levees in advance? About as much as Mary Landrieu and her friends helped divert elsewhere by tacking it on to other bills??
Not that I'd excuse anyone for not voting for Katrina relief, but if the bill included any of this sort of unnecessary expense, I wouldn't blame someone for standing up and saying HELL NO.
Yup, not fixing the problem in advance was all Bush's fault. And Katrina in general, yup, all his fault. He turned on that gub'ment weather machine, caused a big old nasty Hurr'cane to smack around New Orleans, wreck the levees, and kill hundreds of Black people because he just don't care about Blacks and the poor. (Dontcha just love moronic conspiracy theories?)
