Federal Judge Says Corps of Engineers Liable For Katrina Damage

Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that a federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers — and thus the US government — is liable for a big chunk of the damage caused when hurricane Katrina pushed ashore on August 29, 2005 by failing to stop the natural widening of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet canal (aka Mr. Go) causing it to eventually bump up against the shore of Lake Borgne, on the city's east side. 'It is the court's opinion that the negligence of the corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MR-GO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia, and shortsightedness,' wrote US District Court Judge Stanwood Duval. Judge Duval said he believed it was the failure to shore up the outlet that 'doomed the channel to grow to two to three times its design width' allowing waves on Lake Borgne to enter the Mr. Go and travel into the east side of the city, battering the levees to a degree to which they were not designed. 'One of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the US' was both predictable and preventable, testified veteran Louisiana geologist Sherwood Gagliano, a former Corps consultant."

Comments

The reason the levees failed -- Bush

[doginthewoods]

MRGO is only one reason the city flooded. MRGO should have never been built in the first place. BUT the reason New Orleans failed is because the levees were not maintained. Levees age, they erode, the sink under their own weight. They are made of dirt and are not monoliths. The sad truth is that Bush destroyed New Orleans. In a nutshell, he stole the money slated to fix the levees in three years' budgets, in spite of warnings of the catastrophe if the levees gave way. There was (still is) a program that was created to rebuilds the levees (SELA), and Bush defunded it. Work on the levees slowed or stopped, and the weakened levees broke. FACTS:: February 2001 Bush's first budget proposed more than half a billion dollars worth of cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers for the 2002 fiscal year. Bush proposed half of what his own officials said was necessary for the critical Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project (SELA)--a project started after a 1995 rainstorm flooded 25,000 homes and caused a half billion dollars in damage. Bush did this to offset the tax break he gave to the top 1% of rich Americans. The first major economic initiative pursued by the president was a massive tax cut for the rich, enacted in June of 2001. Bush signed his massive $1.3 trillion income tax cut into law-a tax cut that severely depleted the government of revenues it needed to address critical priorities. February 2002 Bush provided just $5 million for maintaining and upgrading critical hurricane protection levees in New Orleans--one fifth of what government experts and Republican elected officials in Louisiana told the administration was needed. Bush knew SELA needed $80 million to keep working, but the he only proposed providing a quarter of that. February 2004 The SELA project sought $100 million to repair the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain levees, but Bush offered only $16.5 million. The Army Corps of Engineers asked for $27 million to pay for hurricane protection upgrades around Lake Pontchartrain--but the White House cut that to $3.9 million. Gaps in levees around Lake Pontchartrain & the Industrial Canal, which were supposed to be filled by 2004, were not filled because of budget shortfalls. Repair work on the levees, including the ones that failed, was stopped due to lack of funds.

Re:What?

[Hatta]

So you have a city below sea level protected by a barrier which cannot possibly handle an event that you know with certainty will one day happen. Additionally, all those years that passed without it happening were ample opportunity to reinforce the levee and otherwise to prepare for that eventuality. This did not happen

And that's exactly why the Corps of Engineers who was responsible for maintaining those levees is responsible. If the inevitable disaster was so obvious, why weren't they doing anything about it? Most citizens aren't engineers and aren't equipped to second guess the Corps. The blame lies squarely with the professionals who failed to notice, failed to warn, and failed to do anything about the problem.

Re:What?

[osu-neko]

but its not like I make periodic inspections of Mansfield damn or check the undercarriage of the upper deck of the freeway for damage.

If you saw concrete chunks falling off the freeway for years, If you saw news reports for decades saying the freeways were unsafe, If you saw a big sign saying "freeway unsafe - do not use", If you were stopped by a cop on the onramp who told you "if you use this freeway you will die",

you would still use the freeway?

Fucking moron. Willful ignorance like that gets you killed. Lack of responsibility coupled with shitty judges makes everyone pay for the mistakes of the stupid.

And lack of responsibility is exactly what this is all about. Yes, the motorists who die when this freeway collapses under the circumstances you cite are idiots and in some way responsible for their own deaths. However, let's also posit that there's some agency whose responsibility is to make sure the freeway never reaches that state of collapse. When it collapses, are you saying they suddenly are no longer to be held responsible for doing their jobs? The fact that the motorist is an idiot does not magically releave the people who were responsible for preventing the freeway of collapsing from their responsibility when it collapses. Just because you've found one person you can blame does not mean no one else is to blame. Alas, there are too many "fucking morons" in the world who don't understand anything unless its simplified to absurdity, so the idea of anything having multiple causes or multiple responsible parties is unable to be grasped by them. Thus, you see spurious arguments where, because they can reasonably place blame on one party, they illogically thing this is an argument for not blaming someone else. Saying person or agency A is responsible does NOT mean B is not. That's a shoddy bit of pseudo-logic that you need to be a "fucking moron" to buy. Personally, I think it's a good idea for everyone who's responsible to be blamed when they fail in their responsibilities, and the fact that you've found at least one of them does not mean everyone else gets a free pass.

Get this through your head. The Army Corps of Engineers failed in their responsibilities. The fact that other people also failed or were just plain stupid does NOT in ANY WAY justify not holding the ACE responsible for their failures to live up to their responsibilities. You can argue until you're blue in the face that there are other people who also did stupid things, it won't change the fact that the ACE failed to do their job properly, and should be held responsible for their failures.

Re:What?

[AK Marc]

There are other variants, but every case I remember was specifically about people without flood insurance, trying to claim against water damage.

And I think that flood insurance should be required to be provided for free with all homeowners policies. It's mostly subsidized by the feds anyway, and the rules on it are stupid.

Personally, my house has flooded 3 times, and it's illegal for me to get flood insurance because of the rules. Incidentally, it's because the city has a know defective storm drain and refuses to fix it. Of course, they blame the Army Corpse of Engineers. Seeing as how it's a waterway, they need ACE sign-off before they can do anything...