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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."
Seriously; this look to government to protect one's self has gone too far.
This is why you need to listen to the guys with hard hats and pocket protectors.
They aren't the only necessary ingredients of a functional society; but engineers(in concert with scientists) are your best hope of pulling nature's teeth before it can bite you in the ass.
Pay no attention to the reports from residents that heard the levies being blown to protect the rich neighborhoods.
I've read in several disparate sources that the Corps repeatedly informed the powers-that-be in Louisiana and New Orleans that the levies were insufficient but were regularly ignored.
Do any of you RTFA? Cheap levees had nothing to do with this portion of the ruling. They didn't maintain a large man-made canal. They let it expand and erode into the existing natural barrier. This applied to the St. Bernard and some lower 9th areas. This had nothing to do with the 17th street or other canals that were topped and then eroded. To the dimwit that said people that live below sea level, FYI the area is not below sea level. It is outside the levee and the MRGO and the corp's failure to maintain it as originally planned is what made this a problem. This would be similar to if a plane crashed into an area that was near a runway and then telling the people that they bear part of the responsibility.
At the beginning of the trial this summer, US District Court Judge Stanwood Duval asked, "You all know what this is about: ... What did the Corps know, when did it know it, and when should it have known?"
He answered in a 158-page ruling late Wednesday.
"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," he wrote.
He awarded 4 people (presumably New Orleans landowners) about $750,000 apiece for a lawsuit that's been going on since 2006. I don't know any more specifics about this case, but that seems like a small price to pay compared to the millions/billions that were spent immediately after the storm.
What I don't understand is why natural disasters should have been mitigated by technology. There are certain areas of the country that are susceptible to certain disasters. They wouldn't blame a construction firm when a tornado rips apart a building in the Midwest. They wouldn't blame the fire department when fires are engulfing a city. Why point extra blame towards the Corps of Engineers when a very powerful storm hits a susceptible city with the full force of its power? I don't buy the argument that we should be expected to spend the money up-front to guard against storms that big.
In my opinion, it wasn't just myopia and shortsightedness, but nearsightedness as well!
When my parents bought a home, the elevation was not on the contract or even sale presentation. You could only see if you were going to search for special map with precise elevation lines. So how many people living there do REALLY realize they live on ground below sea level ? Well *NOW* maybe a lot. but how many did back then ?
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funding for the flood control project essentially dried up
I think that one deserves a rim shot.
But yes, one of the many causes of Hurricane Katrina was short-termism and a "cut government spending" ideology that led to underfunding of essential maintenance of levees, bridges and other not-so-glamorous infrastructure in many parts of the country.
I am officially gone from
who is responsible else how will the lawyers get paid?
So, the Corp is responsible. Big deal. Fix the problem. I do not see how this entitles anyone to sue the government for money. Whats next? Suing the government for permitting tobacco sales? Its not like the government doesn't know they are bad for you.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Fuck the poor, the weak and the helpless!
They've nobody and nothing to blame but themselves!
That's the spirit.
Silly ass-O.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
"While Katarina was ongoing, there were plenty of independent news outlets running video footage of professionals warning what would happen. It made the Bush mantra of "No one could have predicted..." out to be just as much of a joke as the "No one could have predicted..." 9-11 version. (And then the Aug 6th PDB title was released.)"
Exactly, so how a Judge could belatedly blame the Army Corps of Engineers, defies logic. Of course he couldn't every state the real reasons. That the levees failed because of their flimsy construction and funding was denied to pay for Bushs war in Iraq. Not only that Bush was warned in advance about Katrina, but took no action.
"President Bush is expected to shift $1.3 billion away from raising and armoring levees, installing floodgates and building permanent pumping in Southeast Louisiana in order to plug long-anticipated financial shortfalls in other hurricane-protection projects, a move Sen. David Vitter describes as a retreat from the president's commitment to protect the whole New Orleans area"
davecb5620@gmail.com
They are partly correct: This catastrophes in the history was both predictable and preventable. They built a city right next to the ocean, bellow sea level, in a major hurricane zone, on a sinking delta, and in the flood plain of one of the world's largest rivers. It is quite easy to predict that any such city will be flooded, and being a major city it was a major disaster. And it was preventable: they could have built the city somewhere else, and limited the use of the delta area to only stuff that had to be there.
-WolvesOfTheNight
Me? I live 65 metres above sea level and my backyard drops two metres to a drainage ditch. The prospect of flooding does not alarm me. But some of the most agriculturally productive parts of our area (and the Fens, and the Netherlands) are potentially liable to flooding, and in 30 years some of them may be abandoned to the sea. This will result in large economic loss. The decision on when and what to abandon will have to be taken on ruthless economic grounds. The decision in the US seems to have been taken on the grounds that (a) isn't this war expensive? and (b) why are we paying to protect poor people who vote Democrat? People do have a right to expect better of the Governments that they elect and pay taxes to.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The same Army Core of Engineers recommended for years the levies be reinforced. There is no reason to think doing so would not have avoided the flooding problems. The people there failed to make the investment. Its the local government there that is responsible and nobody else.
What we have here is a professional organization said the situation was unsafe and recommended a fix. The customer did not elect to implement the fix. Then when things went wrong the customer is trying to blame that organization for not having recommended something else.
Its total crap.
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If this was such a major concern for the state of Louisiana......................why didn't they just use state money? This is a classic case of fingerpointing.
It also makes the entire state of Louisiana look stupid for not declaring an emergency (Federal gov't can't send in the national guard without the state's say so) or forcing an evacuation, even though they are the ones who should have best known that anything above a category 3 would put the city underwater.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
funding was denied to pay for Bushs war in Iraq
Ah. So, back in the 1990's, when Clinton was running things, and the design wasn't any better and local engineers were saying the same things, that was different? I see. It's different because of your politics, not because of reality. The levees weren't built to withstand a Katrina. That reality goes back well before Bush. Of course you know that, and you're a troll.
Your heros on the left could have spent money to change the levee construction for years and years before Katrina hit. Why didn't they? Well? Did they somehow know that years later, Bush would come into office with pre-existing, poorly built protections around a city that had spent decades making the problem worse - and they were somehow pre-blaming Bush for later political advantage? Sounds about right.
Also, it's Bush's fault that your coffee wasn't very good this morning, and that the traffic lights in your area aren't synchronized very well.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Now Corps would have a case against the city and the state and let it transfer the liability to the city.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
. . . the day before the Federal Government did. See the second paragraph in this link.
Also, see this link for how they requested federal assistance and how the Feds botched it up.
any town on the MS river, CA for earthquakes, FL for hurricanes, the midwest for drought and tornadoes, the north for snow storms, etc. Are you trying to show how little you know about why New Orleans flooded? It was not Katrina, but the failure of the levees. And they failed because they were not maintained, and the reason they were nto maintianed is becasue Bush stole the money to pay for tax breaks for his rich friends.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
Ya, Cause GWB told the Louisiana government how to spend the federal money sent to them. Oh, and what about Mr. Clinton? Did he stand up for 8 years demanding the NO levees be reinforced to handle a Cat5? It's not the president's responsibility to tell states how to spend money. It's congress critters that do that.
New Orleans is heavily Catholic and God could have steered Katrina away. As God's representative on earth, we should sue Pope Benedict.
Mmm. I think if you check the New Orleans flood map, you'll find that the hardest hit districts were the ones with the lowest social mobility. If you're born there, and can't afford to move anywhere else, then should you be damned for your "decision" to be poor?
Very, very few people in the US are so poor they cannot move elsewhere. Yes it's harder for those without means but it's not remotely impossible. I grew up in a family that was poor as church mice when I was little. We could have moved if we felt the need. Saying you can't move because you are poor is demonstrably untrue most of the time. Nobody promises you it will be easy but it most definitely is possible.
Perhaps the State has no responsibility to act for the benefit of its citizens, but if not, then what is its purpose?
Of course its job it to act for the benefit of the citizens but ONLY for those things the citizens can't do themselves. There is hardly an able bodied or able minded adult person in this country who could not pick up and move to another location within the US if they set their mind to it. They don't need the government's help to do that in most cases.
They probably didn't even know they were below sea level.
I don't buy that bit of excuse making for a second. If they didn't know they damn well should have known. It's not as if it was a secret.
What is your town's elevation? Hell, Cahokia IL is smack in the middle of the midwest and it's only 400 feet above sea level.
About 630ft in my case. If I get flooded animals will be lining up in twos.
And a lot of people, especially the poor, don't have much of a choice where they live.
Only the children and the handicapped. I've been poor myself but even poor people can move in the US. It isn't as easy as for those with means but its entirely possible. Even poor people in the US aren't generally so poor they can't relocate. It might be hard but most definitely have a choice.
But the disaster in N.O. was caused by the Corps of Engineer's incompetence.
Since the Corps of Engineers has had plans for DECADES to fix the problems and was never given the funds to make it happen, exactly how is that the ACoE's fault? Yes they bear some responsibility but the majority of the fault lies with the people who lived there and chose not to take responsibility themselves. If you live near a danger and do not constantly prod your government to mitigate that danger then the fault lies mostly with you. If the government won't fix it then move elsewhere. It's not that complicated.
It's scary; I have friends in the St Louis area. I just saw in the paper yesterday that the levees in Alton, IL are in bad shape. I hope the one in Caholia is good, I have friends there. When the hundred year flood hit in the nineties, the Mississippi was at the top of the levee there.
I lived in St Louis for several years. The people that live in the Mississippi and Missouri flood plain are pretty well aware of the dangers. If you live near a big river like that it is basically impossible to contain the biggest floods. There have been 3 very large floods in the last hundred years in the Saint Louis area and you can be sure that there will be another in the next 50-100 years. I have friends with property right on the Mississippi. They are insured as much as possible and they have evacuation procedures in place for their property. They are as prepared as they can be. Only a moron would assume that fellow citizens should subsidize your risk taking activities.
News at 11.
The Army Corps of Engineers failed in their responsibilities.
Can you get it through your head the Corp of Engineers asked congress for the money but congress refused? It's one thing to blame the military when the military is in control, and it's something else when instead of having the power they have to beg for money.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?