[NetBehaviour] FW: Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues

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Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly 
Raised Federal Spending Issues

By Will Bunch

Published: August 31, 2005 9:00 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA   Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the 
city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans. That's because Lake 
Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main 
levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City 
some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level 
with the massive lake.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a 
direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been 
working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s 
on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive 
rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast 
Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying 
out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping 
stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in 
crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin 
increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to 
subside.

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.

Read more:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313


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