From Scout:
Army Corps of Engineers Report: New Orleans Pumps still have mechanical flaws; also found contract improprieties
OK that banner wasn't really there at the -building trust is top priority- press conference of General Van Antwerp, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But it may as well have been.
Please read this post from Scout Prime at First Draft on the flaws in the new pumps installed to better "protect" New Orleans from flooding. The pumps are defective, and the US Corps of Engineers knew they were defective one year ago and lied about them and did not fix them.
The contract process was "a travesty - perhaps even criminal", and there appears to have been a cover-up.
This story is just not going away, as much as elements of ACE would like it too. It shouldn't. If the pumps fail, New Orleans floods.Yet as with too many NOLA stories it is not being heard.
If you have a blog please consider posting on it.
One final note: Matt at Fix the Pumps has worked tirelessly on tracking what has been happening with the NOLA pumps. He has filed numerous FOIA's to get information which he has posted to his blog along with analysis. It was Matt who provided the ACE memo to the Associated Press which broke the story on the defective pumps.
If my friend Scout, with whom I worked gutting a house in New Orleans, asks me to do a post concerning the safety of my home town, I can't refuse. She lives in Wisconsin, and has been follwing the story of Katrina and the flood at First Draft ever since the disaster. It's the least I can do.
Just a few days ago I was listening to "someone in authority" (who, I neither know nor care, but with a connection to or an interest in FEMA) spouting about "emergency preparedness" on a cable news network. He was assuring America that all will be ready for action when the next Big One strikes.
ReplyDeleteAll one can do in the face of this bone-headedness is stare, open-mouthed, and ask "What about the Last Big One?" You know far better than I what vast damage, homelessness and deprivation remains in the wake of Katrina, but these folks don't give a damn. Sweep the failures under the carpet. Presumably the big relief contract money has been divvied up among the usual suspects and that, so far as these folks are concerned, is that. The government's relief effort is complete and, bar the odd glitch (for the most part involving minorities and "probably their own fault") successful.
Warms your heart, though, to see how well things are going over in Biloxi< doesn't it?
Lapin, yes.
ReplyDeleteAnd anyone who doubts the conclusions of Matt at Fix the Pumps needs look back only so far as the flood after Katrina (two separate disasters, Katrina and the flood) to the levees that failed and remember who designed and built those levees.
The breeches in the levees have been closed with reinforced levee structures, but abutting the repaired portions are the same old levee structures which failed. I have been there; I have seen with my own eyes. One doesn't have to be an engineer to know that something is very wrong about these fixes.
I put the link to this story on my blog. (So I'm preachin' to the choir. But hey, you never know who might show up.)
ReplyDeletePJ, thank you for the link. Who knows? Someone may sneak into your space or mine and be led to think.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mimi, for keeping us posted on these things. Very distressing.
ReplyDeleteMary Clara, yes it is, to say the least.
ReplyDeleteYou should have a blog. You write long and powerful comments that get lost in the ephemera of the internet.