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Wednesday, Mar 14, 2007
Army Corps of Engineers: Still Fucking Up the Protection of New Orleans
Having a single level of crappy protection between Lake Ponchartrain and the city of New Orleans was an engineering fuck up of monumental proportions. The flood walls on the 17th Street Canal are crap, as Katrina demonstrated. There should have been a gate at the outlet of the canal, where it meets the lake, to provide another level of protection. The Dutch certainly would not have relied on a single level of crappy protection. So why did the Corps? One word comes to mind: incompetence.
Well, we're not out of the woods on that. A gate has been constructed at the outlet. There are pumps at the gate to move water out of the canal and into the lake. (During a rain storm, pumps move water out of New Orleans into the canal.) But the fucking pumps don't work!. What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Excuses include this beauty from Randy Persica (the Corps' resident engineer for New Orleans' three major drainage canals), "You have four months to build something that nobody has ever built before."
Fuck you! Hydraulic engineering is one of the oldest technical disciplines on the fucking planet. Other countries have undertaken massive engineering projects to protect Holland, Venice, London, etc. from disaster. The state of California moves rivers of water from mountains to cities and agricultural areas. You're telling me this little water pumping project of yours is "something that nobody has ever built before"?
Find a supplier who's got a suitable product rather than asking a supplier to invent a whole new pump.
And don't bypass testing. Ever!
As an engineer, I am deeply offended.
Fucking idiots.
And the fact that the supplier in question has close ties to the Bush family is just the icing on the clusterfuck.
P.S. My grandfather was a SeaBee who also thought the Army Corps were a bunch of fucking idiots.