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Friday, Apr 27, 2007
New Hobby?
The Army Corps of Engineers has a web site dedicated to the Hurricane Protection System in southeast Louisiana. I'll be digging in more to learn about what they are and are not doing. I'm very concerned they are setting the bar too low. Designing for a 100 year event, and compounding that by designing with a very low safety factor leads me to conclude they are designing for failure.
Gosh, if only we could find a few billion in the military budget to do this thing right. Is there any elective military program that we could scale back in order to protect this major American city? Hmmm.
The Corps is Spinning the Pumps
The Army Corps of Engineers has published an article to explain the status of the pumps at the the outlets of the outfall canals.
(The breach of floodwalls on the 17th Street Canal and London Street Canal, "outfall canals", allowed water from Lake Ponchartrain to flood New Orleans. The major suburb of Metairie is also at risk if the west wall of the 17th Street Canal breaches. New Orleans was also flooded by breaches in the Industrial Canal, which is not being fitted with protective gates and associated pumps.)
This is the explanation for why they are publishing their version of the story:
In her memo, Garzino told corps officials that the equipment being installed was defective. She warned that the pumps would break down ``should they be tasked to run, under normal use, as would be required in the event of a hurricane.''
The pumps failed less-strenuous testing than the original contract called for, according to the memo. Originally, each of the 34 pumps was to be ``load tested'' _ made to pump water _ but that requirement for all the pumps was dropped, the memo said.
Of eight pumps that were load tested, one was turned on for a few minutes and another was run at one-third of operating pressure, the memo said. Three of the other load-tested pumps ``experienced catastrophic failure,'' Garzino wrote.
In their article, the Corps doesn't refute the claims in the memo cited by AP, but merely makes excuses for why this was the best they could do under the circumstances. The Corps claims of "Inaccurate and misleading reporting" are arguments that aren't supported anywhere in their story.
The Corps claim of "its continuing effort to remain open and transparent" doesn't hold water either. If they are so open, why are they criticized for "checking their own work" in this Time-Picayune article.
And that, in and of itself, is a big problem, said [Dr. Robert] Bea, a member of the Independent Levee Investigation Team financed by the National Science Foundation to study failures in the region's hurricane protection system.
The corps is reviewing its own work when experts independent of the agency should scrutinize it instead, said Bea, a former chief engineer for Shell Oil in New Orleans who began his career with the corps.
Bea and his colleagues, along with members of the state-fielded Team Louisiana investigators, have said the corps must open itself to true outside collaboration and review -- not just talk about doing so.
"When are these guys going to learn? This is like running into the gang of bullies who beat you up yesterday and having them say, 'Trust us today,' " Bea said. "Nineteen months after Katrina, they're still checking their own work. They should be inviting peer review and welcoming collaboration as a way of showing that they really want to move forward together."
Blame the Victim
Under the Patriot Act, Iraqi victims of kidnappings are sometimes seen as providing "material support" of terrorists, and won't be allowed to immigrate to the U.S.
At issue here is whether the rapist/kidnapper is a member of a U.S. government-documented terrorist group. Even ransom can constitute "material support" of terrorists. But if money is given "under duress" to a group that is not on either of the two State Department lists of foreign terrorist groups, the "material support" restriction can be waived.
Mercury News
Chickenhawk Salad on Wonderbread, with a side of Cheetos
When the troops are withdrawn from Iraq, the wingnuts will blame this fiasco on the people who said it was going to be a fiasco in the first place. And they will blame it on people caught up in George's folly. We've already seen examples of wingnuts blaming the Iraqi people. Here's a wingnut on the Cheetos-stained Vanguard, ready, willing and able to place blame on the troops and their families.
I just heard a leftist who claimed to be the wife of a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq on C-SPAN. I doubt that she was really connected to any service-member...but...
She said, "We're tired."
[Snip]
Our troops are tired of war...it's only natural. Our people are tired of the war as well. But that does not mean we should just lay down and hand murderous islamist thugs a victory.
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