Well finally, some good news.

[CBT]

(Washington D.C. : Ucs News) Unconfirmed Sources inside White House and Pentagon are reporting a change in the Presidents policy. The Bush administration is quietly considering a phased troop withdraw. Since 2005 it has been clear the reconstruction effort has been a failure with violence surging and billions stolen or wasted. A memo leaked to UCS News calls for all troops to be out of New Orleans by the Fall of 2008.
Apparently Bush has decided the damage from Hurricane Katrina
can't be repaired and the American people have lost the will to continue operations in Louisiana. This decision has caused President Bush to veto a bill containing additional funds for Katrina relief.

In a speech to the nation this week the President referred to Katrina reconstruction funds as "pork barrel spending by Democrats".

This has to upset the people of New Orleans, Americans citizens are suffering while the war in Iraq is a "national priority" and Katrina reconstruction is now considered "Pork". This has many in New Orleans wishing the city was an oil rich middle eastern state "Not that we want to be muslims, we just want the Presidents attention."

[knine]

Congressman William Jefferson from Lousiana is helping much either. Indited this week for taking bribes and being caught with 90k "cold" cash in his freezer....doh ! Jefferson says it's his cash, he's complettly innocent, yada yada yada..........that's where I keep my cash, in the freezer, better returns than the bank:rolleyes: gotta go, gona go make a cash sufle'

[Breadfan]

What is the advantage of storing cash in the freezer?

[RCSignals]

(Washington D.C. : Ucs News) Unconfirmed Sources inside White House and Pentagon are reporting a change in the Presidents policy. The Bush administration is quietly considering a phased troop withdraw. Since 2005 it has been clear the reconstruction effort has been a failure with violence surging and billions stolen or wasted. A memo leaked to UCS News calls for all troops to be out of New Orleans by the Fall of 2008.
Apparently Bush has decided the damage from Hurricane Katrina
can't be repaired and the American people have lost the will to continue operations in Louisiana. This decision has caused President Bush to veto a bill containing additional funds for Katrina relief.

In a speech to the nation this week the President referred to Katrina reconstruction funds as "pork barrel spending by Democrats".

This has to upset the people of New Orleans, Americans citizens are suffering while the war in Iraq is a "national priority" and Katrina reconstruction is now considered "Pork". This has many in New Orleans wishing the city was an oil rich middle eastern state "Not that we want to be muslims, we just want the Presidents attention."


How long will Katrina be blamed for destruction to a city built below sea level?

[Starman]

What is the advantage of storing cash in the freezer?

You will always have some cold hard cash available!

[Mad1]

What is the advantage of storing cash in the freezer?


It wasn't exactly "stored" in the freezer ... more like concealed inside containers.


The money was divided among various frozen food containers, according to the heavily redacted affidavit.

Most likely, he was trying to keep it from being eaten by rats.:shake:

Besides, have you ever tried sleeping with $90,000 stuffed into the mattress? It isn't easy, I can tell you.

Mad1
Jeremy

[larryo340]

How long will Katrina be blamed for destruction to a city built below sea level?
I hear you, but if I'm not mistaken the worst flooding happen due to failed very old levies ??

But I shouldn't talk, living on Long Island pretty much at sea level or barely above I worry whenever a hurricane :eek: is coming our way.

[SC Cheesehead]

You will always have some cold hard cash available!

Rats, beat me to it!:bigcry:

SCCH

[sailsmen]

The storm surge was well above sea level.

The levees built by the Corps failed due to design flaws. I have not been able to get an answer if the storm surge was a CAT5, what Katrina was when she went across the Gulf, or a CAT3, what Katrina was when she made land fall in MS. Congress ordered levees that could with stand a fast 3 after Betsy hit.

Some say the MRGO, built and maintained by the Corps, acted as a fire hose aiming the surge towards the industrial canal, 9th ward. The Corps has agreed to close it.

I saw a clients office built outside the protective levee in the 9th ward. There were several steps to get to the office. I have been in it many a time. They built the slab 1' above the Hurricane Betsy high water mark.

Katrina touched the susp ceiling, a full 9' above Betsy. There were several pieces of heavy equip parked near the levee w/ high water marks that were 1.5' above the top of the levee.


New Orleans is inland. the major part of the problem is the MS River is leveed in acting like a fire hose and destroying the Delta.

The Port is a gateway to the US and 15-18% of the Nations Energy passes thru Port Fouchon.

All the state needs in the way of Federal funding is the same % of oil and gas that the Feds pay to the western states. A bill was passed to increase overtime the % of oil and gas.

As respects crime just let us keep the Louisiana National Guard troops that we need, 1,000 more tham covers it.

The biggest crime problem is an incompetent DA who was a former Fed Prosecuter. after he was elected he fired 40 experienced staff members and replacedm them with lifeguards and day care workers. They sued for racial descrimination and a jury trial awarded them a large judgement. The crime wave tracks histaking office to the day. In 2006 3,000 arrested suspects were released because they had not been chared in 60 days as required by law.

Fortunately the Feds Prosec has been given a huge increase to battle the bad guys, in particular convicted felons with guns.

[Bluerauder]

The levees built by the Corps failed due to design flaws. I have not been able to get an answer if the storm surge was a CAT5, what Katrina was when she went across the Gulf, or a CAT3, what Katrina was when she made land fall in MS. Congress ordered levees that could with stand a fast 3 after Betsy hit.

More misinformation. :rolleyes: Why don't you check here for the facts .....

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ASCE Report Urges An End to Half-Truths About Hurricane Katrina Disaster

In a report issued today by the American Society of Civil Engineers, a panel of experts that has intensively studied the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans is releasing its opinions about what went wrong and why. Its overarching recommendation is for policymakers to stop promulgating misconceptions, half-truths and sound bites and build upon validated scientific findings instead.

"Few people have the time to sort through 7,000 pages of technical data," comments David Daniel, chair of the ASCE¹s Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel. The ERP has spent the past year and a half studying the disaster. Daniel, an engineer, is also president of the University of Texas at Dallas. Now that the nation has invested millions of dollars in research by the world¹s leading engineers and scientists, it is time to draw definitive conclusions about what went wrong and, more importantly, to apply that knowledge to make us safer, the report says.

"It's so easy to react to armchair theories and colorful sound-bites," says Daniel. "Unfortunately, people sometimes end up making policy based on headlines, not science. In our report, we offer a rational basis from which the nation can move forward."

The full report, The New Orleans Hurricane Protection Systems: What Went Wrong and Why, can be obtained at www.asce.org

For the full story, go to http://www.ENR.com later today.

[cyclopsram]

Nature has a way of overcoming all of the endeavors of the animals of the world.. Man being near the top of the intelligence chain does some mighty fine things.. however..when a beaver dam breaks two or three times due to high rainfall or destruction by another means, the beaver abandons the area and goes to a different location to build a home...need to take lessons from the beavers....

[Richy04]

need to take lessons from the beavers....



11088

[CBT]

need to take lessons from the beavers....



11088

"Ward, the Beav blew up the levees again!"
"I'll have a talk with him, Dear."

[sailsmen]

More misinformation. :rolleyes: Why don't you check here for the facts .....

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Head of Levee protection for the Corps in our area pre Katrina told me the levees were built to withstand a fast moving CAT 3, ala Betsy. His statement has been repeated by numerous other corps and non-corps reps.

Bob Bee in the following article is on the panel of scientest that was formed to determine the cause of failure.

IMHO the levee walls failed because sheet pile was driven into the levee capped by a concrete extension. The surge eroded away the levee, normally the levee would have give and water would pass thru the levee relieving pressure, and the concrete capped sheet pile collapsed under it's own weight.

KEVIN WAGNER: This is my house in the background right here, 3301 Charles Court.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Like thousands of people from St. Bernard Parish, Kevin Wagner lost his home to Katrina. His brother lost this house nearby, and a neighbor's family lost something irreplaceable.

KEVIN WAGNER: The father and the son survived. They went from rooftop to rooftop to get to this two-story house here, but she didn't make it. She drowned.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: So when Wagner puts on his hard hat and goes to work for the Army Corps of Engineers, he is a determined man. The third-generation St. Bernard Parish native is in charge of rebuilding the same levee that was washed away by Katrina and destroyed his home.

KEVIN WAGNER: My family was affected by the storm, so this is very personal, and I've got very many friends, family and neighbors that all want to come back to this area, and they are waiting for us to see what happens with this levee construction.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: He and his crew are working hard to fix the 76-mile-long levee adjacent to the Mississippi River Gulf outlet, which locals refer to as "Mr. Go." On Aug. 29 last year, MR-GO lived up to its unfortunate nickname. As the storm surge from Katrina came in, MR-GO went. Eleven miles of it were destroyed.

Rebuilding MR-GO is a race against time, because the Army Corps of Engineers has promised that they will rebuild all the damaged levees to pre-Katrina conditions by June 1, the start of hurricane season.

Col. Lewis Setliff heads the New Orleans operation for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Levee specifications
COL. LEWIS SETLIFF III: Phase-one repair that we have engineered here at the 17th Street will withstand a storm surge equivalent to what would be associated with a Category 3 hurricane. I am very confident that we are building these levees to a point where not only will they meet the specifications, but they will be better than they were before.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: As Louisiana State Professor Paul Kemp rides alongside MR-GO, he doesn't see how the work will be done in time. Kemp was one of the first scientists to demonstrate with computer models that water did not overtop the levees, as the corps said early on. His findings showed water actually came through the levees in some places. In other words, at points the levees failed. Now he questions another assertion: That the corps could keep its promise.

PAUL KEMP: My thinking is that it should be crawling with earth-moving equipment and compactors. That would be kind of what we would expect if we were talking about actually getting something serious by June 1.

KEVIN WAGNER: As our colonel says, success is the only option and failure is not, and that's our intent. We will be done by 1 June We're going to have this levee up seventeen and a half feet. That's the original design grade. Actually it will be a little bit higher because we put an additional two and a half feet of material on top to allow for future settlement and subsidence.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Wagner explained the best levees are built of a combination of materials, but the most important one is clay because it doesn't crumble when exposed to strong water forces.

KEVIN WAGNER: This is some good imported clay material that we are actually bringing in from Mississippi. We plan on bringing them on in by barge, as you can see in the background here, and we plan on using it in this area of levee that we're actually standing on.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Wagner is also counting on getting clay from what the engineers call a borrow pit. Using heavy construction equipment, they're literally borrowing material from the washed-away levee and putting it back where MR-GO once was. But experts who've inspected the Army Corps' work question the quality of the soil they say is being used.


The danger of erosion
BOB BEA: In differing locations along the length of the MR-GO levee, we stopped, I got out and collected the soil samples.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Bob Bea is a civil engineer from the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a member of an independent team investigating why the levees failed. Bea recently took three samples of soil from MR-GO and had them tested.

BOB BEA: This material is relatively sandy, comes from probably something that is like a beach that has had clay mixed into it.

Now the concern for such material is underwater erosion like comes from waves that are building up against the levee, we want this material not to be very erosive under water action.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: It falls apart.

BOB BEA: It falls apart.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The same thing happened when two other soil samples were placed under the water.

BOB BEA: Well, we'll mix these three things together, do a fairly good job like a bulldozer would do and then you can watch what the effect is. It will wash away actually easier because of the peat humus and the fine-grained materials that have been incorporated into the sample.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: What do you think of that?

BOB BEA: Well, I think I wouldn't want to build a home behind this levee.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: He says instead the corps should be using Pleistocene clay, which is found in abundance in the New Orleans area.

BOB BEA: Now this material, when you put it under water won't erode. It's extremely resistant to the force of water, so that as waves and surge are building up against this segment of the levee it'll behave essentially as though the water wasn't there. It'll act like a dam.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: A spokesman for the corps said the soil being put into the levee is "exceeding our expectations for shear strength" and that Pleistocene clay is "not necessary" to build a strong and reliable levee.

Bea also maintains the original MR-GO was built inadequately and questions rebuilding something he thinks wasn't done right in the first place.

BOB BEA: It was badly flawed in concept, design, construction, then we followed that into operations and maintenance, and it caught up with us. We've actually met and talked with the engineers that were on the site at the time they built this levee, and at that time they knew they were using dredged spoil from the construction of MR-GO.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Which is below their standards?

BOB BEA: Is below their standards.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: They knowingly built a levee below their own standards in the first place?

BOB BEA: And that's correct.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And now they're building it back to what it was before, and it didn't work?

BOB BEA: And that's correct.

What went wrong
COL. LEWIS SETLIFF III: We have the ability to restore what was here pre-Katrina, and that was a system that's lasted for decades; it's protected this city for decades; and the prudent step is to let's do that, let's get to what level of protection we had before the storm.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And in spite of criticism from both the independent investigative group and from a state forensic team, the corps' official position today is that it still doesn't know what went wrong.

COL. LEWIS SETLIFF III: I think we may find that the design parameters were exceeded in some areas, so there are a lot of factors involved that we need to make sure that we know what happened, and if someone particular or an agency is accountable, and if it was the Corps of Engineers, we'll take responsibility for it.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Members of the investigative team are also critical on another front. They say the corps has tried to block their work.

Two weeks ago the team had to get help from the Louisiana Attorney General's Office to get onto the corps' 17th Street Canal construction site to take soil samples. Meanwhile, just a few yards away, Col. Setliff was denying to us there was any conflict.

COL. LEWIS SETLIFF III: We're not hiding anything. We need people to help us and we will accept any outside -- whether it is a university or other government agencies coming in to help us. But our obligation is to make these repairs. It's very dangerous areas at times, so we have to do that safely; we can't have everybody just showing up at these construction sites.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: So you are not discouraging scientists from doing their work?

[sailsmen]

COL. LEWIS SETLIFF III: Not at all, absolutely not at all.

Local concerns
BETTY ANN BOWSER: With hurricane season just around the corner, local residents are rooting for the corps. St. Bernard Parish native Jeff Pohlmann is back and has his Today's Catch restaurant up and running again making gumbo, etouffee, and po-boys. But he's worried.

JEFF POHLMANN: Three big concerns: Levees, levees, levees. I'm just hoping that they will take these levees to a much higher elevation to guarantee us that we won't relive another Katrina. Everybody I'm talking to is scared to come back for that reason. And I can't blame them, including myself.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Kevin Wagner says he wants to make believers of people like Pohlmann.

KEVIN WAGNER: If we've got to make the contractors go 24-hour operations and bring out whatever lights are necessary to light up the world out here, we'll go ahead and do that.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Should people in St. Bernard Parish sleep easy at night?

KEVIN WAGNER: Well, not until we get the levee finished.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The independent team expects to issue its report on the levee failures in April. Meanwhile, the corps says its own investigation won't be completed until June.






The NewsHour Science Unit is funded by a grant from:


The National Science Foundation.

Reports are produced solely by the NewsHour and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.

[Bluerauder]

To Cut to the Chase as they say, just read the "Executive Summary" pages to get a feel for what happened and why. >>>>>> http://www.asce.org/files/pdf/ERPreport.pdf

Very interesting and enlightening.

[knine]

Besides, have you ever tried sleeping with $90,000 stuffed into the mattress? It isn't easy, I can tell you.



Oh, yes, many times over. I just can't stand it. I can sleep with up to $82,500 but not a dollar more. Damn lumpy mattress.

[sailsmen]

To Cut to the Chase as they say, just read the "Executive Summary" pages to get a feel for what happened and why. >>>>>> http://www.asce.org/files/pdf/ERPreport.pdf

Very interesting and enlightening.

Thanks. I read the article which contains several errors resulting in some incorrect statements. None of which relate to the failure of the levees.

There is nothing in the article that is new to me or that contradicts anything I said above.

A very important point is that it is the Corps of Engineers that is responsible for the design and construction of the levees.

[Bluerauder]

Thanks. I read the article which contains several errors resulting in some incorrect statements. None of which relate to the failure of the levees.

There is nothing in the article that is new to me or that contradicts anything I said above.

A very important point is that it is the Corps of Engineers that is responsible for the design and construction of the levees.
It is apparent that you didn't read the Executive Summary of the ASCE Independent Report. If you did, you would have seen exactly where the levees failed and why. The report pulls no punches and calls out several specifics. Never mind, I tried ........ :rolleyes:

[CBT]

You're both wrong, didn't you hear Louis Farrahkan, leader of the Nation of Islam? It was the KKK and the CIA that blew up the levees! Surely he wouldn't make it up.

[sailsmen]

It is apparent that you didn't read the Executive Summary of the ASCE Independent Report. If you did, you would have seen exactly where the levees failed and why. The report pulls no punches and calls out several specifics. Never mind, I tried ........ :rolleyes:

Communicating over the internet has it's limitations.

I have read the report twice and the executive summary 3 times. I do not see where it contradicts the information I have provided.

Please enlighten me and specifically point out where I have provided "misinformation".

[larryo340]

You're both wrong, didn't you hear Louis Farrahkan, leader of the Nation of Islam? It was the KKK and the CIA that blew up the levees! Surely he wouldn't make it up.
hey, are sure it was not "reverend" Al Sharpton

[CBT]

Nope it was Sweet Lou. I've been to NewOrleans, loved it. But after the hurricane and listening to dumbazzes like Farrakhan and Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin put the blame on everyone else for the aftermath, they can have.

[Mad4Macs]

As respects crime just let us keep the Louisiana National Guard troops that we need, 1,000 more tham covers it.

The biggest crime problem is an incompetent DA who was a former Fed Prosecuter. after he was elected he fired 40 experienced staff members and replacedm them with lifeguards and day care workers. They sued for racial descrimination and a jury trial awarded them a large judgement. The crime wave tracks histaking office to the day. In 2006 3,000 arrested suspects were released because they had not been chared in 60 days as required by law.

Fortunately the Feds Prosec has been given a huge increase to battle the bad guys, in particular convicted felons with guns.

We're happy to help you all out, over here in Houston.
After Katrina, Texas imported thousands of New Orleans criminals, and we've been executing 'em ever since.
:lol: