This was worth reading because to me it just reiterates that this was a problem waiting to happen. It kept getting ignored and finally we got stuck
“On Thursday, however, the Bush White House made available top Corps officials to assure reporters that cuts to the agency’s budget did not cause the disaster. Even though the administration has chronically cut back on the Corps of Engineers’ own requests for funding — including two key New Orleans-area projects — White House officials trumpeted the administration’s support for the Corps.
“Flood control has been a priority of this administration from Day One,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
Mike Parker, a former Mississippi congressman who was booted as civilian head of the Corps in 2002 after criticizing the White House budget office, said Hurricane Katrina was so powerful that flooding was inevitable. But it might not have been as bad.
“I’m not saying that this would not have occurred in New Orleans in this situation,” Parker told The Associated Press. “I am saying that there would have been less flooding if all the projects had been funded.”
A senior Corps commander discounted the notion the disaster could have been averted by full funding of projects such as new and beefed up levees to protect against hurricane surges from Lake Pontchartrain and improving pumping and drainage capacity in New Orleans.
“These (projects) were not funded at the full ability of the Corps of Engineers to execute the project,” said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers. “But the important question is, ‘Would that have made a difference?’ And my assessment is, no, it would not.”
But Strock did acknowledge that more funding for the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project would allow the Corps to more quickly pump out the floodwaters inundating New Orleans.
“Had we had the SELA project finished … we could more efficiently move the water out of the system because it’s a big drainage project,” Strock said.”
And the money quotes
“Other presidents also have taken aim at the Corps’ budget. President Carters’ first veto came against a big water projects bill passed by a Democratic-dominated Congress. And President Clinton squeezed the Corps budget as well. Doing so frees money for other White House priorities.”
“Former Louisiana Sen. John Breaux (news, bio, voting record), a Democrat, said it was clear during his time in Congress that flood control projects were shortchanged.
“Those levees are OK under normal times but once every hundred years, that’s not enough,” he said in an interview. “We’ve all said for years that a category 4 or 5 hurricane hit just right on New Orleans, there was nothing there sufficient to prevent New Orleans from being 20 feet under water.”
Of course it was bound to happen. They told the French back in the 1700s that building there was problematic.
How many years did they just push this off and ignore it. The responsibility should be borne by many shoulders.
Yep … the Pres says nobody could have foreseen this, kinda like nobody could have foreseen people using airplanes to fly into buildings. Anybody with half a brain would have been able to foresee this … maybe not today or next week, but at some point, a crisis of this magnitude was bound to happen.