Because there’s just not enough free-floating anxiety around these days…
On Friday, the Times-Picayune ran a truly lousy piece of news:
Levee officials and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are investigating the cause of water seeping up from the ground on the Lakeview side of the 17th Street Canal in New Orleans, where a breach in the floodwall during Hurricane Katrina caused catastrophic flooding in 2005.
The muddy spots that have surfaced on a vacant plot along Bellaire Drive between Spencer Avenue and Stafford Place have alarmed Lakeview residents, including Rob Moore, who says he first noticed the seepage three or four weeks ago. Surveying the muddy spots Tuesday night (March 20), Moore pointed to where water could be seen bubbling up from the ground and running down to a nearby storm drain -- proof, he reasoned, that the wet areas weren't just caused by any past rains.
As this story has some direct bearing on my personal quality of life, I drove out to Lakeview to check out the wall with my own eyes. And the Times-Pic’s photographer’s snap didn’t convey quite how serious this appears to be. This is the new stretch of the levee (where the hole is in the 2005 photo above) yesterday. After a week of no rain:
Uh oh...
This is far from the only problem in the Corps of Engineers’ SELA levee/pump system. The “temporary” (been there for 12 years) pumping stations at the outflow canals are largely out of service as new, non-corroding pumps are installed to replace the near-useless pumps purchased by the Corps from Jeb Bush’s old company post-Katrina.
By McBride’s count, between 2006 and 2017 the corps removed pumps about 50 times from the canals in New Orleans to repair or replace them.
By 2012, he concluded that the corrosion problem was a “fiasco six years in the making,” noting some pumps had been pulled for repairs three times.
. . .
The pumping stations that have guarded the city since 2006, though, were a short-term fix.
Under pressure to get something in place before another hurricane could flood the city, the corps decided to build temporary stations designed to last between five and seven years.
In the meantime, it started work on the permanent stations. The corps announced it expected to finish that work by 2013, but the contract wasn’t even awarded until that year.
The new, permanent pumping stations are scheduled to be operating this year. Past performance does not inspire confidence.
Before the Federal Flood of 2005, residents in the Lakeview neighborhood abutting the 17th Street Canal complained of leaks from the canal exactly where they are occurring today. And before anyone is tempted to go all Condaleeza and declare “no one could have predicted” the failure of the levees, please note that the Corps and FEMA predicted exactly that scenario in the previous year’s “Hurricane Pam” exercise.
This weekend, our fact-challenged president, miffed because Congress wouldn’t give him all the Lego bricks he wanted to build his new toy on the Mexican border, suggested an unconstitutional work-around:
Well, Mr. President, here’s a news flash: the military is not tasked with border security. The Army, however, is solely responsible for construction and maintenance of the SELA flood-protection system. We’re forbidden by law from touching it.
And, two months before the beginning of hurricane season, our old “enemy combatant” is literally “pouring in” to our city.
So quit fantasizing about your Border Boondoggle and get the Corps humping on the job they already have.
Since you don’t seem to hear anything but crowds chanting slogans, here’s one:
FIX THE WALL! FIX THE WALL!