Mardi

Flood project's cost estimate explodes, Louisiana Citizens, American taxpayers ask: WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT???
The proposed 72-mile Morganza-to-the-Gulf levee system that would protect the Houma area could cost between $10.7 billion and $11.2 billion, according to a preliminary estimate prepared for the Army Corps of Engineers by a contractor.
That's at least 12 times the most recent $882 million estimate for the project, and dwarfs even the $1.5 billion estimate that state officials have said they expected from post-Katrina inflation.
The corps' Task Force Hope Director Karen Durham-Aguilera said the six-volume, 2,736-page estimate prepared by Arcadis Corp. and other contractors, labeled as 95 percent complete, was a "working product," and the actual price might be much lower.
The new standards were developed by the corps-sponsored Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, IPET, consisting of more than 150 scientists and engineers from around the world and peer reviewed by several scientific and engineering organizations.
Editilla bites the sound that feeds us~
Oooh so this is why I had the dishonor of finding Corps Public Relations Pukes showing up in this Ladder's comment section to sucker-punch our reader anonymously, as well as on other blogs around the internet, masked as "nameless bloggers" like Tim Ruppert. He was already hard at work for his Punk'Masters at the Corps/ASCE, attempting to pre-spin the blog'o'spheric view of reasoned opposition to their imminent (they swear) IPET STUDY: that bit of White-Wash "Peerless Review" performed "for the Corps of Engineers" by the ASCE (and the Corps of Engineers)--(note the broad'brush mis-description of this as yet thrice delayed "peer review", from Corps' Task Force Hopeless Director Mxrs. Aguilera, who was recently transferred from Oregon district and is Not licensed to practice engineering in the State of Louisiana). But though selling this faux study to the public for over $25 M reeks, this 11 Billion Dollar Ass'Fuck is why they have been delaying the IPET report's release?
Rather than release the study to Real Peer Review, Mxrs. Aguilera releases press statements with no substantiation of what she decrees, for example, about "more than 150 scientists and engineers from around the world and peer reviewed by several scientific and engineering organizations". IPET was done by the ASCE for the USACE--and roundly disputed here.
THAT IS KNOWN AS A SOUND BITE!
Textbook, PT Barnham Circus Coming to Town Carney Sound Bite!
But it is not just that particular butt'wipe "Peer Review" that Nameless Tim was spin'filtrating, and Mxrs. Aguilera attempts to ram down our throats, eh?
10-12 Billion Dollars is a lot of Contracted Project Engineering Work for assholes like Tim Ruppert. Oh yeah. Just as with the grotesquely expensive, neoengineering failure known as: the Iraq War, Mxrs. Aguilera would have us again accept the word of Contractors that they have hired to build and prosecute this tax-payer rape.
This is like playing football with Syphilitic Gorillas.
Hey, Mxrs. Aguilera, what is with the condescension?
"But Durham-Aguilera said there's little chance the corps will change its construction standards in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita."
What?
To whom do you think you Speak?
We already know for whom your bell tolls, but who do you think actually buys your lies these days?
Are you talking down to We the People of Unsubstantiated Rants (WPUR), "unsubstantiated rants, who know nothing of science, who conduct no research and present no facts or evidence to support their propositions" (as Tim Ruppert is so fond of referring to any Corps Opposition)?
Or are you talking down to We The People who have, and continue to suffer from your malfeasant engineering?
Or are you talking down to We The People and our great, great, great grandchildren who will be paying dearly for your engineering product liability into the next century?
Who are you talking down to, Mxrs. Aguilera?
Are you talking down to the citizens of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinoins, Indiana, Ohio, Nevada, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri...the rest of the nation---who are running from YOUR GODDAMNED FAILING LEVEES AND DAMS RIGHT NOW???
Is this unmitigated horse shit you shovel actually an attempt to misdirect the public view from that 800 Pound Gorilla pissing in America's living room?
With friends like you and Nameless Blogger Tim Ruppert, who needs zealot terrorists? I'm shaking already. Indeed I have already stuck my shaking hands up to my elbows in your unsubstantiated "repair job" at the 17th Street Canal Levee.
Where would you have us stick it next?
One of your new 11,000,000,000 dollar dikes?
Who will you be talking down to this coming August after another Cat 2 storm like Katrina misses the city, yet again is erroneously blamed for the needless deaths of 1000s of its citizens and destruction of over 200,000 homes and businesses
--AFTER YOUR LEVEES FAIL...AGAIN?
Tim Ruppert, Mxrs. Aguilera, ASCE, USACE...all of you lying bastards, it is my fervent goal in life to see the very same Rising Tide that washed your deadly detritus into my life, my lovely city, will take you back out to sea to restore our disappearing coastlines and feed our wandering pelicans.

NOAA: New Orleans at risk from Cat. 2 hurricane~Cain Burdeau

Demand the 8/29 Investigation, Senate Bill 2826

The US Flood Epidemic: Nature or failing infrastructure?
~Sandy Rosenthal
~Levees.Org was founded in November of 2005 by Sandy Rosenthal and her son Stanford, while living in Lafayette, Louisiana after evacuating from New Orleans. They returned to the city and grew the organization to over 20,000 members. The non partisan grassroots group's mission is education that metro New Orleans was destroyed not by a natural disaster, but by the worst engineering failure in the world since Chernobyl.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before~Louis Maistros

Clueless Iowan Asks: "Are you watching us, New Orleans?"
~Des Moines Register
Editilla stands in awe and abject embarrassment before my fellow New Orleanians~I suppose this Pitch'Forkin Cork'Suckin Icehole has not been watching the New Orleans News Ladder since June 7th, as we became the "IOWA FLOOD NEWS LADDER"! I apologize, New Orleans, for considering what happens to our sisters and brothers upstream in Iowa vitally important enough to stay awake for days to cover it on this Ladder...to the detriment of other, more important New Orleans news like today's top lead. What the Hell was I thinking in trying to defend these highly tax-payer-subsidized white folks in at least 2 Nola blogs? Jeez Louie. This is obviously a discussion that needs to be had since I have always thought that we are, all of us, Americans in this country, and we, all of us suffered in the Federal Flood of New Orleans--just as we, all of us, have suffered with Iowa through these latest Corps Infrastructure Failures.
You break my heart, Iowa.
Ok, Nolabloggers...Editilla say, SICK'EM!!!
And, Iowa...How's Your House?



A Town That Looked at Leaving the Floodplain but Stayed On
~This is not the first time this tiny city in a valley of rolling hills 70 miles northeast of Des Moines has been mostly under water, as it is now, a soaking casualty of the swollen Iowa River, the Otter Creek and this endlessly wet spring.
“There were comments made at the time, ‘Why would anybody want to live there?’ ” Mayor Roger Ochs said of the last flood. “ ‘Why would anybody stay there?’ Well, this town is safe and quiet. Many had lived in their houses for years. Most people in town preferred to stay where they were.”

Iowa Congressional Leaders Push to Relieve Flood Financial Aid

When the Waters Recede
~Shira bat Sarah

Flood victims,
states downstream worry:
What's in the water?

Levee funding not fast enough to save Iowa neighborhoods, Corps of Engineers begins counterspin "blame game"
Editilla to wit'tas: Congress, Local Governments, Kiwanis Club, Mother Nature, Katrina the Clown, everyone but...WHO DESIGNED AND BUILT THEIR LEVEES?
But hey, Iowa, who ya'gonna believe? Me?
New Orleans? Or your own Lyin'Eyes?
New Orleans IS watching you, Iowa.
Please WAKE UP AMERICA, do not let the Corps of Engineers pit you against us.
We all live on this river.
Please WAKE UP AMERICA, do not allow the Corps/ASCE PR Machine turn this tragic discussion away from real information as to who designed and built your
failing flood control infrastructure.

Flooding Worsens In Iowa, Hot Conditions In South & East

Feds: 26 levees could overflow if sandbags fail

Illinois Levee Compromised At Carthage Lake; President Bush Addresses Those Affected By Midwest Flooding...in a couple of days (yawn)

Quixotic Corps contending with lake levels in Missouri

Missouri River Flooding

Indiana-'Everybody's frustrated'
~U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., told the crowd that FEMA is a different organization post-Katrina, having responded to criticism of its handling of the hurricane that ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005." The FEMA you talked to today is not the FEMA of yesterday," he said. "
I saw no weakness with regards to the response plan." Buyer urged patience.
"The response here, while it may not fit your personal timeline, is moving pretty quick," he said. "I have been impressed with how everyone is moving together and trying to help you." For residents seeking assistance, the frustration mounts.
"Everybody's frustrated," said Kim Gibson, 36, whose house on Court Street in Franklin was swamped with 10 feet of water. "It's nobody not caring," she said, adding she will visit the recovery center to learn more about her options. "It's just not enough people with knowledge."

<-Click to enlarge.
MS River
MO River
above
St. Louis
(lower right)
WAVICS
Wave-Current-Surge
Information System for Coastal Louisiana
Note~ Gentle'rillas can use these interactive sites together to study the flooding in any state: zoom WAVICS sat'view out and "curser" the Map up the Mississippi River to Indiana and Illinois and then zoom'click back down to follow the smaller rivers like the Ohio and the Iowa. This is active data.
I use the USGS maps to get oriented to the states and their flood gauges due to the lack of boundries of the sat'view. I also look up State Maps.

USGS~Flood Stage Levels current 'real-time' guage readings

U.S. Midwest Floods Head to Mississippi River Cities

American Red Cross: Disaster funds are depleted~Related Article


Flood Recovery Likely to Be Slow

Audit faults KBR's prices
~Pentagon report alleges cases of post-hurricane overcharging

Lessons from an angry planet
~Grist

Seattle church builds, donates organ to recovering Bywater congregation

The World That Made New Orleans~Citizen K
Editilla chin'shillas~I posted this dated review of Ned Sublette's book for a couple of reasons: (1)-Ned is turning out to be a formidable piece of badass as I just started reading the book and (2)-this blogger has become a great friend of da'Ladda--and, as Gentle'rillas well know, I listen to those who listen...to New Orleans...and (2.1)-It is a great book review of a great book. Here is a more recent post that I should have snagged the other day: Lost in the Flood. D'OH!

Radio Activists~Gambit