FEMA lacks data on levees ~In a dramatic turnabout, FEMA has acknowledged to U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Springfield, that it does not possess any information as to the worthiness of flood protection levees in the Illinois counties of Madison, St. Clair and Monroe.
Le départ de sirée ~slabbed ~Long time readers of Slabbed know there was no way that we would pass on the story of Desiree Rogers being shown the door by Team Obama yesterday. We were early innovators on Ms Rogers with Nowdy’s post from November 2008 originally titled “Guess our invitation won’t be in the mail” where she profiled Ms Rogers’ ties to Allstate which became fodder for friendly banter on the Yahoo Allstate Finance board, most of it not complimentary toward her.
Coast Guard veteran fights to be famous~The 28-year-old spent seven years in the U.S. Coast Guard. As an aviation electronics technician stationed in Atlantic City, the Galloway Township resident was a member of a search-and-rescue team. One of his most memorable assignments was in August 2005, when he was among the first responders to arrive in New Orleans after the Corps flooded the city.
New fishing program, marina in works~Richard Burgess~ A program to make it easier for fishermen to sell directly to customers is scheduled to launch in May and construction is set to begin later this year on a new marina in an initiative to revitalize the Port of Delcambre. Twin Parish Port Commission President Jeff LeBlanc said an Internet-based service will allow fishermen to communicate directly with consumers, posting notices on a Web site and sending e-mail alerts about when boats are arriving at the docks and what is available for sale — fish, shrimp, crabs, oysters, crawfish.
Bobby Charles' Timeless ~John Wirt~Released Tuesday, three days before Fats Domino’s 82nd birthday, Bobby Charles’ final studio album, Timeless, is dedicated to Domino, the New Orleans singer-pianist who recorded several of Charles’s compositions, including the 1960 hit, “Walking To New Orleans.”
Corps of Engineers budget cuts face opposition in House panel ~WARNING! DIXLAIMER! BAT SIGNAL! ~New Jersey Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, the top Republican on the House Appropriations Water and Energy Subcommittee, said that the American people want Congress to reduce government spending but doubts there's much support for the administration's plan to cut flood protection financing"by 17 percent." ~Editilla Ho'tellas~ The Corps is pathological in its OVER ESTIMATES of Project Costs. We've seen this first-hand in the way they have continuously raised the funding estimates for projects in New Orleans. As such, we are witnessing a bigger game here of Corps Counter PR, to wit: all sides against the middle! This is how the Corps will beat us into accepting their Option 1. Jo-Ellen Darcy, assistant secretary of the corps, said the corps' budget is "frugal," but reflects "practical, effective and sound use of the nation's resources." What? Excuse me? Frugal? Has this woman drunk the Corps Red Castle Cool Aid??? I am ashamed of Jo Ellen Darcy's incredible bourgeois naivete. Oh, and thank you President Obama for coming to New Orleans, only to piss down our leg and tell us it was Katrina --while the whole time you were planning to de-fund our Flood Protection! Mitch Landrieu meets with Obama administration officials ~New Orleans Mayor-elect Mitch Landrieu met Wednesday with key Obama administration officials and Louisiana congressional members, delivering a message that his city still needs federal help for continued hurricane recovery efforts. One critical issue is the decertification of levees, which could make it harder for homeowners and businesses to obtain insurance and would limit development options.
Bodies team up to seek solutions to levee-decertification ~Beth McCormick~The Alexandria City Council on Wednesday introduced an ordinance that allows the city "to share equipment, resources, promote jointly favorable legislation, seek funding" and maintain that funding with the Rapides Parish Police Jury, city of Pineville and other governmental entities related to the levee-decertification issue.
Multiparty Pacts in Northwest Set the Stage For Largest Dam Removal in U.S. History ~Pam Radtke Russell ~The largest dam removal and river restoration project in U.S. history moved a step closer to reality last month as the U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Oregon, California, PacifiCorp and about 40 other groups signed agreements that will set into motion the $200-million removal of four dams on the Klamath River and the $1-billion restoration of the Klamath Basin.
Space Cadet Vitter Reporting for Vision Duty!~Channels Space Barbie advise from his 12 year old daughters! ~When not voting against jobs for Louisianans, Senator David Vitter (R-Pamp) likes to jump down the Rabbit Hole with his twin daughters: "I believe this budget and the visionit represents would end our human space flight program as we know it and would surrender for our lifetime and perhaps forever our world leadership in this area and in so doing would lose all the enormous benefits of the technological advantage that goes with it," said Vitter, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee's Science and Space Subcommittee. "You don't accomplish great things without a clearly defined mission, and this budget has no clearly defined mission," said Vitter, noting thathis own 12-year-old twins, Lise and Airey, would rate the president's space priorities as "so last week." ~In response, NASA Administrator and 4-Real-Time Shuttle Missions Veteran ASTRONAUT, Charles Bolden Jr., said that the Bush administration's plan to return astronauts to the moon might have sounded visionary but had been under-financed to the point of making the objective meaningless. "A vision without resources is a hallucination," Bolden told Vitty."Prior to 2010, we had a hallucinatory budget."
Alexander Launches the Congressional Levee Caucus ~Inside Louisiana News ~U.S. Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-Quitman, today launched the Congressional Levee Caucus as part of his ongoing crusade to bring critical attention to the levee certification issue. ~Editilla Hot Damn Crowtella!~ Now this is what we call a Levees Legislative Liaison! We need all the Congressional help we can get --since no one seems to know what is going on with getting the 8/29 Review of our Failed levees in New Orleans. At least, from Editilla's own very informal yet thorough, yearly Legislative Survey of the Louisiana delegation as well as relevant House/Senate committees in January, I don't "see" the 8/29 Review on any tables, let alone in anyone's drawers. Ahem, of the elected representatives whom I queried, the very few who did know what I was asking about offered this prevailing response along the lines of: "Haven't there already been 2 'Independent' Investigations already?" or "The new 'Levee Inspections Safety Program' (instituted this time last year) from the Corps of Engineers covers those bases, is funded and is on the ground now." Sooo, again, why an 8/29 Review?
Water Resources Development Act Requests~Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao submitted the following projects for inclusion in the 2010 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA). If these projects are authorized under WRDA, they would then become eligible for federal support ~Editilla sayz Geaux Joe! And btw, the honorable Joseph Cao was one of the ones who knew of the 8/29 Review, yet had not gotten any details about it from any so called Legislative Liaison. Yet, he still rocks and rolls because Congress actually doesn't sit still. Like all of us he has work to do and so here we have it. Thanks again Mr. Cao and again Geaux Joe!
Uuhhmmm...Rut'Row Astro! ~Lyndon LaRouche issued an urgent call for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (?!?) to work with the Haitian government to help relocate up to a million Haitians, now homeless and living amid the rubble of shattered Port-au-Prince in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed some 300,000 Haitians. ~Editilla Venturellas~ Let me just guess where in the continental US would they might see the most unused open space the closest to Haiti? Hey, I say Bring'em Home to New Orleans!
Big Business to Little Guy in Lower Mid-City: Drop Dead! ~SaveCharityHospital.com ~Yesterday, several big business organizations, some of which stand to make money off of the destruction of Lower Mid-City and the construction of an expensive but still unfunded LSU/VA medical center, called for the withdrawal of a lawsuit filed on behalf of residents fighting to save their homes and community. The website of New Orleans City Business, whose publisher has consistently failed to disclose his own conflict of interest as a board member on the LSU Health Sciences Center Foundation, reported on the big business press release.
Business groups urge Child-Gov. Bobby Jindal, others to fast-track hospital construction ~Bill Barrow~A coalition of 10 business groups from across the New Orleans region came together today to urge Gov. Bobby Jindal to make his appointments to the governing board for a teaching hospital slated for Mid-City and to ask that plaintiffs drop pending lawsuits challenging the state project and adjacent federal hospital plan. Jack Davis, a New Orleans residents named as a plaintiff in the federal suit, added, “If governments wouldn’t break the law, we wouldn’t have to file lawsuits.”
Speaking of climbing Ladders ~VENTURA COUNTY, Calif. - Eight years after about $1 million was spent on a Santa Paula Creek fish ladder for steelhead trout, the federal government is looking to spend $7.5 million in stimulus money to build a new one because the old was deemed useless when the fish most need it. The Exquisite Corps of Engineers is working feverishly to get the new fish ladder approved by various regulatory agencies and out to bid by Sept. 30, or the $7.5 million in funding, which is part of the federal economic stimulus bill, could vanish.
Harnessing that raw energy ~Mountain Xpress~Filmmaker and artist Chris Bower on taking his film to Slamdance, documenting the Mardi Gras Indians and why you've got to have a deep bench.
Deja Vu All Over Again ~In this Aug. 31, 2005 file photo, a man pushes his bicycle through flood waters near the Superdome. ~AP Photo/Eric Gay. ~Editilla Clearabellas~ Who'dat Bell Toll'in? After picking my jaw up off the floor we realized that the man in that picture is Not Us, but then again it was us. But at first, I really thought they had gotten me. I cannot adequately describe the weakness and trembling in my hands right now, even a couple of days after spotting this article and photo on the nets. But I say again, that was not me, yet it was all of us. Aside from an abiding suspicion of the current Corps Engineering for Risk, Editilla finds this worth going through again because (a) we can't help ourselves, and (b) we see a very disturbing new trend developing in media and blogs lately with the Katrina Shorthand Jive. I see people, even evacuated lucky locals, beginning to discount what I saw break down with the people in New Orleans after the levees failed. I shall call this new flood of spin'filtration "Neo'Kat Short Hand Jive!" From Katrina Shorthand has grown Katrina Longhand. And I will not have it. No one may Mythologize the Breakdown. For example, this smart guy: disaster management scholar Joseph Trainor observed that “…people are not victims of disasters, they are survivors…People are adaptive and altruistic, mass rioting and mass looting are just disaster myths for the most part…”) That is a God Damned Lie, not even at the level of a Truism, spoken by an academic elitist ensconced clueless in an Ivory Tower far from the Ground Zero of any real disaster. I will not let that memory die, nor allow anyone to spin it as "just another Disaster Myth." I don't care Who'z Yer'Mominem. Why? Why can I not let this go? Because I know what it means. It means as much now, in our Glory and Victory, as no meaning could apply then, in our most ignoble Agony of Defeat.
I don't think the people in that photo actually knew at that time that the levees had failed. It was a rumor on the ground those first couple of days. Look at the water level and "quality". When I did make my way upstream by Thursday (Sept 1st) the 'water' was viscous at that level on me nearly 4 blocks away from the dome. Still from that distance I could see the people out on the parapet there, having just hours before been released from being Locked up 2 Days in that Thunderdome...over 12,000 of them and only about 100 National Guard troops surrounded by the flood. By Thursday, we were into the actual disaster, the Federal Flood, good and proper. By then the water seemed deep enough around the the Thunderdome for them to jump, as many did. When this photo was taken, the levee failures were still a sort of rumor. You can tell that by the relative clarity of the water. Also, those 12,000+ American Citizens were still imprisoned in the Thunderdome in this photograph --locked in there for 2 freaking days-- conspicuously absent in the frame. That was how I dressed though when venturing out: ball cap, backpack for water, more weapons and "found supplies". Except, by Thursday I would also have had a bicycle chain secured tightly around my right wrist, leather strap wrapped around my left wrist...quite prepared to kill or be killed... ...yet not at all ready to die: Left boot: 8" folded serrated produce knife, Right boot: 8" folded Buck knife, Right Belt: 2, 4" folded Buck knives, Left Belt: 2 foot long antique Navy Sabre, Left wrist: push carpet razor and ice pick, Right wrist: bicycle chain wrapped tight and tied, Right Back pants pocket: Big Maglight, Left back pocket: small Maglight... By Thursday or Friday I had already used the saber twice, one time on a news photographer who had tried to shoot holes in one of my grief-stricken nervous breakdowns, another time here. This shit really happened...but was that really me? I still ask myself that question...still, alone and unquiet.
Many who did not see, feel, hear, smell and taste the fear believe it should be so easy to wrap their head around, as if we could just send in a Mythic Disaster Management Scholar and save a little girl, your mominem's little girl, I saw laying face down in the sunrise over a bloody Holy Cross, dead and alone, floating in the water with her eyes down, during that first week of The Breach. There was no one else around, no parents, no aunts, no saints... ---no neighborhood, no city, no more mominem. Believe me. She was about 4 feet long, with those little hair ribbons and wore a dress with prints of butterflies on it. Butterflies for Goddess' sake. As dozens of military choppers flitted overhead, the scene uncoiled my sense of taste and timing like a patient snake doctor. I watched the reflections dance about the fetid waters which held the body of our lost soul, and realized that as surely as she was gone we would remain and shall see more of The Inferno from the Reaper's Exquisite Corps. I felt to believe in Redemption... --only to grasp Vendetta in my own Resurrection, and my cup filled with the Blood of Noble Truth. Got Myth? Yeah, hangin'low. Buddha nailed it. Pilate nailed it. Dante nailed it. Pain is Real.
Give me a secret, bring me a sign, give me a reason to walk The Line, see another dawn through a daughter's eyes So give me a reason to walk The Line.
This shit really happened. This flood was thicker than water. Yet we cannot as easily wash our hands of it as blood. New Orleans Is a City of Living Metaphor. Get that or die... --and you will lie in the graveyards of fools. Res Ipsa Loquitur! Sooo, if any of you have found a friend in God, please ask them for direction to the places they left those restless souls to drown in their own damn'nation: under rooftops, in their backyards, behind their family sofas, while their Grand Mas banged against the walls abandoned in St. Rita's. Myth My Ass. I don't really care what you think. I heard it all before the Breach. Some may think they "know what it means"... to bet your soul and find your self losing. Give me a reason to Walk The Line. But please don't ask me to go easy on anyone who fails to face down this rape of our nation and those who would Crucify Our Mother of Muses, New Orleans, Sinn Féin Evermore.
New Levee Safety Program begs question of need for 8/29 Review Getting a few words edgewise –cats, claims standards, levees, mitigation, perils, profits, providence, termites, and others that come to mind ~slabbed Mississippi River diversion at Violet questioned by St. Bernard residents~Chris Krikham ~Others questioned whether St. Bernard would really benefit from the project. When the Violet diversion was authorized as part of the Water Resources Development Act in 2007, it was born out of a compromise between Louisiana's delegation and former Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who had been pushing for years for a freshwater diversion into Lake Pontchartrain meant to stimulate oyster production in Mississippi. The diversion at Violet, rather than at the Bonnet Carre Spillway, was a way to stave off an attempt by Lott to hold up other Louisiana coastal restoration projects in the bill. Former Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez said Monday that the plan "smells of Mississippi." Pawlenty to wield veto pen on bonding bill~Don Davis ~ A compromise protecting communities downstream from a proposed Fargo-Moorhead flood diversion project won legislative approval Monday night, but the bill containing the provision is destined for a gubernatorial veto. Originally, state legislators wanted to forbid any state spending on the diversion until the federal government drew up a plan to prevent downstream damage; the new language allows the state to draw up the plan since Minnesota legislators have no control over Congress.
Remap plan targets N.O. blacks ~Marsha Shuler ~A state senator and Louisiana Family Forum Action are promoting a state Senate redistricting plan that would move some political clout out of New Orleans. The proposal would reduce five Orleans majority black districts to two and create three new black districts in south Louisiana: one each in Acadiana, the Bayou-River Region and in the central part of the state.
'Money grab' by FEMA? Lawsuit considered over levees decision~Mike Fitzgerald ~The Southwestern Illinois Flood Prevention District Council, in Collinsville, is considering whether to file a federal lawsuit to force the Federal Emergency Management Agency to disclose the evidence that has led it to declare that local flood protection levees are worthless. And FEMA's failure so far to show its evidence for de-accrediting metro-east flood levees has led some local leaders say that FEMA is trying to replenish coffers drained by enormous insurance claims paid out in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. ~Counties with levees account for only 28 percent of the nation's counties and only 37 percent of the nation's land area. But they contain 55 percent of the nation's population, more than 156 million people, according to a study commissioned by Levees.org. ~Click Map or here to enlarge. Levee crisis spurs historic 3-party talks~Beth McCormick ~A historic tri-government meeting later this week is expected to bring the Rapides Parish Police Jury, the Alexandria City Council and the Pineville City Council under one roof to discuss funding a solution for the decertification of the levees along the Red River. Help for Louisiana's other storm ~Times-Picayune Editorial ~When most metro New Orleans residents think of their recovery, they think of rebuilding from the destruction caused by levee breaches and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. But for many South Louisianians, including some in our region, that recovery also includes repairing what Hurricanes Gustav and Ike damaged in 2008. ~Editilla Gotta Hand'em~Thank you T-P editorial staff for telling it like it was! Thank you for avoiding Shorthand Jive to describe The Flooding of 8/29/05! Thank you for marking the Difference between Natural Disaster and what devastated our beautiful New Orleans: Man Made Disaster. It Matters.
*Thanks, Harry for settin'dat Po'Yankee straight half way in.
Ivor van Heerden: ‘Speaking truth to power’ ~Houma Today~"His lawsuit sounds like a long shot, but I’m rooting for Ivor van Heerden. Anybody who has followed Louisiana’s efforts to protect itself against hurricanes and restore its eroding coast has, or should have, heard of van Heerden. He started at LSU in 1992 and two years later was appointed assistant secretary of the state Department of Natural Resources, heading Louisiana’s coastal-restoration program. When LSU announced his firing in April, he was deputy director of the university’s Hurricane Center, which he helped found in 2000."
Sen. Mary Landrieu takes heat on climate change Suburbs hedge on support for downtown New Orleans teaching hospital~Bill Barrow ~But it is no secret that the state's proposed business model - which remains under review - calls for a new University Medical Center to attract an increased share of the region's paying patients that did not patronize Charity Hospital when it operated. Some health care observers in the region speculate that if those paying patients do not materialize, the Legislature would have to direct additional state dollars - now distributed among other hospitals and providers - to keep UMC operational.
Tuesday’s Bejeweled Women ~NOLAFemmes ULL reconstructs history ~Marsha Sills~The cliché regarding Rome has proven painfully true for one local construction crew as it set out to recreate history’s iconic structures as part of a series for the Discovery Channel. “We’ve had a week to build Rome and Egypt,” said Chris Carroll, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
~This chart shows the computerized model for the propagation of tsunami waves from the Chile earthquake, color-coded to indicate maximum wave amplitude. ~Update
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