Bush's Ignorance
Chris and I have both written over the last few days about the implications of Bush administration policy for Hurricane Katrina. Some of you seemed to think this is politicization. Obviously, I strongly disagree. Even in tough situations -- and we both wrote those pieces before the full extent of the devastation became clear (in some cases, before it really started) -- it's important to speak truth to power. Especially when that power is as ignorant and arrogant as the Bush administration. In fact, it turns out that neither of us went far enough in pointing out the Bush administration's culpability in this disaster.
There's a story making the rounds in the blogosphere about the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. The most comprehensive information comes from Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News.
New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.
Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.
Bunch goes on to cite a number of articles in various publications that lay out a story about project funding that is, in retrospect, horrifying. As of early 2004, the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project was "about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds." The administration's 2005 budget underfunded the project by roughly $16 million. Last summer, with debts mounting on the project, the Army Corps of Engineers requested and received about $2.25 million from a local Louisiana levee agency (which had to be covered by a local property tax hike). This spring, the Bush administration proposed "the steepest reduction in hurricane- and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history." SELA's budget was slashed by over two-thirds. In late September, just after Hurricane Ivan, SELA sought to at least get more money for studies regarding hurricane preparedness. New Orleans' Times-Picayune pointed out the reason that the money was unavailable: "the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."
To be fair, hindsight is 20/20. And stronger levees would have done nothing to prevent the massive destruction in places like Biloxi. But it's now clear that a number of warnings, ignored by the Bush administration, could very well have diminished the massive extent of the disastrous flooding in New Orleans.
Not to be redundant, but the Red Cross is really going to need help with this one.
Click here to donate.
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