ACoE Negligence Caused Katrina Flood

It's been called a conspiracy to blame the Corps rather than the storm for the flooding, but after 4 years of painstaking research into Corps documents NOLA residents have been vindicated. This got a lot of air-play today. Rightly so.

From the AP:

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with five residents and one business who argued the Army Corps' shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. He said, however, the corps couldn't be held liable for the flooding of eastern New Orleans, where one of the plaintiffs lived.

Duval awarded the plaintiffs $720,000, or about $170,000 each, but the decision could eventually make the government vulnerable to a much larger payout. The ruling should give more than 100,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.

Joe Bruno, one of the lead plaintiffs lawyer, said the ruling underscored the Army Corps' long history of failure to properly protect the New Orleans region.

"It's high time we look at the way these guys do business and do a full re-evaluation of the way it does business," Bruno said.

I am sure the ACoE (Army Corps of Engineers) will appeal the ruling. They owned up (a little) in a NY Times story two years ago, but wouldn't take full responsibility on their own. The Corps could have done the job right and none of this - especially the flooding - would have happened. People would have homes and communities today.

This could be very expensive for the Feds. Next move is theirs. At least the truth is out now and cannot be buried anymore.

Update: I forgot to post this video from over two years ago detailing what the Corps did and didn't do and how they fudged the facts. Here is Ivor van Heerden, formerly of LSU, yes he was canned, pointing out a few discrepancies. Mind you, this is 2007!

Now, to honour of the city of my birth I am about to indulge in a Sazerac cocktail to celebrate this long-over-due court ruling. Cheers!

And so it goes.
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