Mere months after the federal levees failed in New Orleans after Katrina, the Corps of Engineers awarded the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) a grant to conduct what was seemed to be a PR show to repair the Corps' damaged reputation. The grant steered money to the ASCE to present powerpoints apparently designed to mislead the American public on what caused the August 2005 flooding. These taxpayer-funded presentations explained how the damage occurred, but neglected to explain who was responsible. (Levees.org discovered the details about the multi million grant in a request under FOIA.)How much more is still out there? Like the truth surrounding the BP Gulf disaster last year, stay tuned, there is more to come.
It's bad enough that the presentations contained lies and spin designed to shift blame for the flooding away from the Corps and onto the people of New Orleans. The American taxpayers also paid for it. The information in this video is not new, but most of the footage is new. Not to be accused of taking anything 'out of context', we have uploaded a 15-minute segment -- the longest that YouTube allows - of the full 80-minute presentation and you can see even more of the travesty for yourself.
And so it goes.
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Always find someone else to blame of your own folds... Why do they need the ACoE who are looking at things with one eye closed, while there are other companies, who are not government related, can do the same job, only better.
ReplyDeleteSomething we've learned over the years. Our experts are still in NoLa to show what ACoE did wrong and get a better levee system.
You know I live on the bottom of a former lake, which was pumped dry in 1627. Next to that we're 4 metres under sealevel, in total there's a wall of water 9 metres/30 foot high that's kept behind dikes and takes care I can live my life. Of course we pay an extra tax to keep dry feet, but companies, not related to the government, do the work and they do a good job.
Heard a recent spot on NPR about the significance of insect (termite?) damage and how that played into the levees failing. I guess they like to eat the composite in between the joists, and have been for decades.
ReplyDelete