Tag: Hurricane Protection Levee

Are the construction people at the NOLA area US Army Corp of Engineers that incompetent or simply on the take? We have more levee debris complete with dueling excavators.

We’ve periodically updated Matt McBride’s series Debris over at Fix the Pumps and today we note part 9 of his series was posted several months ago when the Corp of Engineers told the West Bank Levee builder Phylway Construction to stop using dirt from the River Birch Borrow Pits in their construction.  I mention this because Paul Rioux updated the continuing story of testing the nearly complete levee and what he reports today for the Times Picayune does not sound very promising as we find out the new levee contains things like water heaters and shopping carts. Now I could be sarcastic and suggest using old landfill material to construct levees to combat rising sea levels caused by global warming may be the wave of the future but I won’t.  I’ve been around construction too long to understand this kind of thing happens a good bit.  The owner of the project has to be vigilant to insure the project is built to their specifications and sometimes that includes busting the contractor’s chops when the specs are not followed. Unfortunately the Corp of Engineers appears to prefer the whitewash and coverup route and the residents over Marrero way are certain to suffer the impacts of that at a point in time in the future, likely after all the current players are long out of the game.

Through my time doing Slabbed I’ve seen the Corp of Engineers excoriated in the local blogosphere over levee issues that Hurricane Katrina laid bare.  There are some folks like Western Carolina Professor Rob Young that have the opinion the CoE was scapegoated and indeed Rob tells me he received death threats after writing such in the Times Picayune.  For my own part the relationship we have with the CoE here on the coast does not include any flood protection because we simply do not fill in marshes and develop them like happens in metro NOLA.  That avoids the issue of depending on levees that inherently will fail over a long enough timeline altogether. That said I also watched the CoE steer post Katrina cleanup/demolition work to politically connected out-of-state contractors after Katrina so I well understand the agency is politicized and that is not a good thing for engineering IMHO.  The fact the Corps of Engineers was caught on video trying to coverup the problems revealed by the levee testing just simply illustrates the problems inside the CoE that has made it fair game for majority of the withering criticism leveled at it since Katrina.

So if the Corps of Engineers in bed with the contractor we better find out a bit more about the contractor, Phylway Construction.  First off they have been in business for a while and are properly licensed. According to their website: Continue reading “Are the construction people at the NOLA area US Army Corp of Engineers that incompetent or simply on the take? We have more levee debris complete with dueling excavators.”

Matt at Fix the Pumps keeps up the debris in the levee drumbeat. Logs being uncovered not to be confused with Shinola….

Late last month Matt at Fix the Pumps filed part 8 of his series Debris which documents logs being used as levee fill that go well beyond the project specifications.  We’ve been steering readers to this series of posts as the dirt appears to be coming from Team River Birch owned pits and it now appears the problems are most manifested by one contractor.  Matt’s latest installment features reporting from Channel 4 as they and the T-P’s Paul Rioux are feeding well at the table of facts Matt has constructed on his blog.  In fact Rioux’s latest installment on this for the Times Picayune is today’s feature story and is also well worth the read.

sop

Editilla on the NOLA Levees and ASCE

A week or so back I noticed Editilla at the Ladder was raising some hell about the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) impeding other levee failure investigations. It is a most worthy topic so I invited him to do a guest post us here on slabbed on the topic. He suggested a confab involving the Ladder and we are happy to oblige.

Before we get to Editilla some background is in order couresty of Sandy Rosenthal at Levees.org and the Times Picayune.

Levees.org, the local nonprofit flood protection watchdog group, blasted on Tuesday the American Society of Civil Engineers for failing to complete an investigation of alleged unethical behavior of its staff during the initial investigation of levee failures in New Orleans.

Levees.org founder Sandy Rosenthal further criticized delays in the completion of a review of ASCE’s peer reviews of natural and man-made disasters, which the industry group commissioned in December after the filing of the ethics complaint. Continue reading “Editilla on the NOLA Levees and ASCE”

Times-Picayune climbs the Ladder with call for transparency

Our friend Editilla at the always informative and definitely entertaining Ladder, has been hotly pursuing the relationship between the the Corps of Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engineers – chiefly because of a proposed ASCE lobbying effort the Editilla sees as a major conflict of interest.

Son of an engineer, Editilla set out to defend the honor of the profession; and, this editorial in Thursday’s Times-Picayune is a tribute to his effort. Take a read and then link to the post at the top of today’s Ladder.

The public needs to know whether the American Society of Civil Engineers undermined independent probes of Hurricane Katrina levee failures, as one researcher has charged, and it’s reassuring that the group will release the findings from its ethics inquiry.

Rich Hovey, chairman of the ASCE’s Committee on Professional Conduct, recently said that wouldn’t happen. In an e-mail to Levees.org founder Sandy Rosenthal, Mr. Hovey said the committee wouldn’t release the results or even say when the probe was complete.

David G. Mongan, the group’s president, subsequently reiterated his commitment to releasing the conduct committee’s findings. “That position has never changed,” he said in a letter to The Times-Picayune.

That’s the right position. Secrecy would ill-serve New Orleanians, whose lives and property depend on the integrity of the levees and those who are investigating their catastrophic failure.

Take a bow Editilla. Great post! I clicked every link.

Around the GO Zone in 60 Seconds: FEMA Blasted, Bennie Nails It, Gene is Pi$$ed, Cash Clogs, Sister Mary, Brother Charlie & DC Politics, Orange Grove Retail Explosion plus New EOCs & Firehouse

I’ve been out lately so I’m trying to catch up.  It took me 50 seconds to write that long title so I better be quick. First is the verbal a$$ whipping laid on FEMA by Rep Barney Frank of Massachusetts with an assist from our own Bennie Thompson as told by the Sun Herald:

At a congressional hearing of two House subcommittees Wednesday, officials from FEMA and HUD failed to satisfy congressional critics about their efforts to find housing for 22,000 Katrina victims still living in trailers nearly three years after the storm.

House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank, D-Mass., who attended the hearing, was incensed HUD and FEMA have not resolved a dispute over funding affordable housing. And House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said lawmakers should tie strings to federal funds to prevent the diversion of housing funds to other uses, such as Mississippi’s decision to spend $600 million in Housing and Urban Development funding on port improvements in Gulfport.

“We should not send money for one purpose and allow federal government officials to allow a local official to change it,” Thompson said. “While I agree that expanding the port will benefit the Gulf’s economy, I have serious doubts as to whether the new port workers are going to have anywhere to live.” Continue reading “Around the GO Zone in 60 Seconds: FEMA Blasted, Bennie Nails It, Gene is Pi$$ed, Cash Clogs, Sister Mary, Brother Charlie & DC Politics, Orange Grove Retail Explosion plus New EOCs & Firehouse”