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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
Someone (who was in charge of levees, or something -- not like Maureen Dowd) in some article was bitching about budget cuts and how there was not enough money (in I think the Army Corps of Engineers) to do maintenance on the levees last year. I believe $73 million less, or something. I don't remember exactly, and I am not arguing that whatever maintenance was foregone would have averted the disaster, and I'm not arguing that it may have been a decision internal to the Army Corps of Engineers about how to allocate the total pot of money given to them.

A friend just pointed me to this article in the Chicago Tribune:

• Funding cuts led way to lesser levees
  
  By Andrew Martin and and Andrew Zajac
  Washington bureau
  Published August 31, 2005, 10:24 PM CDT
  
  WASHINGTON -- Despite continuous warnings that a catastrophic hurricane could hit New Orleans, the Bush administration and Congress in recent years have repeatedly cut funding for hurricane preparation and flood control.
  
  The cuts have delayed construction of levees around the city and stymied an ambitious project to improve drainage in New Orleans' neighborhoods.
  
  For instance, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers requested $27 million for this fiscal year to pay for hurricane protection projects around Lake Pontchartrain. The Bush administration countered with $3.9 million, and Congress eventually provided $5.7 million, according to figures provided by the office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).
  
  Because of the budget cuts, which were caused in part by the rising costs of the war in Iraq, the corps delayed seven contracts that included enlarging the levees, according to corps documents.
  
  Much of the devastation in New Orleans was caused by breaches in the levees, which sent water from Lake Pontchartrain pouring into the city. Since much of the city is below sea level, the levee walls acted like the walls of a bowl that filled until as much as 80 percent of the city was under water.
  
  Similarly, the Army Corps requested $78 million for this fiscal year for projects that would improve draining and prevent flooding in New Orleans. The Bush administration's budget provided $30 million for the projects, and Congress ultimately approved $36.5 million, according to Landrieu's office.
  
  "I'm not saying it wouldn't still be flooded, but I do feel that if it had been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have," said Michael Parker, a former Republican Mississippi congressman who headed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from October 2001 until March 2002, when he was ousted after publicly criticizing a Bush administration proposal to cut the corps' budget.
  
  A corps plan to shore up the levees began in 1965 and was supposed to be finished in 10 years but remains incomplete. "They've never put enough money in to complete it," Parker said. He complained that the corps' budget has been regularly targeted by the White House because public works projects are perceived as pork and aren't considered "sexy."
  
  "Go talk to the people who are suffering in New Orleans," Parker said. "Ask them, `Do they think it's pork?' "
  
  Joseph Suhayda, an emeritus engineering professor at Louisiana State University who has worked for the Army Corps of Engineers, said the corps simply didn't have enough money to build the levees as high as the designs called for.
  
  "The fact that they weren't that high was a result of lack of funding," he said, noting that part of the levee at the 17th Street Canal--where one of the breaches occurred--was 4 feet lower than the rest. "I think they could have significantly reduced the impact if they had those projects funded. If you need to spend $20 million and you spend $4 or $5 million, something's got to give."
  
  Officials for the Army Corps of Engineers declined to comment on the reasons for the budget cutbacks.
  
  Fred Caver, who retired in June as the corps' deputy director of civil works, said there is always competition for funding and "you're never going to get everything you want."
  
  But he said a reluctance to invest in unglamorous public works projects and especially heavy demands on the budget, from the war in Iraq and entitlement programs, have added to the difficulty in securing funding for corps projects.
  
  Scott Milburn, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, declined to comment about the specific allegations regarding funding for hurricane-related projects in Louisiana. However, he said, "The president signed into law a $100 million increase for the corps for the current fiscal year compared to the previous year's level."
  
  Historically, New Orleans has built bigger and more ambitious levees every time the city floods, Suhayda said.
  
  "They would live with the conditions that they had until there was an event," he said. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 prompted a major upgrade to the levees around New Orleans, he said. The levees were upgraded again to handle a Category 3 storm after Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans in 1965.
  
  In the years since then, local officials have warned that a catastrophic storm was inevitable and sought more funding to improve the area's hurricane preparedness to handle larger storms. In July 2004, for instance, federal, state and local officials staged a simulation in which a "Hurricane Pam" slammed into New Orleans with 120 m.p.h. winds and created havoc that was eerily similar to that of Hurricane Katrina, including widespread building damage and death.
  
  "Since 1995, we've been replaying these scenarios out in various degrees. As we got together to do these, the people in the parishes would say, `Make them as bad as possible so we can get some attention,' " said Suhayda, who participated in the Hurricane Pam exercises.
  
  "Unfortunately, our way for dealing with these disasters is after the fact," he said.

OTOH, a lot of New Orleans residents got those tax cuts in recent years, so maybe it's a wash, no pun intended.