One month later? Pumps problems.

This is the recent word on the faulty pumps.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The faulty drainage pumps that the Army Corps of Engineers installed before last year's hurricane season still have mechanical flaws, according to a Corps report released Friday that also criticized the pump contracts. Sen. Mary Landrieu immediately called for a federal investigation.

Although the pumps have been overhauled, critical deficiencies remain a year later, the report said.

The review by three Corps engineers backed up the findings of a May 2006 memo by a Corps mechanical engineer working on the $32 million project to put 34 pumps at city canals. The memo warned that the pumps were faulty and would not work if needed to remove water during a hurricane.

BUT, just last month, the GAO said they found no improprieties in the contract.

WASHINGTON — The investigative arm of Congress, the General Accountability Office, found no impropriety in the awarding of the contract to install pumps around New Orleans.

The finding was presented to U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu in a private Thursday briefing of a report expected to be released next week.

Though the Louisiana Democrat said she was pleased with the news, she blamed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with misleading New Orleans area residents last summer by telling them pumping capacity was adequate.

This back-and-forth does not inspire confidence.

SLU President forces out nationally recognized wetlands ecologist

Update: The pdf of the Ponchatoula Times article on the demotion of Paul Keddy is at the following link http://www.savefile.com/files/722651
Click on the large orange "Download" button.


This story in today's Morning Advocate seems inexplicable, almost surreal. SLU President Randy Moffett is forcing Professor Paul Keddy, who, according to an SLU press release, only a few days ago received a prestigious national award for his work in wetlands ecology.

Despite national honor, ecologist being reassigned

By MIKE DUNNE
Advocate staff writer
Published: May 13, 2007 - Page: 1b

HAMMOND — Southeastern Louisiana University wetlands ecologist Paul Keddy received one of the top prizes in wetlands sciences this past week, but says he is being forced to leave the university.

Keddy said recently that he lost his endowed professorship as of this September and the university has offered to give him a six-course teaching load for an academic year. But, “they know I can’t handle that,” he said, because of a neurological disability that he had when he was recruited to campus seven years ago.

On Wednesday, Keddy was one of six people recognized with a National Wetlands Awards by the Environmental Law Institute. The institute is joined in making the awards by several federal agencies including the National Marine Fisheries Services, National Forest Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

I have asked contacts in the university community to see if they can dig up more detail. On the face of it, from this article, this seems a spectacularly ill-advised move on SLU's part. Keddy's accomplishments, as described in his vita, are truly impressive and his dismissal will reverberate nationally throughout the academic community to SLU's detriment, and to the detriment of every Louisiana university. Losing his expertise will greatly damage efforts at hurricane protection in Louisiana as well.

Here is another blog post from Professor Zero on the subject.

I have a pdf on the incident from the Ponchatoula Times (local newspaper near SLU), if I can figure out how to post it. It gives more details than the Advocate article. The reporter is clearly astonished at the move by SLU president Randy Moffett.

And take a look at Keddy's campus website for a sense of what he has accomplished.

Catching up.

I've been away from blogging for an eventful few weeks. So I missed several stories -- and I'm going to post them now, simply for the record. Most of these stories are somewhat stale, but they illustrate how the same sorry screwup agencies continue to keep New Orleans from recovery.

First there was the story about the defective pumps -- which were not able to prevent New Orleans from flooding last week. The pumps that W's brother Jeb sold us. It turns out that the specs for the big were taken from the company's catalog. Nice work. That's creative. Just let the company you want to help out write the specs for your bid request.

NEW ORLEANS – The Army Corps of Engineers, criticized for how it handled the bidding for post-Hurricane drainage pumps that proved to be defective, is defending its use of the winning bidder's own language – down to the typos – in laying out the specifications.
. . . . .
Portions of the specifications were taken verbatim from the catalog of MWI, a Deerfield Beach, Fla., company whose top officials have been major contributors to the Republican Party. MWI employed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President Bush's brother, to market its pumps during the 1980s.

The pumps proved to be defective, putting New Orleans at risk of a second flooding after Hurricane Katrina. Last year's mild hurricane season, however, spared the city from having to rely on the pumps.

But there wasn't much outrage about this nationally, since this kind of inside dealing, to-hell-with-people corruption is everyday news with this administration. And if you google "New Orleans pumps" you'll find hardly a peep out of our local congressional delegation about it all. The governor and Mary Landrieu "expressed outrage" that the pumps weren't working, but that's about the size of it. More details about MWI's sorry record is to be found at Politically OUtspoken

Not to be outdone by the Corps in reassuring the public is FEMA which announced an easy plan to get rid of dangerous formaldehyde fumes which build up in the trailers they have supplied:

NEW ORLEANS -- The Federal Emergency Management Agency said the risk from formaldehyde fumes in new government-issued travel trailers, which has cropped up as an issue since Hurricane Katrina, can be reduced by opening vents and windows.

While acknowledging the existence of formaldehyde concentrations in its trailers, FEMA dismissed findings by environmentalists that the trailers pose serious health risks.

Remember when the EPA secretary told New York police and firemen that it was safe to work around Ground Zero after 9/11? Such caring people.

More later.

The Corps is at it again.

The Corps giveth and the Corps takes away.

Some 1,800 feet of concrete-capped floodwall along the west side of the 17th Street Canal is anchored by steel sheet pilings driven into the levee only 4.5 feet below sea level, making them 13 feet shorter than pilings that failed south of Hammond Highway during Hurricane Katrina and contributed to massive flooding in the city.

Just across the canal on the New Orleans side, where the Army Corps of Engineers soon plans to raise and widen the levee in the Veterans Memorial Boulevard area to help better defend against another failure, sheet pilings range from five to 14 feet deep, according to figures provided by the corps.

But corps engineers say the shallow sheeting poses no threat because water in the canal won't be allowed this storm season to rise against the floodwalls as it did with catastrophic results during Katrina, but will instead be restricted to a so-called "safe" elevation, which is tentatively set at six feet.

Yeah, not that the untested and defective pumps are in place, we can scant a bit on the expenses and shortchange N.O. on the sheet pilings.

Yeah, sure. It's not all their fault.

It's just 99% their fault.

A day after Louisiana scientists said decades of mistakes by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers led to the floods that filled New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, the corps said it has found many of the same problems but can't be blamed for everything.

"We have not read the entire 480-page Team Louisiana report," began a news release e-mailed Thursday by the corps. "However, after initial review of media reports and the executive summary, the Corps does not agree with any assertion that USACE is solely responsible for the events of Hurricane Katrina.

Oh, THOSE pumps. . .

This really gives me confidence in the Corpse. I don't know why they didn't just hire Halliburton for the job.. But I guess that Jeb deserves a break too.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet President Bush's promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a storm, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
. . . . . . . . .

MWI is owned by J. David Eller and his sons. Eller was once a business partner of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps. And Eller has donated about $128,000 to politicians, the vast majority of it to the Republican Party, since 1996, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

MWI has run into trouble before. The U.S. Justice Department sued the company in 2002, accusing it of fraudulently helping Nigeria obtain $74 million in taxpayer-backed loans for overpriced and unnecessary water-pump equipment. The case has yet to be resolved.

Because of the trouble with the New Orleans pumps, the Corps has withheld 20 percent of the MWI contract, including an incentive of up to $4 million that the company could have collected if it delivered the equipment in time for the 2006 hurricane season.

UPDATE:
The state panel on Katrina failures has slammed the Corps of Engineers HARD. This is likely to have a big effect on those thousands of lawsuits filed against the Corps last week.

Ivor van Heerden warned about this.

NEW ORLEANS – Three top-ranking Army Corps of Engineers officials who led the agency's reconstruction work after Hurricane Katrina are stepping down, prompting critics to again question whether the Corps is able to protect the city from future disasters.

The latest retirements include two top civilians and the New Orleans district engineer. They come on the heels of the retirement of the agency's chief, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, who said in August he was leaving his post for “family and personal reasons.”


The departing Corps officials dismissed suggestions that they are leaving because of criticism showered on the agency after Katrina. Forensics investigations into what caused flood walls to collapse revealed flawed work in the past largely caused the flooding of the central parts of New Orleans.

They're not leaving because of criticism; it's par for the course for the Corps of Engingeers. The top people never stay long, and the Corps loses expertise and institutional memory. It's part of what's been wrong all along. Somewhere in the archives I have a quote from an article in which Ivor van Heerden predicted this would happen.