About those levees

There’s been a lot of Bush-blaming going on in the last week by the usual suspects about the fact that funding for the US Army Corps of Engineers had been decreased by a substantial amount last year in favor of pumping more money into the Iraq war effort. The conclusion drawn from that from that same crowd is that if Bush hadn’t have called for the decrease in funding for the US ACE, the levees that burst earlier this week after Hurricane Katrina’s rampage would have been upgraded quickly so as to avoid the exact scenario that sadly happened in New Orleans on Monday.

Wrong.

This National Geographic piece dispels that misconception (emphasis added):

Until the day before Katrina’s arrival, New Orleans’s 350 miles (560 kilometers) of levees were undergoing a feasibility study to examine the possibility of upgrading them to withstand a Category Four or Five storm. Corps officials say the study, which began in 2000, will take several years to complete.

Upgrading the system would take as long as 20 to 25 years, according to Al Naomi, the Corps’ senior project manager for the New Orleans District.

Hat tip: Bill Hobbs

Keep that info in mind next time someone tells you that the levee breaks were "W’s fault." They never were, and this article cements that assertion.

Related: Jeff Goldstein points out a glaring hypocrisy in the NYTimes position(s) on funding for the ACE. Now isn’t that a shocker?

(Cross-posted at BlogsForBush)

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Technorati Tags: Flood aid, Hurricane Katrina

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