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President Bushs ecological policies, a m ainstream Louisiana media outlet inadvertently disclosed a shocking fact : Environmentalist activists were responsible for spiking a plan that ma y have saved New Orleans. Decades ago, the Green Left pursuing its agend a of valuing wetlands and topographical diversity over human life sued t o prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from building floodgates that woul d have prevented significant flooding that resulted from Hurricane Katri na. In the 1970s, the US Army Corps of Engineers Lake Pontchartrain and Vic inity Hurricane Barrier Project planned to build fortifications at two s trategic locations, which would keep massive storms on the Gulf of Mexic o from causing Lake Pontchartrain to flood the city.
article in t he May 28, 2005, New Orleans Times-Picayune stated, Under the original p lan, floodgate-type structures would have been built at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes to block storm surges from moving from the Gulf int o Lake Pontchartrain.
into La ke Pontchartrain, declared Professor Gregory Stone, the James P Morgan Distinguished Professor and Director of the Coastal Studies Institute of Louisiana State University.
hese floodgates would have alleviated the flooding of Ne w Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina. The New Orleans Army Corps of Engineers and Professor Stone were not the only people cognizant of the consequences that could and did result beca use of the environmental activists. While speaking with Sean Hannity on his radio show on Labor Day, former Louisiana Congressman and Speaker of the House Bob Livingston also referred to environmentalists whose litig ation prevented hurricane prevention projects. In other words, unlike other programs including the ones leftists like Si d Blumenthal excoriated the president for not funding these construction s might have prevented the loss of life experienced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As the Times-Picayune wrote, Those plans we re abandoned after environmental advocates successfully sued to stop the projects as too damaging to the wetlands and the lake's eco-system.
SOWL stated the proposed Rigolets and Chef Menteur floodgates of the Lake Pontchartr ain Hurricane Prevention Project would have a negative effect on the are a surrounding Lake Pontchartrain.
recollection of thi s case demonstrates they considered this move the first step in a perfid ious design to drain Lake Pontchartrain entirely and open the area to dr eaded capitalist investment. On December 30, 1977, US District Judge Charles Schwartz Jr.
an injunction against the US Army Corps of Engineers Lake Pontchartra in hurricane protection project, demanding the engineers draw up a secon d environmental impact statement, three years after the corps submitted the first one.
is necessary to protect the citizens of New Orleans from a hurricane. Despite this, the judge ruled in favor of the environmentalists. Ultimat ely, the project was aborted in favor of building up existing levees. However, the old plan lived on in the minds of those who put human beings first. The Army Corps of Engineers as recently as last year had publicl y discussed resuming the practice. The September-October 2004 edition of Riverside (the magazine of the New Orleans District Army Corps of Engin eers Public Affairs Office) referred to this lawsuit and project. Eric L incolns article titled, Old Plans Revived for Category 5 Hurricane Prote ction, stated: In 1977, plans for hurricane protection structures at the Rigolets and Ch ef Menteur Pass were sunk when environmental groups sued the district. T hey believed that the environmental impact statement did not adequately address several potential problems, including impacts on Lake Pontchartr ains ecosystem and damage to wetlands. Ultimately, an agreement between the parties resulted in a consent decree to forego the structures at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur PassThe new i nitial feasibility study will look at protecting the area between the Pe arl River and Mississippi River from a Category 5 storm.
lternatives that would be studied in the initial fe asibility report are: Construction of floodgate structures, with environ mental modifications, at Rigolets and Chef Pass.
using more environmentally sensitive construc tion than was previously available. This time the Army Corps of Engineer s would modify the original plans because of the environmentalists. Howe ver, the project was already delayed more than two decades because of th e environmentalists lawsuit. If begun immediately it would take another two decades to complete: a 40-year delay caused by the Green Left. Planning for a category five hurricane was, indeed, visionary thinking. F ew people believed such a storm would take place more often than once ev ery few centuries, and no one had the political will to fight for the fu nding such a project would necessitate. However, scientists had long war ned about New Orleans vulnerability to the potential for massive loss of life caused by such things as the environmentalists lawsuit.
Nati onal Geographic article, written after a smaller hurricane last year, ca ptured the sentiments of one such expert: The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before lan dfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours coming from the worst direction, says Joe Suhayda, a retired coas tal engineer at Louisiana State University who has spent 30 years studyi ng the coastI dont think people realize how precarious we are. As it turned out, this is exactly how events played out during the next h urricane, one year later.
USA Today noted, the levees the government had constructed were no match for the vortex of this force of nature. The sp illing water then undermined the walls, and they toppledLake Pontchartra in, a body half the size of Rhode Island, was losing about a foot of wat er every 10 hours into New Orleans. The ever-rising water soon mixed with sewage, creating a toxic liquid mixture that burned the skin on contact. When the flood levels grounded the city buses Mayor Ray Nagin never deployed, it denied thousands of New Orleans poorest and fe eblest an escape. Despite the mayors apparent incompetence, these floodgates environmental activists sued to prevent from being constructed may have kept a flood f rom consuming the city to the extent it did in the first place. The curr ent programs aimed at reinforcing existing levees but would only prove e ffective against a level three hurricane; they were not adequate for a l evel five storm like Katrina. Moreover, they did not fortify the specifi c areas the government sought to protect, to keep Lake Pontchartrain fro m flooding the entire city, which everyone knew posed a danger to a city below sea level. In other words, this plan would have saved thousands o f lives and kept one of the nations greatest cities from lying in ruins for a decade. At a minimum, such a plan would have staved off a significant portion of the disaster thats unfolded before our eyes. Worse yet, the environmentalists ultimate decision to reinforce existing levees may have actually further harmed the Big Easy. There is at least one expert who claims the New Orleans levees made no difference in fact, they contributed to the problem. Deputy Director of the LSU Hurricane C enter and Director of the Center for the Study Public Health Impacts by Hurricanes Ivor van Heerden said, The levees have literally starved our wetlands to death by directing all of that precious silt out into the Gu lf of Mexico. Thirty years after its legal action, Save Our Wetlands boasts, SOWL's le gacy lives on and on within the heart and spirit of every man, woman, ch ild, bird, red fish, speckle trout, croakers, etc. Despite its pious rhetoric, the environmental Lefts true legacy will be o n display in New Orleans for years to come.
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