No Congressional Funding for Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana Levee

[Louisiana1976]

After a series of loud and passionate meetings, the Army Corps of Engineers is well aware that Plaquemines Parish residents who live south of Oakville on the West Bank want to be protected inside a so-called 100-year levee, the commander of the corps’ New Orleans District said Saturday.


"But we don’t have authorization and funding from Congress to do that," Col. Alvin Lee told hundreds of Plaquemines residents Saturday in the Belle Chasse High School auditorium.


The residents were angry because the corps said Friday it plans to move forward with the Eastern Tie-In Project, which will connect the Hero Canal levee on the West Bank to the Mississippi River levee. As the last piece in a 66-mile chain of levees and floodwalls, the Eastern Tie-In is "absolutely critical," Lee said Friday.


The Eastern Tie-In runs just south of Oakville, with floodgates that would close off Louisiana 23 and a nearby railroad line if a storm threatens.


But it also would wall off the levee-protected northern part of the parish from communities south of Oakville, such as Jesuit Bend, where residents fear that, besides being deprived of federal levee protection, they would be at greater risk of storm-surge flooding because of improvements elsewhere...

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More here:
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2009/09/_after_a_series_of.html

[imdjh]

1. Is that a common complaint about the levee system?

I remember reading decades ago that in essence the real problems started with the first levee and that the levees up and down the Mississippi all have an impact on someplace else in the river system.

We have something similar here with jetties and artificial waterways, each of which traps sand in one place and diverts it from another.

[Louisiana1976]

4. It seems to be....

[tularetom]

2. "The river broke through way down in Plaquemines"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hbtKpnpHig

Marcia Ball singing Randy Newman's 'Louisiana 1927".

Looks like these assholes haven't earned anything about how levees work in 82 years.

I've had personal dealings with the Corps and I can tell you the last thing they'll ever do is listen to the people who actually live in a flood prone area.

[Louisiana1976]

5. Well said!

[Catshrink]

3. I'm sure Bobby Jindal will be pleased at this news

after all, he doesn't want government funding.