New Flooding in New Orleans

Put this on the air! Please!

Bill , im conserned like you.If a hurricane comes this season even if its cat 1 you might want to leave.Come to lafayette for a few days and we'll show you some cajun hospitality.Even a tropical storm can drop huge amounts of rain.we had a tropical storm in 2002 that dropped10-15 inches of rain between houston and lafayette.

Great POD... I'd love to see more like this from NOLA of where its at today.

Films like this explains why flooding is a civil engineering problem, not a simple Natural Disaster.

This video is very interesting because it illustrates to some extent the incompetence of our government through its many agencies. We need an OUTSIDE investigation. We do not want the Fox guarding the Hen House. We need someone else besides the Corps and their people. I say fly in some engineers from Holland and let them asses the damage to our levees and floodwall infrasructure. Why is the government dragging their feet on this ?

It is also very timely, in that other cities north to St. Louis could perhaps learn a thing or two so they do not have to go through the red tape and down right lies that government bureaucracies take you through. You have to jump through hoops to get anything worthwhile completed. Have we exported all of our Civil Engineers to china as well as our skilled craftsmen jobs ? Thank you Levees.Org for being relentless. If you were not there to stay on top of this story, it would just go away and the Corps of Engineers would be very happy.

I found this film because of e-mail from Levees. org.

Don't be fooled because I'm currently in OK right now. I was born at Touro Infirmary and grew up mostly in the Greater New Orleans area. I still own a house in West Metairie, It did not flood during K, and it has never flooded from the street, so far.

The entire repair area of the 17th St. canal has been leaking since the repairs were made. The leak that MANY people have been talking about for years now is at Bellaire Dr. and Hay Pl. This link is to a Google Map image:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=EN&geocode=&q=Bellaire+Dr.+and+Ha...,-90.120494&sspn=0.00196,0.001813&ie=UTF8&ll=30.018543,-90.120412&spn=0.00049,0.000453&t=h&z=20

That dark area lake-ward of Hay Pl. is wet soil. Virtual Earth shows a bigger leak on both sides of Hay, but Virtual Earth isn't set up to provide a direct link to the image I want to show you. You have to find and zoom in the intersection of Bellaire Dr. and Hay Place yourself on Virtual Earth Live Maps.

MANY areas of GNO flood when rain falls too fast for too long, exceeding the pumping capacity. High ground areas like Uptown and Harahan, Elmwood along S. Clearview and River Ridge flood as well. Check out the article in today's (July 13) about flooding in Elmwood.

Yes, I'm all for an 8/29 investigation. There was a second line of sheet piling 40 to 50 feet west of the east flood-wall of the 17th street canal ever since the flood-walls between Veterans' Memorial and the Hammond Highways was constructed in the early 1990's. I knew at the end of 1993 that that second line of sheet piling to the west would create the perfect conditions for geologically fracturing the east flood wall of the 17th st. canal if and whenever the right environmental conditions existed, which is exactly what happened less than 12 years later. I can explain the very simple physics of all of the flooding from the surges, but most people find that extremely boring, so I'll refrain from going into that rant for umpteenth time right now.

Yes, this film should be shown on the NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, and CNN. I ignore Faux cable news entirely since May 18, 2006. Enough said.

Carol, a.k.a. infamously as OKLAtoNOLA## on the nola.com forums.

I've seen the devastation as well as the whitewash the Corps has done. Let's see some serious work to reforest the Cypress Triangle and build credible infrastructure.

All over America there are levees that were built then failed.
They are being re-built by the Army Corps of Engineers who were the origional builders.
The Army Corps of Engineers is also paying for the project which means that they are paying themselves.
This is a job only they are allowed to do. This sounds like a monoply.
Now, post Katrina the information concerning some of their projects are secreative.
Don't we Americans pay for that and shouldn't we know that we are safe through an investigation of outside of the corps of engineers??????????????
Even better, let's hire the Holland engineers to "Fix and Re-build our levee systems!!!!!!!!
I agree with backhandpath
Also don't tree roots grip and help hold down soil to prevent erosion?

Having been flooded twice here in California I believe this is the fault of the Army Corps and their engineers. They have pronounced our levees safe at 200 year levee and we all know that they did not do anything they said they did. They cut corners and wrote it off now we all sit waiting for yet another flood.

I live in No California now - grew up in New Orleans. I know this scene only too well. I've trotted through knee deep water myself many years ago - and it was scarey to me then. It's even more scarey now after Katrina. Let's get the 8/29 investigation going, let's get outsiders involved in making this right, There is no place else like New Orleans in this United States. Just saying "Never again" doesn't make it so. Brad Pitt's got it right - "let's make it right, now."

So...When the levees fail we won't know about it until more get trapped and die. If at first you don't succeed, drown em, drown em again!! Is that the plan??
Since the COE can't be held accountable now, will they still be 'untouchable' when our levees fail again? It's kinda hard to be optimistic. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Louisiana's politics are a hell of a lot more crooked than the river that runs through it!

Not only should all U.S. citizens see this, but the other citizens of this world should see it. It is a well done-if short-film segment.

I was in New Orleans in October, 2005 to help a friend clean up her home after Katrina.

I would like the video to talk more about how much rain fell on that day over what period of time to attain that level of water that caused the flooding in the video?

How wide spread was the flooding and what the city had to say about the flooding and if it has taken any corrective measures prior to hurricane season?

Also, maybe more information to the types of walls and maybe an attempt to interview someone at the Corp of Engineers to why they are not being transparent as they should be?

Thanks

Well done, Bill.

I really appreciate the ongoing efforts to get the Army Corps of Engineers to take responsibility for their costly actions. However, Bill, I grew up in New Orleans. As a child living on Stephen Girard Street, my neigborhood looked exactly like yours, after every hard rain. In fact, I learned the life cycle of a frog, due to those rains. My father, walked the streets for months, requesting neighbors to sign a petition, to motivate the city to fix our streets. One day, while living in New York, my sister called to tell me the city was finally fixing our street. Three years ago, 6 to 7 feet of water destroyed our family home. It is imperative that the American people understand what continues to happpen in New Orleans. If our governent can send millions of taxpayer's dollars to the Middle East, to rebuild THEIR infrastructure, surely some of our money can go to rebuild OURS, and correctly. Perhaps, it will motivate citzens to demand more action from the government. I vote this video be aired on national television.

POLITICS played a huge part in the levee failures.
Billy Nungesser Sr. tried to do the right thing and
this fell on deaf ears. Do the research, its there.
We were warned. Did politics manipulate the corps?
A full 8/29/2005 investigation is needed. Great video

Thank you so very much for this video. Let's please air it nationally. I continue to reside in Texas, for the simple reason that I do not trust the levees any more and there has been no commitment to insure that they will be brought up to the best possible design to protect the people and property. I was born in New Orleans, my parents were born there, heck, even my grandparents and on some sides, much further back, were born in New Orleans. I love New Orleans. I miss New Orleans. My family and I always felt protected by what our government assured us was adequate levee protection....again we find we can't trust...it's a sad day...again.
Lisa W.

Thanks for continuing to expose this problem. It's hard to believe that we continue to debate the "repair" of these man-made drainage canals that allow the lake to penetrate into the city and force all of us (residents, tax payers, et al) to maintain miles of sinking floodwalls forever. It's time to fill in these canals and run pipes to the lake to drain the city, and maintain small levees at the lake instead of the miles of man-made waterways that snake into the neighborhoods. And it's time to demand in no uncertain terms that congress spend the money to get it done properly and quickly.

Thank you for bringing this reality to our nation's awareness. It is not only a disaster for my beloved New Orleans, but for the rest of the country. Our infrastructure is perilous at the hands of the Corps. We need to demand transparency and act accordingly!

To the Army Corps of Engineers:

THERE IS NO SHAME IN SEEKING OUT SOUND AND REASONABLE ADVICE FROM ANYONE OR ANY COUNTRY AND THEN PUT THAT SOUND ADVICE TO WORK.

Lets show the world that New Orleans can be an even better place to live for EVERYONE!

I agree with this video.
I

The Corps has proven over and over again that their levee engineering cannot be trusted. There needs to be an 8-29 investigation. They killed a lot of US Citizens and destroyed a lot of lives and property. Engineering structures are not supposed to fail catastrophically without even seeing their design condition and everyone knows these N.O. outfall canal levees failed without even being overtopped.

This video and others like it need to be aired on national television, repeatedly, until every citizen
in the US in aware of, and on the same page, together, with a clear understanding of what is going on in this country regarding our Infrastructure.

What happened in New Orleans is a wake-up call to
all cities whose water edges are built and secured [?] under the auspices of the US Corps of Engineers.

The Federal Government has delegated full responsibility for the safety and welfare of the people living in those Cities, relative to the security of each
City's water edges, to the US Corps of Engineers.

What happened in New Orleans needs to be a wake-up call to the Federal Government and the US Corps of Engineers that the citizens of the United States will hold them accountable for doing their job. FAILURE SHOULD NOT BE AN OPTION.

But, clearly, the Corp has failed miserably at their job and it's time to head the wake-up call.

Many people, who live in cities bordered by water edges, still live in naive bliss that this cannot happen to them. The US Corps of Engineers is solely responsible for the design criteria, engineering, design, construction, and maintenance of levees. Additionally, a viable levee “system” needs to be in place with effective redundancy.

The devastation that happened in New Orleans is a tragedy that should never be repeated anywhere [New Orleans included] in this country-- That being said, repairs to levees in New Orleans do not include a functioning and effective levee “system”, let alone infrastructure that provides redundancy.

Not only should there be an independent investigation, but the Corps should be mandated by law to make public the design criteria and definition of the scope of the work it proposes to do in order to create an effective levee “system” for New Orleans [and other Cities] as well as what strategy and design it proposes to build, in order to establish redundancy should there be a failure in the levee system.

There should also be an formal independent, outside review of the work proposed by the Corps of Engineers for the levees and levee system as well as a formal acceptance of the design criteria and a selected design solution that demonstrates it can meet all designated design parameters established in the definition of the work to be executed in the proposal, before the work commences.

The Federal Government and the Corps of Engineers has broken the “public trust”. Therefore they have placed themselves in a position for the Public to demand that they submit to formal outside review in order to secure formal approval for work to be done before work commences.

I live in New Orleans, in the "Sliver by the river", an area that DIDN'T flood during Katrina. On the morning that you were filming your street flooding ,mine was flooding also. I am a native of this city, and I came back after the storm because I love my hometown. But the corrupt politicians, the incompetent Army Corps of Idiots, and the lack of caring from a broken government - city to national level - leaves me with little hope. I cry for New Orleans.

Thank you for making this video! Everyday people like you and Sandy are true heroes!

It is very important to keep New Orleans and the surrounding areas affected by faulty levees in the minds of the American public! This is not just a local problem, it is a nationwide problem. Levees funded and "maintained" by the government aren't just here in "Katrina Land", they are all over America...

The American people deserve a fair, outside investigation not funded by the Army Corp Of Engineers!!