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The scandal of the levees

Published Sep 10, 2005 12:21 AM

Louisiana authorities are saying that 10,000 people may have died in the state as the result of Hurricane Katrina.

Mounting evidence shows the human tragedy and devastation in New Orleans is a direct result of the U.S. war on Iraq.

The local Times Picayune newspaper warned in nine articles between 2004 and 2005 that millions of hurricane and flood-control dollars had been diverted to the war, saying of looming catastrophe, “It’s a matter of when, not if.”

President George W. Bush, faced with soaring war costs in Iraq in early 2004, recommended slashing the budget for engineering at Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. The breach in the New Orleans levees allowed water from Pontchartrain to flood the city.

In the last decade, the Corps of Engineers has worked to implement the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA), authorized by Congress in 1995.

But when Katrina hit, $250 million worth of projects remained unfinished. One that a contractor was rushing was at the 17th Street Canal, the location of the main breach in the levees. (Editor and Publisher, Aug. 29)

Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said in 2004: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.” (Times Picayune, June 8)

During a 2004 forecast exercise, federal, Louisiana and New Orleans officials saw a fictitious “Hurricane Pam” produce almost every tragedy now occurring.

But officials abandoned plans to prepare for the actual disaster because of budget cuts.

So those familiar with the situation looked on in disbelief when Bush said Sept. 2 on “Good Morning America”: “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.”

Government agencies had been well aware of the potential for failure
and the horrific human cost.

Racism and war on the poor

Brian Wolshon, an engineering professor at Loui siana State U. and consultant for evacuation planning, said at least 100,000 people in New Orleans were iden tified as “low-mobility”—elderly, infirm or impoverished and without cars. In disaster planning sessions “little attention” was given to what would happen to these people in the event of a hurricane or flood. When the question of their needs was raised, he said, “the response was often silence.” (New York Times, Sept. 2)

People of color make up 70 percent of the New Orleans population—and 28 percent live below the poverty line. (Black Com mentator) These were the people abandoned to death and devastation by authorities.

This racism and the criminal disregard of poor people recall the devastating flood of 1927, when levees broke up and down the Mississippi River after a spring of torrential rain. In the segregated South, Black people were “rescued”—and then confined in work camps, forced into work details to repair white owners’ property. Some were shot for refusing to be re-enslaved. (Pete Daniel, “Deep’N As It Come: The 1927 Mississippi River Flood”)

As New Orleans was threatened, local, state and federal authorities agreed the Corps of Engineers should dynamite the levees below the city—where the population was mostly poor and rural. Though promised compensation, very few of the deliberately flooded-out people ever received a cent. (Judd Slivka, “Another Flood that Stunned Amer ica,” U.S. News Online, Sept. 2)

London’s Financial Times reported on this year’s disaster with the headline: “Bush’s Policies Have Crippled Disaster Response.” But these policies, including war on Iraq, are a direct outgrowth of capitalist profit-seeking. Wetlands drained by land-developers and rendered useless as buffers against storm, the growth in global warming and the rise in sea level—all are spin-offs from unchecked, rapacious big business.

With planning and political will, the Gulf Coast lands could have been protect ed. Because of global warming, the Dutch—who are experts in preventing floods—have for some time been investing an additional $10 billion to $25 billion in “sea defense.” They are upgrading all their “dikes, pumping stations and seawalls.” (Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 4, 2001)

But the political will of both the Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. reinforces only a system of capitalist exploitation. A different answer can come from a rising storm against that system—one coming from the people who have lost the most and have the most to gain.