We spend money upon our priorities.

Think carefully when you vote, and also when you write your Representative in Congress or your Senator.

The consequences of their actions and votes can resonante in ways unanticipated.

Read about decisions past, and think about the ramifications in the future:

Flood-control funds short of requests

By Andrew Martin and Andrew Zajac
Washington Bureau

September 1, 2005

WASHINGTON — Despite continuous warnings that a catastrophic hurricane could hit New Orleans, the Bush administration and Congress in recent years have repeatedly denied full funding for hurricane preparation and flood control.

That has delayed construction of levees around the city and stymied an ambitious project to improve drainage in New Orleans’ neighborhoods.

For instance, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers requested $27 million for this fiscal year to pay for hurricane-protection projects around Lake Pontchartrain. The Bush administration countered with $3.9 million, and Congress eventually provided $5.7 million, according to figures provided by the office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

Because of the shortfalls, which were caused in part by the rising costs of the war in Iraq, the corps delayed seven contracts that included enlarging the levees, according to corps documents.

Much of the devastation in New Orleans was caused by breaches in the levees, which sent water from Lake Pontchartrain pouring into the city. Since much of the city is below sea level, the levee walls acted like the walls of a bowl that filled until as much as 80 percent of the city was under water.

Similarly, the Army Corps requested $78 million for this fiscal year for projects that would improve draining and prevent flooding in New Orleans. The Bush administration’s budget provided $30 million for the projects, and Congress ultimately approved $36.5 million, according to Landrieu’s office.

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t still be flooded, but I do feel that if it had been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have,” said Michael Parker, a former Republican Mississippi congressman who headed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from October 2001 until March 2002, when he was ousted after publicly criticizing a Bush administration proposal to cut the corps’ budget.

Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the corps’ chief of engineers, said late Wednesday that the corps’ requests cited in Landrieu’s figures were the amount that would be needed to finish the work in a given year. But he said the corps, working with the administration, rarely requests the full amount in the budget.

“There are limited resources and there are huge demands on it,” he said. “Very rarely do we fund at full capability.”

Even if the projects had been funded at the highest amounts, Strock said it might not have changed the situation in downtown New Orleans. He said the levee near the 17th Street Canal, where one of the breaches occurred that emptied water into the city, was fully completed.

A corps plan to shore up the levees began in 1965 and was supposed to be finished in 10 years but remains incomplete. “They’ve never put enough money in to complete it,” Parker said. He said the corps’ budget has been regularly targeted by the White House because public works projects are perceived as pork and aren’t considered “sexy.”

“Go talk to the people who are suffering in New Orleans,” Parker said. “Ask them do they think it’s pork.”

Joseph Suhayda, an emeritus engineering professor at Louisiana State University who has worked for the Army Corps of Engineers, said the corps simply didn’t have enough money to build the levees as high as the designs called for.

“The fact that they weren’t that high was a result of lack of funding,” he said, noting that part of the levee at the 17th Street Canal–where one of the breaches occurred–was 4 feet lower than the rest. “I think they could have significantly reduced the impact if they had those projects funded. If you need to spend $20 million and you spend $4 or $5 million, something’s got to give.”

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“Since 1995, we’ve been replaying these scenarios out in various degrees. . . . Unfortunately, our way for dealing with these disasters is after the fact,” Suhayda said.

J. David Rogers, chairman of the geological engineering department at the University of Missouri-Rolla, said politicians have refused to spend money to improve the levees to handle a Category 5 storm because of the low probability of such a storm occurring.

“The politicians were convinced that they had their 100-year event with [Hurricane] Camille,” he said, referring to the Category 5 storm in 1969 that obliterated a large swath of the Gulf Coast. “The fact that we had a big event 20 years ago, or we dodged one last year, doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen tomorrow.”

Priorities.

As with everything, there is not an infinite amount of money or other resources, so we all have to make choices, including our government.

It is the responsibility of each and every one of us to make clear to those who represent us in government what we feel the priorities are. If we do not, it is not the politicians who are to blame when preventable catastrophe occurs, but we ourselves.

Think about it.