146, the number of levees that the Corpse of Engineers has identified as risks for failure.
This fact is disgusting…
January 29, 2007
November 19, 2006
Comic Relief 2006… WooHoo!!!
Tonight we watched Comic Relief 2006, a benefit for New Orleans. It was wonderful, and the local insights offered through the broadcast were definitely on target. They also pulled in $15M in donations. This is a good thing.
This, combined with the results of the last election, shows that folks do care about America’s Jewel. Americans do care about America, and honeys… we are more American than most. We have the history and the sacrifices for a nation’s growth through the many decades that the U.S. has been around. Culturally, only the Fundies and Disney-types DON’T like New Orleans.
So, give a hand to Comic Relief, HBO, and TBS (not that I watched their broadcast… you can’t say “fuck” on TBS) for their efforts on behalf of the people of New Orleans.
And… it’s time for all of the NOLA Blogosphere to start the poop-storm again about the situation down here along the Coast. It’s time to play the heart-a-chordian again.
September 29, 2006
Fix the Pumps
Matt over at Fix the Pumps has some very interesting news about our pumps, floodgates, etc., and security. Check it out.
August 31, 2006
ACoE Fails Mission To Repair New Orleans’ Pumps
CORPS OF ENGINEERS FAILS MISSION TO REPAIR NEW ORLEANS’ PUMPS
Over $30 million remains unspent
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW ORLEANS, LA, Aug. 30 – Drainage station operators at risk of electrocution during
every rainstorm. Three dozen pumps forced to run with rusty bearings. Power outages cause
pump station shutdowns during rainstorms. Over half of New Orleans’ drainage unreliable.
These are not the headlines of a year ago, but of today. Through the sloth and inattention of the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, much of New Orleans’ drainage system remains seriously
damaged and unrepaired more than one year after Hurricane Katrina struck. Over 50% of the
drainage capacity remains dangerously questionable in the case of a major storm – all because the
Corps has only spent one out of every five dollars of the money given it for repairs.
Come see the extent of the Corps’ inaction in fixing this most vital of public utilities at a
presentation given by local drainage advocate Matt McBride.
WHERE: First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, 5401 S. Claiborne Ave., New Orleans, LA
(at the NW corner of intersection with Jefferson Ave.)
WHEN: Wednesday, September 6, 2006. 11:00 AM
WHY: To keep the public informed.
For further information, contact Matt McBride at mcbrid35@yahoo.com
August 29, 2006
Year One, Post-Deluge…
Okay, I wasn’t going to post today out of respect for our losses along the Coast during the last year since Katrina and the Deluge, but my heart wasn’t comfortable with that. One year after the fuck-job from Nature and Man’s follies, WE ARE STILL NOT OK!
This post is not to lessen my concern and hurt for the rest of the Coast: I lived in Biloxi, Pascagoula and Mobile. The memories are vivid and welcoming. At least those places are being helped by the Feds, and the repair monies are coming in. Their’s was a monumental Natural Disaster.
Not so for SE Louisiana. We have been screwed for many decades by the needs of the U.S. and Her corporations. Our barriers from the damage wreaked by hurricanes was willfully destroyed by monied interests and the ACoE. We were deemed expendable: our lives, our homes, family, Culture…. we didn’t count in their cost analysys of their bottom line. We were to be used for the Industrial North and it’s people.
Northeners can come down, get drunk, fuck their brains out, trash us by throwing up on our streets, “do” a girl over a counter, and then go home to resume a “respectable” existance.(And heat their homes.) We are Amerika’s Tijuana. I know this… heard it for decades, I’ve lived it.
I live everyday, like many other women here, as something to be used. Screw those assholes! I am a Southern woman, and this is my home. Wanna fuck with me? Baby, I’ll cut your freakin’ balls off. Same goes for the energy corporations. Polyticians and users? Satan and I have come to a very special arrangement for all of you.
We are a sovereign nation: we are the Isle d’Orleans. Napoleon may have sold us, and Jefferson accepted said sale, but WE ARE OUR OWN! We, and this upon the word of my Elders, never aquiesed to this crap. My ancestors just kept keeping on. Who gives a shit about money-grubbing and power? We just freakin’ live our lives. That’s New Orleans.
Our lives down here were about living, having our celebrations important to our Culture. We just freakin’ go on with life as a community. Our world is our own: we are the Old World within the New. Can you understand this kind of existance? This is the way it used to be, and shall be.
We here will not accept an usurpbation of our sensibilities and beliefs: we ARE the Creoles and what-not of New Orleans. We stand for what Jefferson preached…. a free people. And the country owes us, owes us big time. We have been screwed big-time for your hubris. (Wait until you get your Winter gas bills.)
This message is to not slight the multitude of efforts amassed by so many to help our needy, but rather an expose upon the power brokers and their eternal hunt for more money. FUCK YOUR SHAREHOLDERS: they took the gamble upon buying stocks, and now it’s time to pay the piper. (Pull the handle on the slot machine asshole, and then look at what shows up… screw you!)
Many people in this country are concerned with us, but there is the 3% that wishes total control, and I shall not allow that to happen. Wanna shoot me assholes? You’d better be good, because I’m better. New Orleans is where I stand. This city and culture is all to me, and you have no way of knowing that which I have set up for Her. St. Joan looks after her daughter.
This is just a statement of fact and a dare: come after me Feds, and be prepared to have the fight of your life. I WILL stand for New Orleans, Black and White, poor and rich… do you have the cujuanies? I have the ovaries to fucking take you on, and I will not lose.
Now you know where I stand. Fuck yourselves and die.
Morwen Madrigal
August 28, 2006
The Night Before the Deluge…
Exactly one year ago Betts and I were getting some much needed sleep after our escape from the path of Katrina. We were ragged… our nerves frayed over what could happen to our city if Katrina didn’t pull a last minute turn as a Cat 5 hurricane. Opal the Siamese was curled up with us as if she sensed something bad coming.
About 3 a.m. I would wake up and head back to the motel’s ‘puter room to monitor things from there whilst Betts watched the broadcast news. I could see a lessening of the storm’s strength and a slight turning to the NorthEast. By 7 a.m. the situation looked good, and elated I returned to the room. We breathed sighs of relief and crawled back into bed to rest up for a return home a day or two later. New Orleans had dodged Katrina’s power.
Around 11 a.m. I awoke from a strange dream. Wandering through the motel I decided to get back online and check things out. There was news of widespread destruction across the area. I kept at it for a while longer, and then started hearing of flooding in various places. It would be a few hours before I learned what was causing the flooding, and when the London Canal’s levees broke, I knew that our home and neighborhood was in trouble, but there was no way to tell just how much trouble was at hand.
That would come on the next day.
August 27, 2006
August 24, 2006
The San Antonio Current Gets It Right.
Jason Berry writing for the San Antonia Current.
Great freakin’ piece!
Drainage Issues
Matt MacBride will host a seminar on our drainage problems tomorrow.
The presentation will be at 12 noon in the Astor Crowne Plaza hotel in the Iberville Room. The hotel is located at the corner of Bourbon St. and Canal St.
I will have mor on the screw-ups called the ACoE in a few days.
August 15, 2006
Terrorists Threaten the Isle d’ Orleans!
In the early morning haze that floats above the Isle’s eastern border, an army of terrorists riding upon the backs of elephants bearing oyster rakes and legislation slime their way to the Pearl River. Their goal: to prevent our area from moving forward on Coastal Restoration until such time that Louisiana relents and starts allowing more river water to come through the Bonnet Carre Spillway into Ponchartrain.
Has Hannibal time-slipped to harm our little corner of steamy Paradise? No, it’s Mississippi’s Bigot Senator, Trent Lott. He insists that the water flow be increased into the lake in the possible chance that this will help revive the oyster farms in the Biloxi Marsh. To prove his point, he has had provisions installed in the latest authorization that will provide monies for the Corps to get to work on Coastal Restoration in SE Louisiana to be placed on hold until Louisiana acquieses and foots part of the cost of this project.
This plan was devised almost three decades ago, but never implemented. Why haven’t we enacted this delusional plan you ask? Scientists and environmentalists have maintained that the project will not provide the desired result, and instead wind up polluting the lake with run-off from the MidWest farms to create Dead Zones there. The area will LOSE healthy water ecosystems.
Science is now saying that the best thing to do for the MS oyster farms is to close MR.GO, thus ending the channel’s allowing of seawater intrusion into the marshes, and in time producing a healthier wetland, INCLUDING the Biloxi Marsh. Lott doesn’t wish to wait for the new solution. (wonder what he stands to gain in all of this. Hmmmm?)
Sorry Senator, the plan you endorse was created during the same period as many of the other water projects around here, and many of them FAILED miserably. What we we need at this point in time are new ways of looking at water projects. Good science, not that crap from the Seventies. The Coastal areas must be rebuilt , not just have new water dumped in. Let’s do this right this time, and the Biloxi Marsh will flourish in time.
It’s that, or we will annihilate your army with our gator cannons.