Gentilly Girl- a part of the 99%

September 24, 2007

House Raising Mitigation Grants Coming?

Filed under: Drainage,FEMA,Louisiana,New Orleans,Our House,Rebuilding — Tags: , , , , , — Morwen Madrigal @ 1:41 pm

News from the T-P. It looks as if the Hazard Mitigation Grants will be here later this Fall.
Sounds like good news for folks desiring to raise their homes, but there seems to be a catch:

“Deckert said he applied to the state-run Road Home program for federal aid to rebuild and raise his home in New Orleans’ Lakeview neighborhood. But since the mitigation grant he expected to get got tied up in the squabble between the state and feds, he used his rebuilding money to raise his house. He doesn’t think he should be penalized for trying to get on with his life.

“It’s frustrating,” said Deckert, who lives in a government trailer in front of an unfinished house now raised 9 feet off the ground. “If you took care of it because you couldn’t wait any longer, because you can’t fix your house until the foundation is fixed, you’re screwed.”

It looks like Betts and I are screwed too. We were awarded the $30K grant, but then the squabble between the State and FEMA held off the delivery of the money until the Fall. We couldn’t wait that long to get back into the house… it took 10 months to get the thing raised anyway from the day we made the down payment.

My fucking depression is not getting better over this news.

August 23, 2007

Greg Palast on the Drowning of New Orleans

Once again Palast digs the freakin’ dirt on the assholes who fucked New Orleans when the levees failed under conditions that were way below spec. Read it and weep America… one day soon this kind of dog and pony show may just visit your locale.
Here’s a snippet:

“That leaves the big, big question: WHY? Why on earth would the White House not tell the city to get the remaining folks out of there?

The answer: cost. Political and financial cost. A hurricane is an act of God – but a catastrophic failure of the levees is a act of Bush. That is, under law dating back to 1935, a breech of the federal levee system makes the damage – and the deaths – a federal responsibility. That means, as van Heeden points out, that “these people must be compensated.”

The federal government, by law, must build and maintain the Mississippi levees to withstand known dangers – or pay the price when they fail.”

Link to his article.

Curtsey to Ana Maria for this.

June 20, 2007

Flood Risk Assessment Maps

We finally have the ACOE’s Flood Risk maps!

I’m glad we raised the house to 9+ feet… the map for our neighborhood shows an 8+ flood in a 1 in 500 chance event.

Whew!

June 8, 2007

The ACOE Is Killing Us

Fix the Pumps is today featuring the new internal ACOE report on the “work” the Corps have been doing to get flood protections around the city up to snuff.

Matt entitled his post: “Bombshell”. My only response to this report is “Oh Poop on a stick”.

All of this “repairing” of our mis-designed and improperly built levee systems and the new pumps should be seen as a betrayal to the folks of New Orleans and the American taxpayers. It is CRIMINAL ACT!!!

Reparations for all of New Orleans and our area NOW!!!

May 6, 2007

National Geographic on Levees

Just found this link for a good primer on what we here in SE Louisiana are facing when it comes to erosion and levees.

April 5, 2007

Now It’s Pipe Poop and Rust…

From “Fix the Pumps” comes the newest information on how well the ACOE is looking after the tax dollars they are using toget NOLA’s protections up again since the failure of the Federal levee system.

A snippet:

“What is obvious, but somehow has escaped everyone’s notice until now, is that the pipes are unpainted, and have been since they were installed almost a year ago. Naturally, they’re rusting.”

We need lots of Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs, a bunch of batteries, and rubber bands. We locals could build a better system for drainage and protection compared to the Corps’ juvenile attempts.

April 2, 2007

From Matt at Fix the Pumps: “Oh. My. God.”

Here are two pieces from Fix the Pumps: Here and here.

In the first piece, you will see some pics that I will tell you absolutely should not be happening. The second piece describes the model to be used for calculating the viability of a hydraulic system. In both scenarios we are screwed if this is what the ACoE intends to use for keeping us dry.

March 28, 2007

GAO Looks Into MWI Pump Poop

From WDSU comes this piece by Cain Burdeau-  LINK

May the shit storm begin!

March 26, 2007

Pump Poop III: The Fire

Filed under: Corps of Engineers,Drainage,Levees,MWI,New Orleans,Pumps — Tags: , , , , , — Morwen Madrigal @ 3:29 pm

Matt over at Fix the Pumps has a long piece concerning the failure of a pump test (MWI) that resulted in the test building badly damaged by fire and one worker dying due to his burns.
Matt tells it better than I can…

March 20, 2007

More Pump Poop

Filed under: Corps of Engineers,Drainage,Levees,New Orleans,Pumps — Tags: , , , , — Morwen Madrigal @ 1:06 pm

This is probably what they’ll do next for our pump situation:

Thanks to the Toledo Blade.

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