Faulty Pumps? Corps of Engineers? AGAIN??

Mar 14, 2007 by

Gee whiz, golly! The Corps installed faulty pumps in New Orleans to make up for their failed levees! Everyone who is surprised please raise your hands…

Yup, thought so.

From Yahoo News via the AP wire:

NEW ORLEANS – The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet

President Bush

‘s promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a storm, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The Churchillian verbiage of the infamous Speech at Jackson Square continues to prove that talk, no matter how lordly, is cheap. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, the US seems to have declared war on the city. Granted we have our own batch of lackwits running the show, but the Federal efforts seem almost deliberately geared towards stamping us out under the guise of assisting us.

We lived here because we were told by the Army Corps of Engineers that it was safe within certain parameters. That was a lie. The Cat 5 part of the storm ht the MS gulf coast and obliterated it. The winds that hit New Orleans were clocked at Cat 2, one level below what the levees were supposed to be rated for. They failed. “Act of God, ” try “Act of Man.”

So our supposed protection, promised before last hurricane season has been provided by these pumps:

The pumps failed less-strenuous testing than the original contract
called for, according to the memo. Originally, each of the 34 pumps was
to be “load tested” — made to pump water — but that requirement for all
the pumps was dropped, the memo said.Of eight pumps that were load tested, one was turned on for a few
minutes and another was run at one-third of operating pressure, the
memo said. Three of the other load-tested pumps “experienced
catastrophic failure,” Garzino wrote.

What is it going to take for pink slips to start being issued? Or even better, we make it law that members of the Corps, politicians, and mebers of the Levee Board have to live in house that back directly up to the levess.

This is not simple dishonesty, these are people’s lives! Something has got to give, we need a serious change in the way these people are paid, contracted, and held accountable for works that directly affect the lives of an entire city.

One of my favorite little details, one I will end on, is about the company that made the pumps (a company that still got 80% of the mony for the job). They have *GASP*connections to the Bush family:

MWI is owned by J. David Eller and his sons. Eller was once a business partner of former Florida Gov.








Jeb Bush
in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps. And Eller has
donated about $128,000 to politicians, the vast majority of it to the
Republican Party, since 1996, according to the Center for Responsive
Politics.

MWI has run into trouble before. The U.S. Justice Department sued
the company in 2002, accusing it of fraudulently helping Nigeria obtain
$74 million in taxpayer-backed loans for overpriced and unnecessary
water-pump equipment. The case has yet to be resolved.

Because of the trouble with the New Orleans pumps, the Corps has
withheld 20 percent of the MWI contract, including an incentive of up
to $4 million that the company could have collected if it delivered the
equipment in time for the 2006 hurricane season.

xposted on HumidCity, DefendNOLA, LJ New Orleans, Powers and Morrison

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