Several of the levees that flooded New Orleans may have been built with shoddy materials or by contractors who took shortcuts to save money, an investigator told Congress Wednesday.
About a dozen people, including engineers and contractors, made the allegations of poor workmanship in recent weeks to investigators probing the levee failures, said Raymond Seed, the head of a National Science Foundation team examining the levees.
Seed would not identify the tipsters and he cautioned that the allegations may ultimately have nothing to do with the levee disaster that led to hundreds of deaths. But he said that investigators are taking the tips seriously and intend to turn them over to federal officials.
“What makes us nervous is we’re hearing multiple accounts,” Seed said after testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. The National Science Foundation, which gave Seed a grant to investigate the levees, is an independent federal agency charged with promoting science and the nation’s welfare.
The complaints focus on two canals where levees topped with flood walls were built in stages over the past 15 years. One of the claims is that contractors used steel sheets – which were driven into the levees to prevent water seepage – that were shorter than what was called for in designs. If true, that could have made the levees weak and prone to failure.
Other tipsters complained that inferior materials, such as porous soil, were used to construct the levees.
Robert Bea, another University of California, Berkeley professor working with Seed, said in an interview that he talked on the phone with two women who said they had specific information from their late husbands on construction shortcuts taken on the levees.
Seed said other investigators received similar complaints.
He wants the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversaw design and construction of the levees, to dig up portions of them to make sure they were built properly.
A preliminary report issued Wednesday by Seed’s group and an American Society of Civil Engineers team said key levee failures on the canals near Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans occurred because water oozed beneath the steel sheets and pushed aside the soft delta soil.
The levees were supposed to be able to withstand water heights seen in Hurricane Katrina, which hit Aug. 29. Investigators have not pinpointed whether designs were inadequate or the levees were built improperly.
Well how can this be? I thought it was GWB’s fault!
A preliminary report issued Wednesday by Seed’s group and an American Society of Civil Engineers team said key levee failures on the canals near Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans occurred because water oozed beneath the steel sheets and pushed aside the soft delta soil.
Looks like screwy Louie may have been on to something when he said their was a big hole under one of the breeches, only he had the cause wrong. Look to the MSM to ignore this one cause they can’t pin it on Bush.
The sad thing is the Democrats in DC and Louisana will sabotage this fact finding to be sure the money still goes to Democrat patrons in Louisana. The levees will still be inadequate, but the Dems, led by the Landrieu family, will be marching in with their right palms turned skyward looking to be filled with taxpayer dollars.
Hey peejz, what happened?
The site’s different, and it loads up funny. I’m not trying to be a smart-ass, but it seems like there’s a lot of empty space. I got a Mac, so maybe that’s the problem.
Where did everybody go? I hope I didn’t poision your site.
OMG,, before I leave, I just gotta say high to dg… mabe when I come back I can tell you about my wonderful “interview skills”
It’s Bushs fault anyway, regardless. The Democrites are so disconnected from reality that they would be trumpeting this if they thought it might be politically useful.
That’s it?
Look people this is a insane story!
no shortcuts on any levees the fact is the black\Hispanic city and state government got the money and had a party with little white girls!:wink:
people remember buy guns you will need many in the coming hell that will become this non nation. this story and many others do point out the hate that is inside this once great nation of laws and right and wrong, think Guns, think life.
Does any of this surprise anyone?The contruction engineers who oversaw the building of the levees said it would fail unless they dug down to bed rock because the base was too soft and that they would need an additional $800,000 to construct it properly. The request was denied by the Clinton Corps of Engineer as unnecessary. They rolled the dice and lost. Of course, the MSM isn’t reporting that are they? If you aren’t willing to pay to correct a hidden problem when it become obvious, how can you expect it to not get worse. If you need a root canal, just putting a filling in the tooth isn’t going to solve the problem.
Oh, so now it’s President Clinton’s fault?!?!
When the levee was built, during the CLINTON administration, the contractor went to the Army Corp of Engineers and advised them that the earth under the construction site was too soft and that the foundations would have to be dug down to bedrock at a cost of $800,000. The Corps of engineers rejected the recommendation. I’m not saying that it is Clinton’s fault. Only that the decision to not build them properly in the first place was made during the Clinton administration and therefore could not have been President Bush’s fault.