Bad Pumps (New Ones) In New Orleans

Defective Equipment Reportedly Installed As Feds Scrambled To Get Ready For 2006 Hurricane Season

(AP)  The U.S. 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 2006 hurricane season turned out to be mild, and the new pumps were never pressed into action. But the Corps and the politically-connected manufacturer of the equipment are still struggling to get the 34 heavy duty pumps working properly in a city still recovering from Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

The pumps are now being pulled out and overhauled because of excessive vibration, Corps officials said. Other problems have included overheated engines, broken hoses and blown gaskets, according to the documents obtained by the AP.

Col. Jeffrey Bedey, who is overseeing levee reconstruction, insisted the pumps would have worked last year and the city was never in danger. Bedey gave assurances that the pumps should be ready for the coming hurricane season, which begins June 1.

The Corps said it decided to press ahead with installation and then fix the machinery while it was in place, on the theory that some pumping capacity was better than none. And it defended the manufacturer, which was under time pressure.

"Let me give you the scenario: You have four months to build something that nobody has ever built before, and if you don't, the city floods and the Corps, which already has a black eye, could basically be dissolved. How many people would put up with a second flooding?" said Randy Persica, the Corps' resident engineer for New Orleans' three major drainage canals.

Katrina's storm surge caused water on Lake Pontchartrain to back up into the city's drainage canals. The canal walls gave way, and about 80 percent of New Orleans flooded. Nearly 1,600 people in Louisiana died in the storm and its aftermath.

The 34 pumps — installed in the drainage canals that take water from this bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city and deposit it in Lake Pontchartrain — represented a new ring of protection that was added to New Orleans' flood defenses after Katrina. The city also relies on miles of levees and hundreds of other pumps in various locations.

The drainage canal pumps were custom-designed and built under a $26.6 million contract awarded after competitive bidding to Moving Water Industries Corp. of Florida. The company was founded in 1926 and supplies flood control and irrigation pumps all over the world.

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. 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 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 the company could have collected if it delivered the equipment in time for the 2006 hurricane season.

Misgivings about the pumps were chronicled in a May 2006 memo provided to the AP by Matt McBride, a mechanical engineer and flooded-out Katrina victim who, like many in New Orleans, has been closely watching the rebuilding of the city's flood defenses.

The memo was written by Maria Garzino, a Corps mechanical engineer overseeing quality assurance at an MWI test site in Florida. The Corps confirmed the authenticity of the 72-page memo, which details many of the mechanical problems and criticizes the testing procedures used.

[anopinion1]

anopinion1, you don't know what you're talking about. Go here
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releas
es/2000/01/000121071306.htm
for the full story. I'll give you the short version here: "New Orleans is sinking three feet per century"
Posted by creeper00 at 03:09 PM : Mar 14, 2007

go back and read the first thing i posted on this topic... it says a little something to the effect that new orleans is built in swampland and has sunk down so far that it now sits in the bottom of a lake.

[sclaires]

Well what can you expect when there is a connection with the Bush family?? Shoddy work, equipment that does not work, and a multi-million contract from the government. Sounds like the same old BS from the one who got the contract.

[djp123zzz]

Apparently, the corruption extends not just systemically, but ideologically also, and those whom help to continue to perpetrate it should not consider themselves beyond severe prosecution no matter what time passes or level of secrecy they believe they are protected by. You see, there are no secrets really nowadays. If there are those whom delude themselves to the extent that they think they can get away with anything in the short or long term, especially nowadays, then they would be taking true risks to their personal freedom it seems to me.
The frustrations of hard working people do not get forgotten.
Although in fairness, I would like to technically-know WHY, OR if only some slight and easily repairable glitch was all that was wrong with those pumps, and, if indeed it was fair to generalize them as if they were totally defective, if in fact there is only some small thing which must be designed for them before the next hurricane season.
I really am not ready yet to believe that any company would be that evil to install defective pumps for all that money unless something could be proven publicly which proves it. If so, then the entire company ought to be jailed and put out of business forever. Corporate "protection" would be, in this case, a "protection racket", and I believe America is fed up with that sort of atmosphere.
Dan Petit.

[cbse3]

to cornholio622
I guess when you take Bevis and Butthead, put'em in a bag, den shakes dem up......you gets de kind of logic dat you profess.... next, the ioa tolla is a ...........you can take it from here

[cornholio622]

cbse3 Don't God's gifts also require we use common sense? Does it make sense to rebuild in an area that is guaranteed to be flooded again? Would it not cost less to relocate? Do I really need to "Dig deeper" to find out some hidden meaning here? I don't think so. I'm sorry if you live there and so it makes you sensitive. Those who refuse logic are doomed.

[cbse3]

to cornholio622
you to must have an ear of corn that is deeply lodged in a place that is affecting your thought processes. God also gave us the ability to learn,and the strength to overcome adiversity and ignorance. Dig deeper and find out more of the facts....the rest of the story.... only then will you truely be able to make an intelligent comentary

[cbse3]

ajaxrose1 at 02:39 PM : Mar 14, 2007
con't
and yet only about 4,000 to 5,000 claims have been satisified sence the storm. People have experienced multilevel losses....their homes, their businesses, their source of income, their employees, the infrastructure gas lines, sewer systems power lines that have taken how long to build over and above my 55 year life time...you really have know idea about this disiaster

[creeper00]

anopinion1, you don't know what you're talking about. Go here
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/01/000121071306.htm
for the full story. I'll give you the short version here: "New Orleans is sinking three feet per century"

[cornholio622]

New Orleans should not be rebuilt and especially not reoccupied. It is a foolhardy waste of money and will definitely endanger future lives. God has spoken through Katrina "Live somewhere else" The money would have been much better spent building a whole new infrastructure in a safer place allowing lake Ponchartrain to settle where it likes.

[cbse3]

to ajaxrose1 at 02:39 PM : Mar 14, 2007

you really have to pull your head out of your rear end to get a clear prespective of what happened in New orleans and more importantly what is not happening due to the bureaucratic bungling of of the Fed's, FEMA, Corp of Engineers, the La Recovery Road Home Program,and the various Insurance companies that have stifiled our recovery. Maybe you should read over the past comments. Over 180,000 dwellings were affected

[musty2u]

Our navy in its infinite wisdom will plow millions into old ships once or twice, but then there comes a time the ships are sunk to make reefs for the fishies. So should be the story of New Orleans. Similarly, the navy has commissioned four ships bearing the name New Orleans. Two cruisers, one assault ship, one transport dock, and even the Confederate States had one names CSS New Orleans. To let the city of New Orleans be covered with water seems a reasonable approach. Let the ocean and seas take back what it wants. Goodness, if ALGORE's blatherings have anything about them we can't start holding back rising oceans very long.

[ajaxrose1]

When you live in what is essentially a BOWL you surely can't be surprised if it gets filled up once in awhile. What I still don't uderstand is, beyond humanitarian relief, why it's the rest of the world's responsibility to rebuild it. It wasn't there when the first people decided to settle there, so where did it come from? They just decided to live there and someone ELSE built a city for them? I doubt it. It takes time and work to get something like that raised up again. The rest of the world cannot stop turning until New Orleans is rebuilt; it has to keep going. What are the people of New Orleans doing to get it going again? I noticed everyone could put in time and effort into a nice big Mardi Gras parade. Apply the same priciples to cleaning up and rebuilding, but expect it will take a little more time than planning a parade.

P.S. to stevenga777: The only thing wrong with this country today is that there are too many people expecting OTHERS to always take care of them and everything else. Plain and simple. If you want to live in a socialist country where your Big Brother will take care of you, then there are plenty of them on the planet. Move.

[ander241]

There is some correct information here. Yes, New Orleans is a wonderful city deserving to be rebuilt. The original city was built on the 20% that didn't flood during Katrina. Every year there was the same article in the newspaper about the "worst case scenario" which would be a direct hit with Lake Pontchartrain backing up entirely and filling the city with 30 feet of water that would take months to drain with no responders and hundreds of thousands dead. The Corps always said that they couldn't fund a better program because it would take too long and too much money.

Instead, just before THE season, five men surveyed the 100+ miles of levees and did this in time to get together for an expensive lunch at noon. The Corps is culpable for knowing that those levees that breached weren't even properly built in the first place. If they had been, the city would not have flooded. We did not have the worst case scenario which would have involved a direct hit coming up the mouth of the Mississipi River for 100 miles raising the river, which functions between it and Lake Pontchartrain with a finger system. Then the lake would act like a huge tidal wave.

As for the Dutch system. They came over here and viewed the systems with the local guys and I have no idea why in hell they did not use their system. It is brilliant and doesn't rely on the stupidity of man.

Still we are waiting for the help we deserve and are treated as if we are forgotten.

We won't forget!

[ander241]

Newster1, the city is 6 ft. below sea level. Look at FL. Built on swamplands with more fingers of land built out from it. There is a wonderful diversity of cultures, more National Historic Registry buildings than any city in the U.S. Writers have long found the flavor of the city worth living and writing in. Film industry people live here. Jazz came from New Orleans. We have out own cuisine and the restaurants rate number one often. The arts are prolific; there are museums (even the National D-Day Museum is located here and not D.C.); galleries; film and writers' societies; large parks and boulevards, incredible architecture; a non-judgmentalism that is unique in any city; festivals, parades, celebrations of holidays;a world-class zoo and aquariaum. The Mississipi River made this a viable place for ports and access to the middle of the country. Commerce!

These reasons make this city worth saving. What happened would not have happened if the government and the Corps of Engineers had done their job correctly. And now, they continue as in the past. For this to happen to any city in our country is a disgrace.

As for protection along the coast 100 miles down the MS River, global warming and lack of care by the government has worn away the natural protection of lower La.

Where else could you live surrounded by history, awake to live music and the smell of wonderful cooking every day?

[alphaa10-2009]

bm6005BTW said, "I'm a college graduate, just disappointed in the effects to our country by relying too much on education and too little on experience and common sense!!"
---

The Bush Syndrome has little to do with education but rather a lack of it or a consumate failure to employ it. Education is, as you imply, more than "book larnin'", and should represent the synergy from a number of resources. Any educated person understands a degree is only the beginning.

However, aside from the sheer incompetence and ignorance of the Bush regime, its most damaging element is rank corruption and criminality. Failure of character and a void of ethics at the highest levels of government cannot fail to "trickle down" on the rest of us, as it is now.

The Murphy's Law corollary is, those who already understand the lesson are left to pay for it-- the rest of the country must pay for the failures and omissions of Bush and his criminal consorts.

[alphaa10-2009]

Will this flow of garbage from the Bush family ever stop? It reminds us, like nothing else, of the chaos, dysfunction and rank corruption surrounding a third-world despot and his family members, all partners in crime.

The monitoring and oversight which should have been in place after Katrina-- especially with the US Army Corps of Engineers-- was notably absent. A post-Katrina GOP congress simply handed taxpayer billions to Bush friends, principally Halliburton, in no-bid contracts.

There was no oversight because the GOP wanted none. Not only that, the leadership level of the US Army Corps of Engineers, like that of FEMA, has been plundered of committed professionals by the same Bush politics which fired eight US prosecutors.

This is a circus, and Bush is the (criminal) ringmaster wearing a clown face.

[bm6005]

From a "shining light on a hill" the USA has gone to the rustbelt of the world in everything from education to human rights to being a beacon of freedom to the world. The USA is in decline.
Posted by stevenga777

As we've turned over more and more of our decision-making to highly educated idiots as opposed to those who know the subject matter we've seen an exponential rise in governmental and business stupidity. Allowing college profs (Wolfowitz), Lawyers (Chertoff) & MBA's to control and make decisions for us is one of the greatest mistakes ever made in America. These generalists couldn't pour **** out of a boot, with the instructions stamped on the heel. BTW I'm a college graduate, just disappointed in the effects to our country by relying too much on education and too little on experience and common sense!!

[cbse3]

to stevenga777

and the pumps used to drain the Zuyder Zee in Dec of 1916 were the A.B. Wood design, a New Orleanean engineer see the following for info
http://files.asme.org/ASMEORG/C
ommunities/History/Landmarks/5485.pdf. these pumps are still in use in New Orleans and are recgonized dedicated national landmarks

[lars2008-2009]

anopinion1

The original city of New Orleans was built above sea level. Those areas didn't flood during Katrina. However, as is so often the case with cities, New Orleans grew and the lower lying areas were settled as well. The levies were built to fix this problem and for the most part they did for a very long time. People felt safe and continued to build for generations. Then cam the perfect storm.

Congress was asked for decades for extra funds to reinforce the levies but supposedly it just wasn't a priority so the money didn't come. An ounce of prevention?

Why are we spending a trillion dollars trying to rebuild Iraq, a country who's population doesn't want us there, and we can't afford to rebuild a great American City and protect it with an adequit system of levies and pumps?

[stevenga777]

We should just get the Dutch from Holland to build our ***** and canals. They have done a fabulous job reclaiming land from the ocean.

From a "shining light on a hill" the USA has gone to the rustbelt of the world in everything from education to human rights to being a beacon of freedom to the world. The USA is in decline.