Budget cuts delayed New Orleans flood control work
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bush administration funding cuts forced federal engineers to delay improvements on the levees, floodgates and pumping stations that failed to protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters, agency documents showed on Thursday.
The former head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that handles the infrastructure of the nation's waterways, said the damage in New Orleans probably would have been much less extensive had flood-control efforts been fully funded over the years.
"Levees would have been higher, levees would have been bigger, there would have been other pumps put in," said Mike Parker, a former Mississippi congressman who headed the engineering agency from 2001 to 2002.
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1 comment:
Coulda woulda shoulda
I spent 12 years in the air force, 4 as a financial management officer. Part of my job as a budget analyst was to research the various house and senate bills and tracking the markup committees etc... one thing I discovered is that a "fully funded" program is as rare as a three headed cow.... hardly ANYONE gets their program 'fully funded'
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