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Gotta love that Jason David. Kinda makes me miss drum corps.


Don't mention drum corps. Don't mention DCI. Don't mention me being in a top 12 corps in 82 that I'm actually ashamed of.


Damn there was a lot in that one.


You must have been a little pent up housed. There was a lotta shit in that post, the USACOE being most of it.


That sounds much better than a div III corps that you're ashamed of, even if it was once a top twelve corps. We went to the show in Lafayette a couple of weeks ago, so I had some nostalgia. Just a little. I'm over it. But now I'm curious and will have to devise a plan to get that corps name out of you.

Loved that story about Faine and the beads!!! Redemption.


Michelle: Sky Ryders. Or as we called them "Guy Ryders" or "Score Divers". If I had it to do over again, I would have bit the bullet and done Blue Devils.


The TP is only about a year late with this story. The Corps reported to Congress last summer that the Saffir Simpson designation of Category 5 is based on wind speed, and that wind speed is only one part of what makes a hurricane destructive and deadly. Levees are not designed to withstand or defend against wind. The LACPR preliminary report is available online if you want to read all the details. Rather than attempt to fit storm protection into theoretical storms by Cat as was done previously with the Standard Project Hurricane back in the 1950s and 60s, the Corps is using a statistical approach that supports a risk-bassed analysis. So just like the innundation maps released last month that showed flooding potential for annual probablility storms of 1-in-50, 100 and 500, the LACPR is looking at 1-in-100, 400 and 1000 year storms. With its big headline, is the TP admitting that they have not be paying attention or did not care to notice until now?

And the final selection of what New Orleans gets, if we get anything at all, will be made by Congress and the President. Why did Congress ask for such a study in the first place? Could it be to put off the decision until later when the denial of protection will cause less of a natioanal backlash?




The real focus of my ire is not even the corps in this case; it's the feds.

First, they claim the will build "the best levee system known in the world".

Now, since the USACE is using this statistical approach, they aren't even building 1-in-400 year protection.

The Dutch, btw, have 1-in-10000 year protection.


Then maybe your ire is pointed in the wrong direction.

Question: if the USACE and Congress both really were comitted to "whatever it takes" would that even matter? Is there any evidence that throwing money at the USACE makes anyone safer? Or is it just rewarding them for incompetence?

Last time I checked, the Corps couldn't manage to build a rock weir and a mud wall with $120M:

So while it would be nice to get commitment to and funding for massive levee improvements, IMO it's a lot more important to get real oversight from groups like the ASCE and Van Herdeen's LSU group.

Ultimately we'd get a lot more real protection from spending the already-allocated funds on competently engineered projects than we would from giving another $5B to the USACE to just piss away.

Whether or not that oversight is happening is still very much an open question. I'd like to know more about this if any of the blog regulars know what is going on there.


The TP actually issued a correction on that headline, since the Corps said the current plan would protect against a Cat 5 like Camille. I think it was printed Monday. I often feel like the TP's copyeditors believe that they work at a tabloid.

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