ENVIRONMENTAL LEGAL BLOGS: KATRINA-IT'S ALL BUSH'S FAULT-PART IV

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A law colleague of mine has, somewhat gleefully I suspect, called my attention to a weblog, Attyhood, wherein a columnist tries again to persuade us all that it really is all Bush's fault-- and, indeed, that the President has committed a high crime and misdemeanor justifying impeachment (from the blog: "If this isn't a 'high crime' or 'misdemeanor,' we don't know what is")!

So I read on eagerly--what, exactly, is this "impeachable offense"? Beginning in 2003, the Administration allegedly did not commit sufficient funding to the levee-building projects of New Orleans. As Attyhood tells it (emphasis in original):

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars. (Much of the research here is from Nexis, which is why some articles aren't linked.)

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:

The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

...

...the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money....

I'm not too impressed. Attyhood's analysis overlooks or minimizes a few inconvenient facts:

First, if differing budget priorities by the President constitute an impeachable offense, presumably all of Congress (which approved the 2003 and following years' budgets) also should be prosecuted(the Republicans for being allies of the evil Bush and the Democrats for failing to fillibuster such critical budget cutting--but then, perhaps they were too busy fillibustering John Bolton's alleged ill manners, surely a more important issue).

Second, as Attyhood itself notes, "the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts." (emphasis added). Yet it's all Bush's fault because of budget cuts done in the last 2 years; the previous 35-40 years' apparently inadequate efforts count for nothing.

Third, just yesterday I posted comments by Attyhood's ideological allies to the effect that it was really the failure to protect the wetlands (also Bush's fault) that led to the severity of the damage. To use a pun, if the levee budget-cut argument doesn't work, try any other port in a storm.

However, as with 35-40 years of apparently inadequate levee construction-and-maintenance efforts, the wetlands issue--believe it or not-- goes back years before Bush took office. In Popular Mechanics' September, 2001 publication, for example, the article "New Orleans Is Sinking" commented:

During a strong hurricane, the city could be inundated with water blocking all streets in and out for days, leaving people stranded without electricity and access to clean drinking water. Many also could die because the city has few buildings that could withstand the sustained 96- to 100-mph winds and 6- to 8-ft. storm surges of a Category 2 hurricane. Moving to higher elevations would be just as dangerous as staying on low ground. Had Camille, a Category 5 storm, made landfall at New Orleans, instead of losing her punch before arriving, her winds would have blown twice as hard and her storm surge would have been three times as high.

Yet knowing all this, area residents have made their potential problem worse. "Over the past 30 years, the coastal region impacted by Camille has changed dramatically. Coastal erosion combined with soaring commercial and residential development in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have all combined to significantly increase the vulnerability of the area," says Sandy Ward Eslinger, of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Coastal Services Center in Charleston, S.C.
(emphasis added).

Thirty years ago, Bush was 29 years old and held no political office. Yet, after being in office for 4 years, he is now responsible for everything-- including problems dating back to before the Carter Presidency.

Finally, had the President and Congress allocated to New Orleans' levees the absent monies being cited by the it's-all-Bush's-fault crowd, then Attyhood would undoubtedly still want him impeached-- after all, why didn't the President anticipate that Hurricane Katrina would take a jag East and decimate Mississippi, where the damage and loss of life appears equally to be severe? Surely the money being spent on Iraq, after all, could have been spent protecting the citizens of Mississippi from the ravages they have experienced.

By this logic, every underfunded project in every State and Territory is the fault of Bush's policy on Iraq. Unquestionably, people are entitled to make that argument, if they wish. But budget priorities in a democracy, whether on environmental protection or on anything else, are guided by election results-- and, as I recall, just a few months' ago those results didn't go the way the it's-all-Bush's-fault crowd wanted.

It's time for that crowd to get over their tantrum at losing. Blaming Bush for New Orleans' present predicament is not their most flattering moment.