The Orleans Levee Board is officially dismantled. Positions on the Levee Board never required any expertise or knowledge, just an “in” with the Governor or some other politician. Their mission statement was –
The Orleans Levee District is dedicated to protecting the lives and property of the citizens of Orleans Parish by constructing, operating and maintaining the Mississippi River and Hurricane Protection Flood Control Systems and to providing safe and secure facilities for aviation, marine and recreational activities.
but they did practically nothing related to the first half of that statement. Their time was almost exclusively dedicated to “providing safe and secure facilities for aviation, marine and recreational activities” and managing their extensive list of rental properties.
After Katrina, I took the time to read and summarize their meeting minutes for the year leading up to Katrina. They didn’t just take the time to manage their rental properties. They also attempted to manage their tenant’s activities. When discussing renting a property to a pharmacist, Commissioner Green worried, “what is occurring in New Orleans East with a few places that call themselves pharmacies. … a few places that opened as pharmacies and now have turned into dispensaries for pain killer medication’s, etc. On a day to day basis, it will be up to staff and Mr. Pappalardo to make sure that sort of thing does not happen here.” It’s a good thing there were no pressing issues with the levees, like the seepage at the base of a levee for a year prior to Katrina right where it broke at the 17th Street Canal, to worry about.
Voters insisted on a consolidation of all the local levee boards into two “superboards” – one for the East Bank, and one for the West Bank. In a final bit of irony, in the Board’s meeting room where the official motion was approved to dismantle the Board so the new “superboards” can take over –
On one wall of the meeting room hung a series of plaques that the Army Corps of Engineers had awarded the Orleans Levee Board almost every year since 1984 for its “outstanding” performance in maintaining the city’s levees and participating in the area’s flood-control program.
The Corps was finally forced to admit that they flooded New Orleans, not Katrina. But the Orleans Levee Board was certainly an accessory to that crime.
What about the possibility of pulling out of Iraq, letting Iran invade and lose resources fighting their own kind,
and then come in and mop up the dregs?
This was a stupid article.
Thanks so much for that insightful and thoughtful critique. What, were you on the [corrupt, crony-filled, nearly useless] Board? Read those minutes for some insight into exactly what a waste of time and money the Levee Board really was.