Sunday, November 22, 2009

Corps of Engineers: Guilty

As bmaz points out, this is potentially an enormous court decision.
the decision by Eastern District of Louisiana Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. in the In Re: Katrina Canal Breaches Consolidated Litigation case is a game changer with immense and far reaching ramifications.

Duval excoriated the Army Corps of Engineers and held them, and the government, directly liable for much of the flooding that devastated New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish in the Hurricane Katrina disaster of 2005.
Forgive me for some personal schadenfreude. When I was managing Department of Energy environmental cleanups, there was a never-ending drumbeat from the Corps that they could do it better. What I saw them doing didn't look better to me.

And building dams is what they are supposed to do.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

There was a time, of course, when governments were held liable at the ballot box. But firing a congressman is just as hard as firing a civil servant these days.