Wednesday, October 10, 2007

New Orleans Pumps Flawed?

I read today at the Environment News Service, New Orleans Pumps Flawed, Whistleblower Discloses. First, does this surprise anyone? Isn't that the whole reason New Orleans flooded?

Anyway, the story is about a Corps engineer is saying that safety features were bypassed and that the pumps are not fully functional.

The top U.S. Army Corps of Engineers specialist assigned to oversee the city's new pumping system says that key safeguards were circumvented and "there is an erroneous assumption that…hydraulic pumps are fully operational, and hence, the risk to the public remains high," in the words of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.


The engineer, Maria Garzino, has filed for whistle blower protection.

Garzino filed the disclosure with the OSC after finding that the Corps "misled [her] into believing that USACE was going to properly address the pumping equipment problems."


I'm not all that surprised.

2 comments:

Ben said...

Are the pumps flawed? Truthfully, I'm not sure whether that's even an issue. Can there ever be enough pumps to pump water out of the bowl NO is built in when the higher ground is also flooded or flooding? Where exactly will water from a hurricane be pumped to?

LewisC said...

The higher ground doesn't flood. The water is pumped into the river and into lake ponchartrain.

The flooding in New Orleans wasn't from the storm, it was from levee breaches. The flooding in Metairie wasn't from the storm it was from a moron parish president who turned off the pumps.

LewisC