I read the Los Angeles Times article we linked about how the Bush administration failed to protect New Orleans, and it just didn’t smell right. We looked into the departmental files and found a clipping from a blog called MemeFirst, and it reminded us of the Save Our Wetlands lawsuit where a wise Federal Judge stopped the Corps from building proper dikes.
Some of you will recall that in the comments section of this post last week, I mentioned that flood planning and abatement measures take decades to build, and I wrote that I wouldn't be surprised to find out that relevant planning decisions went back to the Carter or Reagan administrations. Actually, it was the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson that set in motion the modern flood protection system for New Orleans - or at least the flood protection system that New Orleans was intended to have. After Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Congress approved and Johnson signed a law to build the Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Barrier Project to protect New Orleans from future catastrophic hurricanes.
The centerpiece walls and gate systems mandated by the bill, however, were never built. Why?
A lawsuit begun in the mid-70s by environmentalists stalled development well into the 80s. After nearly a decade of litigation that prevented implementation of the plan, the Army Corps of Engineers finally threw in the towel and shifted to a compromise plan that had less of an "environmental impact." Some protection, after all, was better than none. Bottom line, the federal government had a plan to protect New Orleans from hurricanes like Katrina, but was unable to implement it due to interference from local environmentalists and the local judiciary.
The environmental group that brought the lawsuit - the now-ironically named "Save our Wetlands" - hasn't yet taken down the web page boasting of shutting down the Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Barrier Project. In the document, the group claims that because its attorney broke down and wept in front of Judge Schwartz, he issued an injunction that shut down hurricane barrier construction. Here's the text:
“The Save Our Wetlands attorney goes right up to the Judge’s cigar, pointing his finger and says to the Judge Charles Schwartz, ‘it is not that I don’t like you it is that I am losing respect for you’. The Save Our Wetlands attorney then says, ‘You said you were going to issue an injunction now god damn issue it.’ At this point the Save Our Wetlands attorney breaks down and begins to cry, kicks open the chamber door, and enters the courtroom cursing profusely, to a courtroom packed with people. He then kicks open the courtroom door and goes immediately to his apartment and collapses; he had not slept in three days.
“At 8 a.m. he gets a call that he is to appear in the Judge Charles Schwartz’s courtroom at 9 a.m. The Save Our Wetlands attorney thinks that he will be held in contempt and taken into custody by U.S. Marshals. Upon arrival Judge Charles Schwartz reads the injunction. The Save Our Wetlands attorney apologized to the co-counsel for his actions the night before. He is told, by his co-counsel Doug Clifford that it is his opinion that the Save Our Wetlands attorneys actions brought a human element to the discussions in Judge Schwartz's chambers on the previous night, and that it broke U.S. Attorney’s Gerald Gallinghouse's mental and political pressure inside the judges chamber. And it was because of this, that Judge Charles Schwartz issued an injunction against the United States Army Corps of Egineer's Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Barrier Project. Save Our Wetlands Inc. nominates United States District Judge Charles Schwartz as the savoir of Lake Pontchartrain and the reason the National Bayou Savage Refuge Center--the largest urban wildlife refuge in the world exists today.”
...And also the reason New Orleans does not exist today.
Getting-what-they-want-by-crying has been the modus operandi of the environmental movement in the U.S. for decades, figuratively speaking. In this case, environmentalist do-gooder busybodies actually cried to get what they wanted. On a lark I used Google Earth to investigate the fate of the home of the presiding judge - Charles Schwartz, Jr. - which backs up on the Metairie Country Club. It's still standing, but he'd better find himself a pair of waders, especially if he plans on playing the back nine anytime soon. Who's crying now?
The left-wing think tank, Center for Progressive Reform, takes the position that the injunction was simply a minor annoyance that would shortly have gone away, but also reveals that the left, the enviro-loonies (and the local Democrat machine) had mounted fierce opposition to the Corps.
Right-wing pundits and politicians, however, have attempted to blame the flooding on environmental litigation that temporarily halted the Corps from pursuing the first option. They argue that if the law suit had not been initiated, the Corps would have been able to complete the first option and the city would therefore have been better protected. As this report documents, these claims are wholly unfounded. It is beyond dispute that the litigation would have only temporarily delayed the Corps from pursing option one had it chosen to do so. In the process of responding to the lawsuit, however, the Corps decided to switch to the second option because it believed that one represented the better policy. This switch also responded to the widespread local public opposition to the first option. See Special Levee Report.
Let us look at the sentence that starts with “It is beyond dispute that”. Has the dear reader previously noticed how the left loves that phrase? The actual translation is, “I don’t want to talk about it!” That in turn relates to the fact that the speaker actually lacks the facts, the logic, or both to dispute it. The writer would have us believe that if the Corps had merely written a more extensive (expensive) environmental impact statement, the litigants would have happily dropped their complaint. Anyone with even the most passing familiarity with environmental strike suits knows that complaining about the EIS is merely the opening gambit for litigation designed either to stop a project altogether or to make it too expensive for the proponents to proceed.
The Corps chose to drop its fight and comply with the community’s expressed wishes, for which they are entirely unwilling to accept the consequences. In fact the city sued the Corps for $77 BILLION in damages for its actions, but in an article February 1 entitled “In Court Ruling on Floods, More Pain for New Orleans”, the Times sniffs, “There is disappointment but little surprise in New Orleans after a federal judge grudgingly absolved the Army Corps of Engineers of liability in the flooding of the city after Hurricane Katrina.”
The leftyloonies at the Times (and the federal judge) appear to actually believe that the Corps of Engineers should be held liable for damages to New Orleans for conceding that it had lost a lawsuit
