Orleans Avenue Canal Wall Gap

So, the Corps was in charge of building a hurricane protection system around New Orleans, as ordered by Congress in response to Hurricane Betsy.  There are a lot of interlocking political entities that (levee boards, New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board [S&WB], etc.) that end up adding some complexities to construction.

The Corps eventually decides to build walls along the outfall canals (instead of moving the pumping stations to the lake; that's a HUGE issue all on its own that I won't touch on for now).  They build the canal walls on the 17th Street and London Ave. Canals.  There, fundamental flaws in the analysis of the soil strength (the sort that even an undergraduate in civil engineering should understand to avoid), will lead to their collapse.  

The Orleans Ave. Canal didn't fail like the others.  Why?  Well, that's sort of revealing.  Pumping Station Number 7 drains the area near Delgado and puts water into the Orleans Canal to bring it to the lake.  That pumping station is a masonry structure built all the way back when Albert Baldwin Wood was running the S&WB.  Masonry is relatively weak and brittle.  Since that structure is the closest to the lake out of all the pumping stations, if they were to add walls lining the canal, the lake water could push up against the walls of the pumping station and (if they rose high enough) collapse the walls of the pumping station.  That would be bad.

Fortunately, the Corps & S&WB realized this.  The Corps requested the S&WB reinforce their structure.  The S&WB says, 'we're broke, it's your project, you fix the structure, since it's hurricane protection and not internal drainage' [this is in ~80's-early 90's, so the S&WB was pretty broke].  The Corps and the S&WB then get into a big pissing contest.  Meanwhile, the walls are going up.  Eventually, they reach the section nearest PS#7 and they just stop building the wall.  About a 300' gap is left, that way if waters rise, it won't put undue pressure on the walls of PS#7.  

This gap is still there today:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/noladishu/8009389284/in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/noladishu/8009394002/in/photostream

The thing is about this gap is it renders basically the entire wall useless!  The wall provides basically no protection for the city, despite several million dollars spent on its construction.  The reason the Orleans Ave. walls didn't fail is because they were never holding anything back!  

Now, I'm actually an engineer with some experience.  I actually see the situation the engineers were in.  Situations with ambiguous boundaries and split responsibilities happen.  You rarely know exactly what the final project is going to look like before you begin.  When you have a gap, you sit down and figure out whose responsibility it is.  Engineers have lots of meetings...  Usually, someone just mans up and takes it over (usually the one with the biggest budget).  It's a serious sign of how much of a cluster the levees were before Katrina that there was never resolution on this issue.  The gap continues to be a monument to "not my job" syndrome ( http://www.dw-jotd.com/images/notmyjob.jpg ).  

I'm not making any of this up.  When ASCE came to town to write their Katrina report, they specifically highlighted the Orleans Ave. Canal Gap debacle as a symbol of how it was "a system in name only":
(~page 64.) http://www.asce.org/uploadedFiles/Publications/ASCE_News/2009/04_April/ERPreport.pdf . You can go there and see it for yourself, too. It's near where 610 crosses over the canal. Drive down the west edge of City Park and look for yourself.

Also, see Matt McBride's latest post at Fix the Pumps.

Also, test post from Blogger App. Not sure how it will work.

Looters vs. NOPD: a table

Looters	NOPD
Looted Wal-Mart	Looted Wal-Mart
“Sniper fire” (really a Relief Valve)	Long range, deadly fire
“Raping Babies”	Raping children
Body count: Looters shot 1 cop in the head (survived)	Body Count: Still counting (1 conviction so far, probably a few more soon, maybe a lot more)
Rapes: 2 confirmed sexual assaults in Superdome, others elsewhere	Rapes: Equipped and ready to go

Next time a storm runs this way, here's a humble suggestion for the governor's office: issue additional orders to shoot NOPD on sight.

UPDATE- NOPD vs. TUPD gunbattle. Nobody hit, despite both officers being "expert" firearm-wielders.*

Another thing NOPD loves doing along with criminals: stealing guns:


*- The article was a little unclear as to whether it was just NOPD firing or the NOPD and TUPD exchanging rounds.

Rising Tide 5 in the books...

Rising Tide - Mac McClelland Keynote
Originally uploaded by Maitri

Rising Tide 5 is in the books. I've been sick and Candice had work to do, so we weren't around all that much, but we both made an appearance Friday night and I made it for most of Saturday.

Mac McClelland signing my copy of Halliburton's Cementing Handbook. That's something special.

The venue was great. I liked the setup a lot. There were areas to mill around and talk away from the presentations. That I think is always one of the highlights of Rising Tide. Also, the air conditioning actually worked! Amazing! The lakefront is still my favorite of the Rising Tide venues, thus far.

I decided to not use my flash for my photography, so most of my photos didn't come out well. Oops. I got a couple that came out well.

A few of my takeaways from the Politics panel:
* The focus of the panel was on 2 races: 2nd Congressional (New Orleans) and senate (Vitter/Melancon)
* Crouere: "Bobby Jindal WILL NOT serve two full terms as governor."
* If public universities start shuttering their doors left, right, and center in Louisiana, it will destroy Jindal's reputation both in the state and nationally.
* 2nd Congressional will pit "ethically challenged" Richmond vs. Cao, with Cao having a decent shot at reelection. Note that at last year's Rising Tide, the entire panel thought he was toast.
* Vitter should cruise to reelection, despite nobody actually liking the guy (Republican or Democrat). Vitter is a hard worker, but he's also never faced a strong, well-organized opponent. Every single race he's run has been against pitiful competition. Melancon isn't covering himself in glory, thus far. Also, don't be surprised if more damaging revelations about Vitter's past are released right before the election...
* The LA Democratic Party is a mess. Mitch tried to get the previous head of the party sacked and, despite the backing of his sister, failed. There's major division between the "John Breaux Democrats" and the more liberal, more black democrats. Good leadership is needed to keep the two camps pulling in the same direction and that hasn't happened for a long, long time. As a side note, remember that EVERYONE in the state was a Democrat 20 or 30 years ago.

Tim gave a great presentation on "Why can't we get some dam safety?" Related: Dam Failure - Wiki. Note that dams are considered life safety systems, while levees are not and that's written into the law by Congress.

Congrats to Cliff on winning the AshMo Award for the year.

4 Years Ago

PDR_0029
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

Four years ago today, my grandfather died at the age of 99. He was my only living grandfather.

He grew up in Mississippi. His father died when he was only 6, so he grew up poor. He always had to work. He remembers delivering the papers that ended WWI. He dreamed of being an architect or an engineer. He used to win architectural drawing contests in the county fair. The Great Depression killed those hopes. He came to New Orleans and started working for a bank. He started sweeping the floors of the bank, but many years later, after marrying my grandmother, and going to night school, he became the president of the bank (Federal Farm Credit Bank, if memory serves).

He always had a passion for tinkering. At first, he didn't feel that he had anyone to pass it along to, since he had three daughters and times were different then. Years later, I come along as the first male grandchild and I'd say we had a special bond. We had lots of trips to the Butterfly. He used to keep a trunk full of slingshots and other assorted contraband for me and my little brother to play with, when out of sight of my mother.

He gave me subscriptions to Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, and whatever else I requested. He taught me the basics of shop.

He rode out Katrina at Lambeth House, since the new management could get their act together before the storm, but NOFD helped them evacuate after. He ended up for a couple of months in Lutcher, LA.

He came back to New Orleans when I did to finish my last semester for Tulane Engineering. We had debates on whether or not it was appropriate, given the state of the city, but he wanted to come back. He dearly loved New Orleans.

I graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Tulane and he was there when I walked and got my degree. Despite being wheelchair-bound and not in the best of shape, he made it to McAllister Auditorium. He died three months later. He was pretty sick towards the end, but he had his mind to the end, which is about as much as anyone could ask for.

The photo is the two of us from August 2005. I was interning at an engineering firm on Magazine Street doing mostly drafting work while I prepared for my senior year at Tulane. The drawing is a rail-based launch system so a topsides unit could be rolled onto a barge and then towed offshore to be placed on a platform.

5 Years of Keeping Up With the Corps

In the five years since the worst failure in the history American Civil Engineering, we've had to keep up with the Corps. They've done some good things since the storm (MR-GO closure, quick and strong repairs) and some not so good things (Option 1 vs. 2a/b debate for permanent pump stations). I'd like to go through 5 major ideas that, depending on how they settle, will determine what sort of levee system we end up with.

1- Design/Build. Shortly after the storm, the Corps decided to issue most of their contracts as Design/Build instead of the Design/Bid/Build, which they've used for decades. Nobody is really sure why the Corps is doing this. I've heard arguments from the Corps saying that they'll get more "creative" designs. I've heard arguments elsewhere saying that the Corps wants someone to throw under the bus in case there is another failure. The Corps also didn't initially free up any money for bid prep work, which meant that bidding firms would spend as little as possible preparing for the bids and would go with very conservative designs they knew how to estimate the cost of. Design/Bid/Build allows you to work the kinks out of the design while still on the drawing board. It's a hell of a lot cheaper to pay a few engineers overtime than have hundreds of workers and field equipment idle while you have to redesign something in the field once construction has begun. In general, I think the design/build approach will lead to excessive cost overruns, but won't make a difference one way or the other on the quality of the work.

2- Resiliency/Backup. One of the points the SELFPA-E has repeatedly made to the Corps when arguing for work on the interior canal walls is what happens if there's a failure of the interim control structure. I have no reason to think there is a design flaw, but if there was, then the flood waters would have a direct path into the city where we know that certain sections of the floodwalls are sub-standard. If the walls are repaired, there would be a second line of defense. The Corps has said that there's no money to do repairs to the existing walls and they can only do what Congress orders them to. The Corps wants to focus all their efforts on Option 1. Now, I will give the Corps credit because there have been several promises made to do at least a modest amount of work upgrading the canal walls at known weak points and that has at least partially mollified SELFPA-E's worries about the canal walls. There is some recognition within the Corps that redundancy is a good thing. OTOH, the Corps can shift some money around and it sort of pokes a hole in their "we do what Congress orders us to do" argument, because otherwise, they wouldn't spend a nickel on canal wall upgrades. From what I understand, it looks like there will be minimally acceptable repairs to canal walls, but many engineering experts, particularly the SELFPA-E would prefer to see more.

3- Geotechnical Analysis. Southeast Louisiana is built on very soft soils and the geotechnical analysis of what sort of loads it can carry is key to any large building project. Most of the geotechnical engineers I know do not believe the Corps' geotech methods are the best that are out there. Furthermore, while I can't say this about the Corps, I have personally seen geotechs put under enormous strain give a "better" answer to allow projects to move forward. The last thing I'll say about geotechnical engineering is it's one of those things in engineering that's still sort of art mixed with science. MIT did a famous study that was presented to ASCE where they constructed a dike, gave a group of eminent geotechnical engineers every single detail about how it was constructed (fill material, depth, volume, etc.) and asked the geotechnical engineers to provide an estimate of how high the water level inside the dike could go before the dike gave way. Of the 7 experts, 5 gave predictions significantly below the level that it failed at, 2 gave level substantially above the level it failed. The geotechnical engineers were given perfect data and no political or economic considerations factored into this test.*

4- B.31.3 Calculations. Matt McBride covered this a few years ago: Post 1 and Post 2. Later, Parsons wrote a report [pdf] that stated the piping is properly designed, per ASME B.31.3 code. It doesn't happen often, but I can say absolutely, definitely, objectively that they are WRONG! I've done those ASME calcs many times before and they are just plain wrong. The consequences aren't all that severe (the piping would probably leak, causing a drop in pressure and lower pumping rates; very small risk of rupture/HSE danger), but it still worries me. If there's a mistake that obvious in something built to tight tolerances, what about more subjective engineering decisions that use materials with wide tolerances?

5- 100 vs. 1000 year protection. As Tim has repeatedly pointed out, "100 Year" protection isn't enough. We need 500 or 1,000 year protection. Furthermore, I have personal questions about how those 100-year levels are computed. The Corps, in the post-Katrina work, has actually built a bit higher than strictly to 100-year protection. For example, some levees have a few extra feet to take subsidence into account and ensure that in a decade or so, the levees will still be well above the 100-year level. Outside the government, I've seen other organizations that have completely revamped what they consider to be a "100 year event". For example, offshore, what used to be considered a 1000-year design is now only considered a 100-year design and as a result, modern construction methods are much, much more robust than they were even just 5 years ago. Don't take my word for it. "Lessons Learned the Hard Way" Page 11 [pdf]: "Yesterday’s 1000-yr criteria have become today’s 100-yr". You can also compare the old API RP's with API 2INT-MET (subsequently integrated into current API RP's).

From all this, I hope everyone sees how important it is to keep an eye on the Corps. Oversight is incredibly important. Note that the SELFPA-E is spending an enormous chunk of their incredibly meager budget to get engineering firms to review the Corps design drawings and calculations. This is important work that must continue.

UPDATE- Minor edits for spelling.
___________________
* Paper: "Reliability of embankment performance predictions" Hynes and Vanmarcke, 1976.

If God Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise

Spike Lee came down and blasted a shotgun at New Orleans. His camera caught the good, the bad, the guilty and the innocent. The main feature of Spike's documentaries is the expansive, if schizophrenic coverage they provide.

Here are a few thoughts:

My absolute favorite part of the entire thing was how they covered the plight of the elderly. More than whites or blacks the elderly had it the worst of anyone. Too many stayed in their homes in Lakeview or elsewhere. They had ridden out Betsy and Camile and just weren't evacuating. Too many drowned in their homes. Many more just had more change and chaos than they could take. So many just lost the will to live, more than any physiological illness.

From there, the rest of the film is a mix of the good, the meh, and the atrocious.

The coverage of the levee situation is atrocious. Ivor van Heerden and Brad Pitt are levee experts and Ivor says the reason the Corps is building things right is because the trial lawyers are on their ass! The Corps is given very little chance to speak (for good or for ill), and Dr. Calvin Mackie (the first black engineering professor at Tulane), who was sterling in "When the Levees Broke" dismissing dynamited-levee-conspiracy-theories, was not really referenced.

Good job on covering mental health issues.

The most questionable part of Spike Lee's style is who he decided to put in the film. It's a very mixed bag. John Kerry? Tracie Washington and Brinkley do not speak well to Spike Lee's judgment. Fuck Brinkley. Fuck anyone who wants to put a camera, mic, or pen in front of him. In his horrible book, the "Great Deluge", he writes that in 1927, they blew up the levees to flood all of the black people in the Lower 9th Ward. Nope. That's how shitty a historian he is.

IMMENSE smackdown of Warren Riley, et. al. by General Honore for panicking people about snipers and raping babies. Honore showed real leadership (unlike, say NOPD) and put his body in front of panicky soldiers with loaded rifles and told them to stand down and realize they were in an American city. As a post-script, I've been told they later realized that the alleged "sniper" near Charity was the PVSV popping off relieving pressure on a liquid oxygen tank used for the hospital.

Schools, meh. Would have liked some mention that the School Board was in the process of being flushed down the toilet before the storm.

Crime & NOPD. Man, what a disaster.

Nagin and the history question... Nagin was allowed to talk way too long and say way too little.

Ivor is also an expert on mining and oil and gas safety...

Tracie Washington is an expert on Dispersant

The BP part, meh.

Notes on the 2010 Tulane Engineering Forum

Engineers at 2010 Tulane Engineering Forum
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

Got a chance to attend the 2010 Tulane Engineering Forum yesterday. It's been evolving into the most interesting engineering conference in the city. There's a good chunk of the city's P.E.'s that attend it every year, including lots of business owners. There's also always at least one presentation every year on the state levees. Partly because of the technical proficiency of the audience, you get some extremely in depth and thorough debate.

Last year's introductory session {PDF} was given by the Corps and I'm told they spent the whole time praising all the things that are being fixed up and all the good things the Corps has done. I'm told that there was some interesting back and forth at the end of their presentation, but I don't know the details, so that's all I'm going to say about that for now.

This year's presentation was by Dr. Dalrymple, Dr. Bolard (PE), Dr. Christian (PE), and Dr. Reed. They were a part of the National Research Council's team that worked for the Corps on LACPR, basically the task force that Congress appointed to design "Category 5 Levees."

As we all know, to date, there is no solid plan for Category 5 Levees. The most up to date thing the Corps came up with was a "menu of options" (111 in total) that was slammed when it came out. The Corps, despite billing themselves as the premier coastal engineers in the country, left it up to Congress to make the ultimate determination of what would get done. While there are some political implications (see Oyster's post), the panel went through some of the scientific and engineering challenges that also pose problems.

First to present was Dr. Dalrymple. His main points were the lack of a "sediment budget" for the lower Mississippi River. The loss of sediment load and sedimentation action is the #1 coastal loss issue, according to him. This was one of his slides:

Source

As a side note, if you were to poll the top 100 coastal Louisiana experts on what the biggest problem is, probably 95 would say either canals, primarily for oil and gas exploration, or sediment loss, primarily due to levees confining the Mississippi River. When you have someone from the Corps speak, they tend to play up the canals and when someone from the oil industry speaks, they tend to play up the sediment loss. All four presenters, while nominally affiliated with the Corps, were heavily into the sedimentation camp.

Dr. Dalryrmple went on to comment about to designing a "Category 5 Levee" system. It would be more accurate to describe what New Orleans needs as a 400-1,000 year level of storm protection. No matter what is built, some local cooperation is needed for non-structural mitigation strategies, such as zoning, building codes, and buyouts.

In the end, Dr. Dalrymple held a fairly pessimistic view of the future. When asked what was the NRC's influence on the Corps' plans, Dr. Dalrymple described it as "subtle." The audience of engineers nervously laughed.

Dr. Bolard was the next to present. He once again railed against the failure to take advantage of sediment, both with beneficial use of dredged materials and how we're still directing the majority of the sediment load that comes past the city off the continental shelf into hundreds of feet of water. 125 Million Tons per year of sediment are wasted in this way. Dr. Bolard pointed out that all of the plans from the Corps assume that we'll have basically the same coastline as we do now in 50 years, despite the fact that we lose 24 square miles of coastline per year and that trend has been more or less unchanged for 80+ years! The bulk of Dr. Bolard's remaining presentation was a complicated discussion of the Corps' attempt at using MCDA to whittle down the 111 plans into one or a few actionable items. He described the multiple attempts as failures, for a variety of reasons.

Dr. Christian was next to present and he had by far the best presentation of the group. I'll actually skip over most of his presentation because I want to come back to it in a later post. He mostly talked about the "600-lbs. gorilla in the room: the Corps' performance before during and after Katrina." He started off by listing things that Corps has done into 3 categories: things that have been blamed on the Corps, but aren't really their fault, things the Corps has done well, and thing the Corps has done "not so well."

On the things the Corps gets blamed for, but isn't really their fault, he claimed: split responsibility, Louisiana politics, and a few other minor things. He gave one example of a specific floodgate that has 5 different entities "controlling" it (railroads, roadways, the local levee board, and the Corps). He said that they looked up the operation procedures of each of the organizations and each one assumed that someone else would close the gate in the event of an approaching storm! Also, Louisiana's political scene doesn't do us any favors nationally when hunting for funds to build the levees.

Dr. Christian's list of things the Corps does well were Task Force Guardian, IPET, and the Corps' hydraulics and hydrology understanding. He particularly singled out the Vicksburg office for their understanding of hydrology.

Dr. Chrisian's list of things the Corps does "not-good" was pretty scary. First, he says that all too often you'll have a representative from the Corps, say that the Corps has never had a failure. He says that if you put enough modifiers and adjectives in there, you can get a strictly factual statement, but, in the end, THE LEVEES FAILED!

NOAA via Wikipedia

It's sad to say, but the Corps failed, the Corps failed, the Corps failed. He said it needs to be drilled in that the Corps' levees failed from Katrina's glancing blow under stresses far below their design capacity. The Corps-built levees resulted in the worst civil engineering disaster in American history. Dr. Christian was adamant that that fact not be overlooked in any way.

Dr. Christians other two serious criticisms was the Corps' geotechnical and soils analysis, especially with the New Orleans office is fundamentally flawed. He said that was his professional opinion and that he knew there were lots of people with the Corps that would take strenuous objection to the statement. Note that the debate safe water level in the outfall canals has been extremely contention because of just this issue.

Dr. Christian's last "not so good" Corps procedure was that peer review, while successfully implemented under TF Guardian and IPET, has become a "box-check" and not a real concerted effort. Getting any information out of the Corps is like pulling teeth and there's outright hostility to "outsiders" looking over the Corps' design process.

Dr. Christian made a lot of bold statements, but between the slides and his response to engineers' questions, he seemed to back them up, IMHO.

Dr. Reed was the last one to present. She spoke of the need to manage flood protection, navigation (remember, the reason New Orleans exists), and coastal restoration. We managing the lower delta (where to chop it off) is the big issue for the next 50 years. We don't have the sediment load to preserve everything that exists today, so we need to do some triage. She also mentioned that Mississippi is extremely concerned with any effort to gate the mouth of Lake Pontchartrain because of its effects on Mississippi Gulf Coast storm surges (probably increasing them).

Where does all this leave us? One attendee who saw both plenary sessions (2009 Corps and 2010 NRC/LACPR) described them as presenting "quite a different picture." Currently, we have no plan for Category 5 Levees. The Corps says they'll come out with a plan 'this summer,' but we'll see if/when it comes out and if it's just another "menu" of options. The full presentation will also eventually be uploaded to this page.


NOTE- Minor edits. Also, Dr. Christian praised the Times-Picayune coverage of the situation. He says they've done a better job of informing the locals of the challenges facing the city than anyone has ever given them credit for (and it's not like they've been ignored).

UPDATE- Looks like Mike Schleifstein made it. His article looks along the same lines as mine, but I've got a few more details and he's got a few more links. Also, he caught that the new due date for "Category 5 Levees" is July. I just caught summer.

UPDATE 2 - Presentations Online

UPDATE 3 - The Corps' summer plan is out and it's yet another "Menu of Options"

7:40

7 minutes, 40 seconds in. FYYFF. Treme is now my favorite show in the world and I haven't even watched one episode.

White House Gives Up on the Gulf Coast

So, P.E. makes a remark about Janet Woodka. Harry Shearer has been all over the story.

In summary, Obama appointed a well-qualified person to a position that he never really got behind. I'm sure she's had some sort of an accomplishment, but I can't name any and the Obama administration quickly forgot she even existed. They eventually remembered enough to kill the office off nice and quiet like.

So, how is Obama doing on the "Litmus Test?"

Last week on Bill Moyers' Journal, Princeton professor, Melissa Harris-Lacewell offered the following statement in regard to expectations for the nascent Obama Administration.

...I have a couple things I think are the most important. I think the recovery of New Orleans continues to be the central democratic litmus test of our time, that what does and does not happen in the context of recovery for the Gulf Coast tells us whether or not we value community, what we're going to do about environmental injustice, whether or not we're going to provide affordable, quality housing, and whether or not we truly believe that we are a racial democracy, one in which people of all races get to contribute.

As Jeffery puts it, Clinton II is looking more and more like a mediocre president. I'll end with a quote from Churchill:

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.*

_________________________
*(Context for original quote was in relation to the U-Boat campaign)

In Honor of Bora and the Saints, The Perfect "Pain Perdu"

Happy Bora
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

This is a photo of Bora. She's been a part of the family ever since I was born. My grandfather first hired as a sitter to help take care of his wife as she was going downhill fast from Alzheimer's. I was born just a few months before my grandmother died.

Paw-Paw liked her a lot and since he was getting up in years, wanted to keep her around. At first, his excuse was to help take care of me (and later my little brother). She taught us Creole French. She took us on the streetcar all over town. She was like a second mother to me and my little brother. As we got older, she took care of my grandfather more and us less.

When Katrina hit, her house in New Orleans East was ruined. She had insurance and Road Home money, but to this day, it's not rebuilt because she can't quite come up with the last chunk of money to finish it. I also think one of her contractors screwed her over and took the money and ran. She misses New Orleans every single day.

She still lives in Houston, where she evacuated to shortly before Katrina. She's in her eighties now, but still going strong. She's coming to our wedding in March if I have to drive there and pick her up myself. And she still watches the Saints.

Dear Saints, please win this one for Bora.


******************************
The Recipe: Bora's Perfect Pain Perdu

2 eggs (beat)
1/2-cup sugar {can be cut in half if you wuss out}
1/2-cup milk
1-2 tablespoons vanilla
Cinnamon (eye it; enough to form a slight crust on the mixture)
Stale Bread {3 day old French bread sliced 3/4" thick is about perfect}

It took me a while to really get this recipe down. I asked Bora for a recipe, but being an old Creole woman, she knows nothing of recipes or measurements. I actually had to talk her through it while holding up measuring cups to try and nail it down.

Beat the eggs and add the sugar, milk, vanilla, and cinnamon. Once it's all nice and mixed up, start soaking the bread.

Get out a big cast iron pan and get it real, real hot. Melt some butter in the pan and take the thoroughly-soaked bread and plop it in the pan. It should be really noisy when you drop it in.

Don't worry if it smokes a little. If it isn't smoking, you're doing it wrong. It doesn't take very long per side. Only a minute or two (depending on size of bread, how much you crowd the pan, etc.). If you run low on sauce, don't be afraid to stretch it with a little milk. The recipe was designed to be poor-people food.

Pile up your Lost Bread and take to the table. You can coat it with cinnamon-sugar, maple syrup (if you're a Yankee), or good 'ole powdered sugar.

10 Stories that Changed Our Lives

So, there's a bunch of end of decade lists out there. One I came across has Katrina at #10. Personally, I would have put it a bit higher (like, say #1, but that's just me). And then I noticed what #9 was: Brett Favre...

Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!
Brett Favre!

Brett Favre!

Ashley had a word for guys like this*

FM#1:
Sparks fly over New Orleans health aid. Darrell Issa opened his big fat trap and unleashed this gem:

"Is everyone so poor in Louisiana that the state cannot do more for you? Are you going to be a permanent ward of the federal government? "

First off, nice job throwing your boy, Bobby Jindal, under the bus. Trying to kill off all opposition to Sarah in 2012? Second, Kucinich put him in his place: "Our country is falling apart, and what's happening in New Orleans is a signal condition of where America's priorities are totally fouled up."

FM#2
Scott Cowen sent this email out to students, their parents, and alumni:

Good Morning:

Yesterday, City Council President Arnie Fielkow and I presented “Five Things You Should Know About New Orleans” to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. We wanted to send the national media a different kind of message regarding New Orleans.

Our main points were:

1. The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina will result in New Orleans being a better and stronger city in the future.

Katrina exposed flaws – crumbling federally-built levees (Gee, maybe you should have kept Civil Engineering around to do something about those crubling levees), a government unprepared, poverty and other signs of a community that had failed its youth. But this tragedy also awakened citizens to the need for change.

2. As a result of Katrina, New Orleans can serve as a demonstration lab for disaster recovery and transformation. (You mean like this?)

We now know how to plan for and respond to emergencies. We know the value of public/private partnerships that are revolutionizing our school system and establishing community health centers to provide medical care for the uninsured. We know how to recover our economy and even how to deal with FEMA.

3. Our recovery is a superb example of civic activism and resiliency.

Citizens voted out a wasteful system of seven tax assessors and multiple parish levee boards. They demanded funding for an inspector general to root out corruption and they banded together to demand effective and accountable government.

4. New Orleans is an iconoclastic city, which has retained its distinctiveness and charm despite the challenges and hardships it has and does face.

There are now more restaurants in New Orleans than before Katrina. We ranked first in more categories in Travel + Leisure Magazine’s 2009 “America’s Favorite Cities” survey than any other city. We are a hotbed of entrepreneurship and the quintessential sports town – hosting the Super Bowl in 2013 and the men's and women’s NCAA Final Four basketball championships in 2012 and 2013. Not to mention our undefeated Saints.

5. New Orleans has the potential to become a model city for the 21st century.

Great things are in store for New Orleans. We have gotten a taste of positive change. We want more and we aspire to be a model for the country.

I was honored to share our city’s message on a national stage. I hope you, too, will share these five things with everyone you encounter, especially out-of-town friends and family. Together, we can make the story of New Orleans known far and wide.

Have a great weekend,
Scott

As a sidenote, maybe not this year, but don't be too surprised if Cowen throws his hat into the ring for mayor sometime soon.
________________
* Title Reference

Cowen was also a favorite target of Ashley's

Chalmatians and 9th Warders have their day in court

"In a landmark decision, a federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding by Hurricane Katrina" from WDSU.

Here are a few notes and thoughts:

From the CS Monitor:

"The government's primary defense is that what we did, it did not cause this, and if it didn't cause it, there is no liability," Mark Davis, a professor at Tulane University Law School, told the Monitor this summer.

The LA Times talks about the monetary award a lot. It notes it will be years before appeals are exhausted, but the compensation could total billions. Note that this ruling would only apply to residents of Chalmette and the Lower 9th Ward. Also from the article:

He called upon the Obama administration and Congress to agree to a universal settlement -- something he said the Bush administration had pledged not to do.

O'Donnell said his team had filed a separate legal action that seeks to cover those thousands of victims in a class-action suit. He noted that the federal government had agreed to universal settlements in past cases in which it had erred, including after a 1976 failure of the Teton Dam in Idaho and the 2000 Cerro Grande fire in New Mexico, which started as a federal controlled burn.

I looked up the Teton Dam failure and found a few things that interested me, like, "On Saturday, June 5, 1976, at 7:30 a.m., a muddy leak appeared, suggesting sediment was in the water, but engineers did not believe there was a problem." Also, on the cause of the dam failure (emphasis mine):

Study of the dam's environment and structure placed blame on the collapse on the permeable Loess soil used in the core and on fissured (cracked) Rhyolite in the foundations of the dam that allowed water to seep under the dam. The permeable Loess was found to be cracked. It is postulated that the combination of these materials allowed water to seep through the dam and led to internal erosion, called piping, that eventually caused the dam's collapse.

From the American Society of Civil Engineers Report on the 2005 New Orleans Levee Failures:

Known soil stability problems played a big role in both with a very similar failure mechanism between the outfall canal failures and the Teton Dam failures. The best thing about the Teton Dam failure:

Today, Bureau of Reclamation engineers assess all Reclamation dams under strict criteria established by the Safety of Dams program. Each structure is periodically reviewed for resistance to seismic stability, internal faults and physical deterioration.

Gee, it would be a nice idea to try doing that for levees.

I still think this ruling will be overturned on "sovereignty immunity" grounds, but it's always nice to reinforce to the rest of the country that had the Corps simply designed and built the levees to spec, most of New Orleans' flooding would never have happened and we'd all be talking about how New Orleans 'dodged a bullet.' If you want to see a natural disaster, go to Buras, LA or Waveland, MS.

UPDATE- Harry Shearer weighs in. Oyster provides quotes from a judge with quite a lexicon.

Remember

Rising Tide 4: Harry Shearer

Harry Shearer is this year's keynote speaker.

Quick notes and liveblogging on Harry Shearer's keynote speech below:
* New Orleans has lost the battle in the media over the story of Katrina and the city's recovery.

* His blog posts get filled with Nola.com-esque comments about how calling New Orleanians to 'lift themselves up by their wet bootstraps, welftard.' He spends and inordinate amount of time rebutting and refuting those commenters (ARE YOU LISTENING, NOLA.COM!).

* Media Bias = LAZINESS ABOVE ALL ELSE! (Ex.- Shearer's rooftop living in L.A. story).

* Katrina as a storm vs. Katrina as a federal flood. Janet Napolitano, on a recent "fact-finding" tour of New Orleans said, "You'll never be able build a levee big enough to protect New Orleans." {Me} Oh really, that's your expert engineering opinion on the matter?

* Bloggers as the successors to journalists.

* Daily journalists/bloggers under a lot of pressure to publish everything immediately, often to the detriment to the story. Often should be tempered by more educated perspective.

* Relationships with sources. Robert Novak story about how, 'you're a source or a target, Karl Rove's "I'm a source, not a target" sign.'

* Harry Shearer's radio show coming to WWNO in New Orleans.

* Harry Shearer tries the inside game and get NOLA some love from the Obama administration. Shearer told White House rep that there wasn't any funding in the Stimulus Bill for finishing the levee work. Tries the inside game, gets the run around (for the most part). Some constructive talks with Janet Woodka, Obama's Gulf Coast Czar (who's office will be dissolved in about a month). The only care that Axelrod & Rahm have for New Orleans is to bash Bobby Jindal. Shearer is done with playing the inside game.

* Shearer talked with Brian Williams about why the Federal Flood story got buried. Brian honestly confesses that emotional sob stories are emphasized over factual stories about New Orleans. Video below:

Harry Shearer @ #RT4: On confronting Brian Williams at Tulane U in June 2006 from Crystal Kile on Vimeo.

* "Dutch Dialog" for New Orleans. Planning committee mentioned in Harry's speech.

* Had New Orleans "won" the media war, people wouldn't think that there was only a problem for people "down there."

UPDATE- Maitri has more.

UPDATE 2- Added video. Minor punctuation edits.

Lower 9th Ward: 1302 Days After Katrina

December 2005 photo by author

Looks like the Lower 9th Ward is coming back into the spotlight on a few issues:

Congregation looks to oust pastor. Looks like a crooked pastor has been sitting on a pile of money and not rebuilding his Lower 9th Ward church, so the congregation is looking to oust him and get a hold of all the financial records he's been keeping secret. Could turn out to be a microcosm of the city reflected at this little church.


CNN Revisits the Lower 9th Ward.

Cliff has been wondering what's up with the illegal dumping in the Lower 9. Looks like it's just a disgruntled employee trying to blackmail Sidney Torres, but there are a few more possibilities, like a competitor trying to take out an upstart. We'll see what other facts come out. More here.

Let the rest of America not forget that the Lower 9th Ward is all around them...


December 2008 Photo by author.

Estimating and Procrastinating

"Keystone Corps" Estimating. The Corps doubles their estimate for the cost to gate 'the funnel.' For all the Times-Pic goes on about the estimate, this one might not be their fault. Honestly, this is an incredibly difficult task right now. I've been involved in writing some detailed estimates for big projects and you either have to be so conservative you'll scare the client or you have to try to explain legitimate cost overruns. Commodity fluctuations since Y2K have made it very hard on estimators. For example steel prices shot way up, affecting piping prices. Industrial pipe (SMLS and ERW) reached the highest price they've ever been, but have slowly been declining since August. I wouldn't be surprised if the Corps estimate didn't take into account steel price changes. By the time they actually get the budget corrected, I wouldn't be surprised if steel prices have dropped enough (thanks to the Financialapocalypse) to keep things in line.

FEMA's Toxic Bureaucracy. CBS alleges Bush-era appointees are intentionally delaying reconstruction projects to ensure personal job security in their $100,000+ benefits government jobs. Who is this Doug Whitmer character and why is he still running the show? Cao and Louisiana's only useful Senator are calling for an investigation. I'll say two things: if they go for a full investigation of FEMA contracts, they're going to turn up some VERY interesting things with some VERY interesting connections. Not necessarily ones you might initially guess. Second, this article makes a some anecdotal stories I've heard within the local engineering community over the past 2 years make a lot more sense... I'll just leave it at that.

...Let the investigating begin!

Can't Sleep. Clowns will eat me.

Up real early this morning (partly because of this), so I'll post a few links.

Wonkette reports on Draft Stormy movement. "VITTER MUST BE DESTROYED!" Related: David Vitter is a jackass (Iced Coffee and a Bagel).

The Politics of Health Reform. Fascinating to get an outside perspective. A sample from the BBC:


Map of New Orleans political donations. Fascinating to click through for a while. I find it especially interesting that a lot of the old St. Charles Ave./Pickwickian-types mainly donated to Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani. Now there's money well spent!

Stimulus Battle in Perspective: Of course, the last time we saw a vote like this one was probably the 1993 vote on Clinton's first budget -- every single Republican in the chamber voted against it, hoping to prove, once and for all, that they were right about economics and Democrats were wrong. If memory serves, that budget was the first step towards the longest economic expansion on record, the creation of 22 million jobs, and the total elimination of the federal budget deficit. Related: For Republicans, there wasn't much downside to voting no.

More extensions to housing aid in Louisiana? Those overly generous subsidies to landlords is part of what's keeping market rates up. You remove those payments, the market will fall (it already has fallen from it's post-Katrina highs). Probably won't return to pre-Katrina rents, but that's unreasonable to expect.

Gulfport Mayor indicted for Katrina fraud.

Taibbi + Blago. Need I say more?

Roger Clemens has always been batshit insane. Deadspin clarifies the level of insanity: "Then Donahue would rub the hottest possible liniment on his testicles. “He’d start snorting like a bull,” the trainer said. “That’s when he was ready to pitch.” "

State Farm completely pulling out of property insurance in Florida.

Here's a few companies that have never had mass layoffs. I can thing of a few to add to the list, too (Honda, for one).

When it comes to Israel, to revive or dump the two-state solution?

Bill Gates talks about education, especially high school, and what constitutes a successful school. Two most interesting points: a kid is better off with a good teacher in a "bad" school than he is with a bad teacher in a "good" school. Also, in extremely poor areas, the schools with the longest schooldays tend to do the best.

Sad to see Cerasoli go. Oyster rounds up the reacts. One little tidbit: “People were telling me he [Nagin] was saying they would regret getting the office up and running 10 years from now.

Old media, don't piss off new media. Remember that the "Symbiotic relationship between new and old media" isn't a one way street... Also, McCain-endorser's Pedo son gets out of jail early with barely a peep from local media.

So, after closing Our Lady of Good Cousel, et. al.*, the Nazi Pope decides to embrace a Holocaust-denier and a cleric who said Katrina was God's punishment for being too kind to the gays.

Want to see Scott Cowen foam at the mouth? Mention the letters AAUP and stand back.

And for your amusement:

The Thing, remade with G.I. Joe's.

*BTW- Great comic 2 weeks ago Greg. Can't link to your comic, though, because the archives are down.

New Orleans East

DSC00217
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

Passed by Jazzland / Six Flags New Orleans on the way to Mary Queen of Vietnam. Very Spooky. Rest of the set here.

Green Dot Day

NOTE- I posted this briefly and then took it down because I was too early. Now I'm putting it back up late because I forgot

It's been 3 years since the Times-Picayune issued their infamous "Green Dot" map on the cover.

The infamous image is below:


Excellent roundup at Regional Modernism: The Map That Launched A Thousand Ships