Michael Parker, who was forced by Bush to resign as assistant secretary of the Army for civil works after accusing the White House of shortchanging the Corps of Engineers, said the culprit is not the president but government-wide resistance to investing long-term in projects such as flood control.
"You have watched during a period of 72 hours a modern city of New Orleans [become] a Third World country, and it is all because of the disintegration of infrastructure," Parker said. "Everybody is to blame -- it transcends administrations. It transcends party."
Parker, a former Republican congressman from Mississippi, said the biggest institutional obstacle to protecting levees and bridges and waterways is the Office of Management and Budget, which has sought to rein in the Corps of Engineers' budget under Bush and predecessors. Critics say the corps sometimes works with lawmakers to secure congressional spending authority on wasteful programs.
Local and federal officials have long warned that funding shortages in the New Orleans area would have consequences. They sounded the alarm as recently as last summer when they complained that federal budget cuts had stopped major work on New Orleans east bank hurricane levees for the first time in 37 years. Al Naomi, the senior project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, reported at the time that he was getting only half as much money as he needed and that much of the funding was being used to pay contractors for past work.
"When levees are below grade, as ours are in many spots right now, they're more vulnerable to waves pouring over them and degrading them," Naomi told the Times-Picayune of New Orleans. Walter Maestri, the emergency management chief in Jefferson Parish (county), at the time linked the funding shortfall to the cost of the Iraq war. "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay," he told the newspaper. Maestri added, "For us, this levee is part and parcel of homeland security because it helps protect us 365 days a year."
One project that has drawn attention in recent days is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, commonly called SELA, which began a decade ago to improve flood protection in a network of improved drainage canals and pump stations in Orleans and Jefferson parishes.
The project, which is supposed to cost $744 million overall, has been shortchanged recently, according to advocates. The corps said it needed $62.5 million next fiscal year; Bush proposed $10.5 million.
This provoked howls of protest from the Louisiana congressional delegation. "All of us said, 'Look, build it or you're going to have all of Jefferson Parish under water,' " recalled former senator John Breaux, a Democrat who is a Bush ally. "And they didn't, and now all of Jefferson Parish is under water."
Floods Ravage New Orleans