katrina

for those of you who haven't been following... the cnn headline for today. They originally promoted their flood control as having the potential of mitigating 5+ feet of water... oops - damn plus and minus signs - they always get me too:

But in a report released November 7, Corps scientists estimated that the actual benefit the system would provide would be just 6 inches.

The discrepancy was tucked into the voluminous report's appendices, and neither the Corps nor the scientists hired to conduct the study brought the changes to the public's attention when the report was released. It wasn't until New Orleans television station WWL-TV asked an engineer involved in the assessment about the discrepancy that it became known.

"We've made some corrections," the engineer, Ed Link, told The Associated Press on Friday night.

Link said the mistakes were apparently made in the calculations for two sub-basins that include Lakeview and nearby neighborhoods. In one, a minus sign was used instead of a plus sign.

Ivor van Heerden, a hurricane and levee expert with Louisiana State University, said the mistakes are the latest example of sloppiness and a lack of scientific peer review in Corps work.

"It's people's lives we're playing with and all we're getting is fuzzy science," van Heerden said.

Walter Baumy, a chief Corps engineer in New Orleans, said he was unfamiliar with the mistakes, but said, "I wouldn't contest what Dr. Link says."

the whole situation in new orleans is a sad one on many accounts. why can't they just recognize that the environmental (and social) issues there are larger than they have been and apparently are currently prepared to deal with??? and oh yea do this before more people die, lose their homes and all of their posessions...etc...