Mayor Nagin filed a $77 billion lawsuit against the US Army Corps of engineers for the levees breaking in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Despite the fact that billions of dollars have already been allocated to the rebuilding of the storm damaged Gulf Coast, Mayor Ray Nagin is going for the big money grab:
Only $1 billion of the $77 billion the city is seeking from the Army Corps of Engineers is for infrastructure damages it says it suffered because of levee breaches during Hurricane Katrina. The rest is for such things as the city’s tarnished image and tourist industry losses.
The city “looked at everything and just kind of piled it on,” Mayor Ray Nagin said.
“We got some advice from some attorneys to be aggressive with the number, and we’ll see what happens,” he said.
Don Surber notes that “that works out to $158,869.67 for every one of the 484,674 people who lived in New Orleans as of the 2000 Census.”
I’m sure that this money — if awarded — would be stolen, looted, and squandered just like the money that’s been pouring into New Orleans for decades for the upkeep and maintenance of those same levees.
From the LawHawk:
Let’s get this straight. Tens of billions of dollars was set aside by the federal government for rebuilding areas affected by the Gulf Coast hurricanes, and while some areas have done a good job at using the money to rebuild, others have not.
Such as New Orleans, which Amy Ridenour from the National Center Blog calls The Cindy Sheehan of Cities:
New Orleans is the Cindy Sheehan of cities: Because it suffered a loss, most people are too kind to say anything about its outrageous behavior. I think maybe it is time to stop being kind.
As for New Orlean’s “tarnished” image, this commenter at Don Suber’s Daily Mail blog hits it right on the nose:
NO’s image is tarnished all right — thanks to the breathtaking corruption, greed and malfeasance of the ruling Democrats and the criminal and pathological behaviors of a large portion of the population.
For actual damages, Nagin should sue the one person entirely responsible for the devestation to his city: Hurricane Katrina (or Mother Nature, if you prefer). As to the punitive damages that he seeks, he should sue himself, the governor of Lousiana, and a good portion of the citizens of New Orleans who have contributed to the demise and decadence of their own city.
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In the 60′s congress put responsibility of the “hurricane protection system” of the New Orleans region under the Army Corp. In the 80′s they began construction. For years people were told that they had protection for a “slow moving cat 3″. That was not the case.
Katrina missed and wiped out Mississippi. While the surge was strong the system in New Orleans and many of the surrounding areas should have held. The 17th Street and London Ave. Canal walls (which breached in 3 locations) collapsed while the water was still 3-4 feet below their design limits. Those 3 breaches caused almost all of the flooding in the “bowl†of New Orleans. The levees on the Industrial Canal and the MRGO dissolved after brief periods of overtopping. The system failed in over 50 locations in southeast Louisiana.
The flooding was not a natural disaster, but a man-made disaster. The hurricane protection system built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was poorly designed, constructed and maintained by that agency, a part of our national government. The system was never built as high as we were told, and it failed due to faulty engineering.
This is not my opinion – it was the judgment of the Corps own IPET report after its year-long, $10 million in-house investigation. “The hurricane protection system in New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana was a system in name only.” “This is the first time the Corps has had to stand up and say we had a catastrophic failure of one of our projects,” says chief engineer Lt. Gen. Carl Strock.
Oh, and the paper filed by the city is not a lawsuit. It is the declaration of damages that is required to file a suit in the future. On one week’s notice the deadline was changed from 2 years to 18 months.