[StBernard] My response to Donald Powell - an opinion edtorial

[Westley Annis]

Dear Families and Friends of metro New Orleans Levee Breach victims,
Below is a letter I sent to the Washington Post in response to Donald
Powell\'s letter on Thursday Feb 2.    
Sandy

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Dear Readers of the Washington Post,

On Thursday, in this publication Donald Powell, the Gulf Coast
reconstruction czar defended Congress\' refusal to back the Baker Bill
while offering no alternative.  At present, Congress is willing to
help roughly 20,000 of the 200,000 flooded homeowners in Greater New
Orleans.  This is outrageous because both Powell and the
administration HAVE YET TO ACKNOWLEDGE that our failed levees are the
handiwork of the federal government.

Our beautiful city is destroyed and more than one thousand have died
because the levees collapsed.  This should not have happened because
Katrina missed metro New Orleans. We sustained the winds of a Cat 1
and the storm surge of a Cat 2 yet levees broke all over the city -
many without being over topped.

The levees failed because they were not properly designed, and the
responsibility for the design and the construction of the levees
belongs by federal law to the US Army Corps of Engineers -a federal
agency.

Metro New Orleans was not wiped out by a hurricane.  Metro New Orleans
was wiped out by a federal project gone wrong.
We the citizens of Greater New Orleans stand together and say to
America, and especially our nation\'s leaders, we were flooded because
of federal failures that engineering experts are calling the worst
engineering failure in US history.

We hold the federal government and the US Army Corps of Engineers
accountable for what happened to us!

It is time for Congress to acknowledge the federal government\'s
central role in the flood.

And at nearly 5 months later, it is high time that Congress accepts
their responsibility and set aside the appropriate funding to rebuild
our homes.

Sincerely
Sandy Rosenthal
Founder, Hold the Corps Accountable
www.levees.org