Army Corp of Engineers to New Orleans-area Residents: “Never Mind”
[Guest post by DRJ]
Last Friday, the Army Corp of Engineers announced it had put a minus sign in a calculation instead of a plus sign resulting in a miscalculation that understated the flood level by 4-5 feet in Lakeview and Old Metairie. However, after rechecking the numbers, the Corp discovered it did not make an error:
“The Army Corps of Engineers has a message for Lakeview and Old Metairie residents worried about a recent announcement that their flood risk hasn’t improved much at all: Never mind.
Turns out, the corps was right when it announced in June that new gates and levee repairs would reduce flooding in those areas by up to 5 1/2 feet if the city is hit by a 100-year hurricane.
But on Friday, the agency spooked residents by announcing it put a minus sign in a calculation that called for a plus sign, and that the maps underestimated flooding by 5 feet in Lakeview and 4 feet in Old Metairie.
“The maps we put out in June (showing dramatic reductions in flooding in the two areas) are correct,” said Ed Link, leader of the corps-sponsored Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force.
After two days of checking and rechecking, Link said Sunday that the numbers in a table in the IPET team’s long-awaited risk study were wrong, but the numbers used to make the maps were right. “I cannot explain yet why those tables have incorrect numbers in them,” he said. “But the most important thing here is that we are not misinforming the people of New Orleans.”
The best part of this New Orleans Times-Picayune article is the first comment left on the website’s blog entry: “They thought they made a mistake but they were wrong.”
— DRJ
That is so classic.
Christoph (92b8f7) — 11/18/2007 @ 9:00 pmAmusing, but… can you honestly name someone who hasn’t done this? You thought you locked your keys in the car, but you hadn’t. You thought you left the iron on, but you didn’t. You got a notice of a failure to pay a bill and believed it was your fault at first, but then discovered it was theirs.
Their big loss is that they announced the erroneous error before they’d had a chance to really check it out – probably because they were afraid if they didn’t immediately grovel about it that someone would squeal to the press and they’d be accused of a cover-up.
Don (c9e244) — 11/19/2007 @ 7:15 amAnd how many people lost their homes and property becuase of the eco-wackos idiotic regulations? SCREW THE GREENS
krazy kagu (0c7fb2) — 11/19/2007 @ 7:43 amIf you’re going to make a mistake, you can’t go too wrong when your mistake is… thinking you’ve made a mistake.
chaos (9c54c6) — 11/19/2007 @ 10:47 amIf I were living there, I would not trust this, at least until someone not from government goes over the details. Either they made a major mistake the first time, or a major mistake the second time. Either way, that does not give me any great confidence in them.
Not to mention the first two laws of bureaucracy:
kishnevi (2e0ef8) — 11/19/2007 @ 8:26 pm1 Announce that everything is just fine
2 Blame someone else when 1 becomes impossible to put into practice