Knowledge

The Corps of Engineers knew about the potential failure of the levee. How come they didn't report to the Commander-in-Ineptitude? Afraid for their jobs, maybe? Somebody beside Drownie needs to be held accountable. Where is the ReThug mantra of personal responsibility?

"The corps called it an unforeseen combination of events that split the earthen levee and toppled the floodwall.

But Raymond B. Seed and Robert G. Bea, in charge of the National Science Foundation's Independent Levee Investigation Team, said Monday that the results should have been foreseen, given the results of a 1985 test done near Morgan City in south-central Louisiana. The test was done at an Atchafalaya Basin levee and floodwall system built to test whether a design similar to that of the 17th Street Canal levee and floodwall would work.

The test ended when — with water nearly 8 feet high along the test floodwall — sheet piles supporting it inside the levee began tilting backward, 'indicating that failure was imminent,' the statement said.

'Not only did they have that in their repertoire of information, they failed to use it, as best we can tell,' Seed said in a telephone interview from the University of California at Berkeley.

The Corps' Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, which issued its report Friday, did know about that test, Corps spokesman Wayne Stroupe said. He said he would forward Seed's and Bea's statement to a Corps scientist for a response.

Seed and Bea said the soft clay behind the levee also should have been known to the corps."

Emphasis added.