NOLA pumps were faulty, not ready for last year's hurricane season....still not working properly

As suspected the pumps in New Orleans were not ready last summer.  The AP reports documents they have obtained chronicled that the pumps were defective and would have failed during a storm....and ACE knew it.....

NEW ORLEANS - The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet President Bush's promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a storm, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The 2006 hurricane season turned out to be mild, and the new pumps were never pressed into action. But the Corps and the politically connected manufacturer of the equipment are still struggling to get the 34 heavy-duty pumps working properly.

SNIP

The drainage-canal pumps were custom-designed and built under a $26.6 million contract awarded after competitive bidding to Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Fla. It was founded in 1926 and supplies flood-control and irrigation pumps all over the world.

MWI is owned by J. David Eller and his sons. Eller was once a business partner of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps. And Eller has donated about $128,000 to politicians, the vast majority of it to the Republican Party, since 1996, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

SNIP

Misgivings about the pumps were chronicled in a May 2006 memo provided to the AP by Matt McBride, a mechanical engineer and flooded-out Katrina victim who, like many in New Orleans, has been closely watching the rebuilding of the city's flood defenses.

The memo was written by Maria Garzino, a Corps mechanical engineer overseeing quality assurance at an MWI test site in Florida. The Corps confirmed the authenticity of the 72-page memo, which details many of the mechanical problems and criticizes the testing procedures used.

SNIP

In her memo, Garzino told corps officials that the equipment being installed was defective. She warned that the pumps would break down "should they be tasked to run, under normal use, as would be required in the event of a hurricane." (all emphasis mine)

Matt McBride who provided the document to AP is the author of an excellent blog called Fix the Pumps. So follow his blog to see if the pumps will be ready this year.

Comments

[Grandmère Mimi]

Nothing new here. Move along. Move along.

Sadly this is true. This is just the latest in a long series of failures by the US Corps of Engineers. The surprise would come if they did something right.

[dan mcenroe]

Bush-El...isn't that Superman's corrupt, money grubbing uncle who installed faulty computers on Krypton that might have warned them of the planet's impending doom?

All kidding aside, I'd want to take a closer look at the bidding process that just happened to award this plum contract to a buddy of Jeb's. And I'm just dumbstruck that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the politically connected companies the Bush administration has given a plum contract to has completely fucked up the job. I can't even get my head around it. They all suck. In NOLA and Iraq. How is this possible?

I mean, I'm not naive enough to think that some of them actually have a conscience, but I would think that one of them - just one of them - might realize the prudent thing to do when you get a plum contract that you probably didn't deserve is NOT FUCK UP THE CONTRACT and keep those sweet gov't dollars flowing into your coffers. Also, companies that don't fuck up their contracts rarely get investigated.

I'm going to write a book: Rich Dad, DON'T FUCK SHIT UP Dad.