This saddens me and angers me at the same time.
Pumps of any kind are usless anyway with broken levees.
The whole situation down there just stinks like rotten fish.
Why does America put up with this blatant corruption in it's face?
3-13-2007 Jeb Bush former business partner wins contract for New Orleans pumps and delivers faulty units
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.
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.
MWI has run into trouble before. The U.S. Justice Department sued the company in 2002, accusing it of fraudulently helping Nigeria obtain $74 million in taxpayer-backed loans for overpriced and unnecessary water-pump equipment. The case has yet to be resolved.
Because of the trouble with the New Orleans pumps, the Corps has withheld 20 percent of the MWI contract, including an incentive of up to $4 million that the company could have collected if it delivered the equipment in time for the 2006 hurricane season.
The pumps, 60 inches in diameter and capable of moving 200 cubic feet of water per second, are run by pressurized hydraulic oil. The supercharged oil cranks up a hydraulic motor, which in turn spins water-moving propellers.
The pumps failed less-strenuous testing than the original contract called for, according to the memo. Originally, each of the 34 pumps was to be "load tested" ? made to pump water ? but that requirement for all the pumps was dropped, the memo said.
Of eight pumps that were load tested, one was turned on for a few minutes and another was run at one-third of operating pressure, the memo said. Three of the other load-tested pumps "experienced catastrophic failure," Garzino wrote.
=====================================================
Did she really not know the pumps installed were junk?
3-14-2007 La. governor outraged over faulty pumps
NEW ORLEANS - Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco lashed out at the Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday for installing defective pumps at three major drainage canals just before the start of last summer's hurricane season.
"This could put a lot of our people in jeopardy," Blanco said. "It begs the question: Are we really safe?"
She called for a congressional investigation into how the Corps allowed it to happen.
Citing internal documents, The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the Corps installed the 34 pumps last year in a rush to fix the city's flood defenses, despite warnings from one of its experts that the machinery was defective and likely to fail in a storm.
At the same time, the Corps, the White House and state officials were telling residents that it was safe to come back to New Orleans, which was devastated in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina breached the city's floodwalls.
On Wednesday, Donald Powell, the administration's Gulf Coast hurricane recovery czar, said that he was never shown the memo, and that assurances he made that New Orleans was as safe as or safer than it was before Katrina were based on information he got from the Corps.
As for whether the city was as safe as the Corps claimed, Powell said: "We got through a hurricane season without a hurricane so we didn't have to answer that question."
But he said residents should not panic as the new hurricane season approaches. "The corps is working as fast it can to get the systems back up. The levee system is better than it has ever been," he said.
Pumps of any kind are usless anyway with broken levees.
The whole situation down there just stinks like rotten fish.
Why does America put up with this blatant corruption in it's face?
3-13-2007 Jeb Bush former business partner wins contract for New Orleans pumps and delivers faulty units
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.
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.
MWI has run into trouble before. The U.S. Justice Department sued the company in 2002, accusing it of fraudulently helping Nigeria obtain $74 million in taxpayer-backed loans for overpriced and unnecessary water-pump equipment. The case has yet to be resolved.
Because of the trouble with the New Orleans pumps, the Corps has withheld 20 percent of the MWI contract, including an incentive of up to $4 million that the company could have collected if it delivered the equipment in time for the 2006 hurricane season.
The pumps, 60 inches in diameter and capable of moving 200 cubic feet of water per second, are run by pressurized hydraulic oil. The supercharged oil cranks up a hydraulic motor, which in turn spins water-moving propellers.
The pumps failed less-strenuous testing than the original contract called for, according to the memo. Originally, each of the 34 pumps was to be "load tested" ? made to pump water ? but that requirement for all the pumps was dropped, the memo said.
Of eight pumps that were load tested, one was turned on for a few minutes and another was run at one-third of operating pressure, the memo said. Three of the other load-tested pumps "experienced catastrophic failure," Garzino wrote.
=====================================================
Did she really not know the pumps installed were junk?
3-14-2007 La. governor outraged over faulty pumps
NEW ORLEANS - Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco lashed out at the Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday for installing defective pumps at three major drainage canals just before the start of last summer's hurricane season.
"This could put a lot of our people in jeopardy," Blanco said. "It begs the question: Are we really safe?"
She called for a congressional investigation into how the Corps allowed it to happen.
Citing internal documents, The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the Corps installed the 34 pumps last year in a rush to fix the city's flood defenses, despite warnings from one of its experts that the machinery was defective and likely to fail in a storm.
At the same time, the Corps, the White House and state officials were telling residents that it was safe to come back to New Orleans, which was devastated in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina breached the city's floodwalls.
On Wednesday, Donald Powell, the administration's Gulf Coast hurricane recovery czar, said that he was never shown the memo, and that assurances he made that New Orleans was as safe as or safer than it was before Katrina were based on information he got from the Corps.
As for whether the city was as safe as the Corps claimed, Powell said: "We got through a hurricane season without a hurricane so we didn't have to answer that question."
But he said residents should not panic as the new hurricane season approaches. "The corps is working as fast it can to get the systems back up. The levee system is better than it has ever been," he said.
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