Save Our Wetlands Accused of Green Genocide - SOWL Refutes Blame for Sinking New Orleans

June 16, 2007 - SOWL Responds to "Overzealous wetlands protection cost us dearly" - On June 16, 2007 Deborah Settoon wrote a letter to New Orleans Times Picayune full of half truths and misinformation, blaming SOWL for flooding New Orleans by enjoining the Corps' Chef Menteur Barriers in 1976. She also made a personal threat against SOWL.
March 21, 2007 - Corps Caused Disaster, Report Says; State Inquiry Finds Decades of Blunders - Decades of incompetence and neglect by the Army Corps of Engineers allowed Hurricane Katrina's storm surge to devastate New Orleans, according to a long-awaited report being released today, the state's only official investigation into the causes of the disaster.
June 1, 2006 - Corps Takes Blame for New Orleans Flooding - A contrite U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took responsibility Thursday for the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and said the levees failed because they were built in a disjointed fashion using outdated data.

Nov. 1, 2005 - Letter to Dr. Gregory Stone, SOWL Disputes Sen. James Inhofe Statements - Senator Inhofe using the good name of Dr. Gregory Stone and the LSU Coastal Studies Institute to label SOWL as an "extremist environmental group,"resulting in a barrage of hate, threatening, intimidating, violent attacks on SOWL-even accusing SOWL of murdering the people of New Orleans.

Oct. 12, 2005 - HBP Would Not Have Saved New Orleans - After Hurricane Betsy in 1965, plans developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to protect New Orleans from a strong hurricane were short-sighted and flawed.

Oct. 10, 2005 - GAO Report Exonerates SOWL In Barrier Dispute - According to the recent GAO report, "Corps staff believe that flooding would have been worse if the original proposed design had been built because the storm surge would likely have gone over the top of the barrier and floodgates, flooded Lake Pontchartain, and gone over the original lower levees planned for the Lakefront area as part of the barrier plan."

Sept. 28, 2005 - GAO Report on Corps' Hurricane Barrier Project - United States Accountability Office, Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives - Army Corps of Engineers: Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project.

Sept. 15, 2005 - Press Release: SOWL Falsely Accused of "Green Genocide" - The article goes on about how Save Our Wetlands, Inc. (SOWL) by enjoining these “floodgate barriers” committed murder upon the people of New Orleans all for some fish over human lives. The article falsely states that Hurricane Katrina pushed Lake Pontchartrain over the flood walls...the spilling water then undermined the walls, and they toppled.”

Sept. 12, 2005 - Joseph Towers Assertion That Environmentalists Are to Blame for Katrina’s Damage is 'Pure Fiction'. - Towers, a retired chief counsel of the Army Corps of Engineers is quoted in the Sept. 9, 2005 Los Angeles Times. “My feeling was that saving human lives was more important than saving a percentage of shrimp and crab in Lake Pontchartrain."

Sept. 12, 2005 - Editorial: SOWL Responds to L.A. Times Article - On Sept.9, 2005 the Los Angeles Times ran a story quoting Joe Towers, former general counsel of the United States Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans Division, that the Corps' Hurricane Barrier Project (HBP) would have saved New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, if only United States District Court Judge Charles Schwartz, Jr. had not issued an injunction against it. Save Our Wetlands Inc. (SOWL) was one of the plaintiffs. "If we had built the barriers, New Orleans would not be flooded," said Joe Towers

Sept. 9, 2005 - A Barrier That Could Have Been - In the wake of Hurricane Betsy 40 years ago, Congress approved a massive hurricane barrier to protect New Orleans from storm surges that could inundate the city. But the project, signed into law by President Johnson, was derailed in 1977 by an environmental lawsuit. Now the question is: Could that barrier have protected New Orleans from the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina?

Sept. 8, 2005 - New Orleans: A Green Genocide - As radical environmentalists continue to blame the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation on President Bush’s ecological policies, a mainstream Louisiana media outlet inadvertently disclosed a shocking fact: Environmentalist activists were responsible for spiking a plan that may have saved New Orleans. Decades ago, the Green Left – pursuing its agenda of valuing wetlands and topographical “diversity” over human life – sued to prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from building floodgates that would have prevented significant flooding that resulted from Hurricane Katrina.

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