POAC XII: No one expected the levees to fail

Ho-hum. I already know how this one will shake out, even without POAC's dismal record.

No one expected the levees to fail.

Just remember that this claim was with respect to Katrina. Keep that in mind as we proceed.

2001 Houston Chronicle: FEMA ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most castastrophic disasters facing this country.

One can have a big disaster without failed levees. Looks like we'll have to go in deeper to find the antidote to the so-called "talking point."

Turns out there only two mentions of the levee system in the whole story. Here's one:

New Orleans is essentially a bowl ringed by levees that protect the city from the Mississippi River to its south and Lake Pontchartrain to the north. The bottom of the bowl is 14 feet below sea level, and efforts to keep it dry are only digging a deeper hole.
During routine rainfalls the city's dozens of pumps push water uphill into the lake. This, in turn, draws water from the ground, further drying the ground and sinking it deeper, a problem known as subsidence.
This problem also faces Houston as water wells have sucked the ground dry. Houston's solution is a plan to convert to surface drinking water. For New Orleans, eliminating pumping during a rainfall is not an option, so the city continues to sink.
A big storm, scientists said, would likely block four of five evacuation routes long before it hit. Those left behind would have no power or transportation, and little food or medicine, and no prospects for a return to normal any time soon.
"The bowl would be full," Levitan said. "There's simply no place for the water to drain."
(Houston Chronicle, LSU site)

And here's the other:

University of New Orleans researchers studied the impact of Breaux Act projects on the vanishing wetlands and estimated that only 2 percent of the loss has been averted. Clearly, Bahr said, there is a need for something much bigger. There is some evidence this finally may be happening.
A consortium of local, state and federal agencies is studying a $2 billion to $3 billion plan to divert sediment from the Mississippi River back into the delta. Because the river is leveed all the way to the Gulf, where sediment is dumped into deep water, nothing is left to replenish the receding delta.
Other possible projects include restoration of barrier reefs and perhaps a large gate to prevent Lake Pontchartrain from overflowing and drowning the city.
All are multibillion-dollar projects.
(ibid)

Sorry, POAC. That's not how you establish that nobody thought that the levees would fail. Unless you're an idiot.

This entry by itself makes POAC worthy of induction to the BBB Blogroll. But I'll stick to the plan.

Addendum:
I originally expected the levee issue to center on the difference between the levees being breached and the levees being overtopped.
The "gotcha" quote from Bush concerns the break in the levee that flooded sections of the city after Katrina. The mainstream press promptly took that to mean that nobody expected the levees to be overtopped by the storm surge--the reporting on that point was pretty consistently inept in the mainstream press.

It occurred to me that the confusion on that point might make it appear that POAC did a better job making their point than I have judged.

The talking point concerns a break in the levees. The Houston Chronicle article concerns water overtopping the levees. The article assumes that the levees will not give way, or at least makes no mention of it.