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 and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana called for a congressional investigation into how the Corps allowed it to happen.
"If they can't design, build and install a pump that works, then maybe they shouldn't be doing any of the work," Landrieu said.
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.
"We were asking the Corps to do the job as fast as possible to get the condition of the levee back to make it as safe as possible," Powell said.
Because the 2006 hurricane season was mild, the new pumps were never put to the test.
The Corps and the politically connected manufacturer of the equipment, Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Fla., are still struggling to get the 34 pumps, designed and built under a $26.6 million contract, working properly.
The pumps have been plagued by excessive vibration, overheated engines, broken hoses and blown gaskets.
"You want to build confidence, but you have to tell it like it is," said Gwen Bierria, 65, who is rebuilding her home with her husband next to one of two canals that were breached during Katrina.
"It's like being pregnant; sooner or later it's going to show," she said. "And Katrina was a big-time show."
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 decision to use these guys was not political; there was no connection there," said Frederick Young, a former Corps project manager who oversaw much of the work with the pumps.
When the decision was made to go to larger-diameter hydraulic pumps on the canals, MWI was the only "manufacturer that was agreeable to our timetable" of getting the pumps in place by June 1, Young said. Young said he had recommended using dozens of smaller pumps that had already been proven to work.
The Corps kept the memo detailing problems with the pumps within the ranks, Young said. Corps officials in New Orleans did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
William R. Scherer Jr., an attorney for MWI, said that the company's job had serious constraints and that the Corps changed its specifications, requiring an overhaul of the pumps.
"All I know is that the pumps that were installed met the capacity requirements; they perform as designed if called upon," he said. "We believe the people in New Orleans benefited by MWI being there, both by the portable and the temporary pumps."
The U.S. Justice Department sued MWI 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.
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.
The Corps said it decided to press ahead with installation of the pumps because some pumping capacity was better than none.
The 34 pumps were installed in the drainage canals that take water from this bowl-shaped, below-sea-level city and deposit it in Lake Pontchartrain. They represented a new ring of protection that was added to New Orleans' flood defenses after Katrina. The city also relies on miles of levees and hundreds of other pumps in various locations.
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Associated Press writer Melinda Deslatte contributed to this story from Baton Rouge.
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