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Wait, is this supposed to be a reason or excuse for not repairing the levees and risking people's lives? “It’s a low-income area,” Stu Townsley, the US army co

• UncleEntity 4y ago
  Because when it comes time to allocate budgets and schedule projects the priority goes to their neighbors up in Silicon Valley. California…
• Kon-Peki 4y ago
  It's not acceptable. You should click the link that is the source of that quote. The guy is not heartless; he's lamenting the situation. > But three years ago, “as part of the overall environmental justice resetting of the federal government Corps of Engineers, OMB, Congress, all recognized that if you exclusively looked at benefit-cost ratios you wouldn’t fund projects in areas that were typically lower-income,” Townsley said. > So the Corps initiated a study that resulted in a report demonstrating “there would be some value for life safety, even though the project benefit-cost ratio was pretty close to unity for the costs to equal the benefits,” he said. ... > “It’s tragic that we got this just before we’re starting construction,” Townsley said, referring to the breach and flooding. Later on: > Although the Army Corps had close to $150 million in federal funding, state and local communities were required to foot 50% of the cost, of which up to 70% was the state’s responsibility. The rest fell on local communities. There you go.