Truth Farmer

$25 Million of Dirtwork at Bird’s Point

Last year I did a rather thorough piece on the aftermath of the Bird’s Point Levee intentional breach. If you are unfamiliar with that issue, please read my article here. Just for a little back ground, it was recently reported in the South East Missourian that $25 million had been spent on the “restoration” of the levee thus far. Then, on June 20th, it was reported in the same paper that work couldn’t progress on the project (restoring the levee to 55 feet) because the Army Corps of Engineers had received an objection in their reward of contract for an additional $20million.

Today, it was reported that work would begin again on the levee restoration project.

To put this in perspective, if you paid $250 per hour to 10 dozer operators, you would spend $20,000 per day. At that rate, for $25,000,000 in tax payer dollars, you could have 10 dozers working full time for 3.4 years! 1250 days. If you add the new expenditures of $20 million to it, you would have ten dozers working 8 hours a day, five days a week for the next 6.16 years.

The breach in the levee was 2 full miles long. When I was in school, a mile was 5,280 feet. That means that the two-mile breach is 10, 560 linear feet. Thus, to date, nearly $2400 per linear foot has been spent on bringing the “levee” a fair bit short of its original height. After the disputed $20 million is spent, the cost per linear foot will be $4261 per linear foot.

This is the government’s idea of restoring a levee.

While they may be out there somewhere, I have never found any figure given for the cost of blowing the perfectly working levee up. So whatever the cost of a couple of barges hauling pumpable explosives up the Mississippi might be, add that to the University of Missouri’s projected crop loss of $85 million, and you have a massive expense to the entire nation. One that is currently nearly 16 trillion dollars in debt, can ill afford these kind of boondoggle expenses.

On March 25th of this year, my family and I found ourselves in the general area of Bird’s Point Levee and drove down the entire length of the blown out section. Here are the photos of your tax dollars at work, with a little commentary from time to time to help you with understanding what you are looking at in the photos.

The plastic was already torn away when I took this pic. The green material feels rather like a scrubee pad for doing dishes, and like there is sand behind the green material.

A lonely dozer at the end of the breach.

The sandbags are really expensive here!

The bottom line is, who is being treated respectfully and fairly by the way this issue is being handled? The Citizens? With over $120 million of losses if you bother to figure crop loss into the equation? Or the undisclosed entities making $4k per linear foot if this job is ever completed?

This is a shovel ready job….Bring yours!

===I was made aware that there was actually a third breach at the levee. It was at a location known as Seven Island Conservation Area. The footage on the three breaches are: the main breach referred to as Bird’s Point, 9,000 feet, Seven Island breach, 800 feet and Donaldson Point is stated as being 4700 feet.

This should clear up any confusion caused by not having complete information. This issue is huge, and the cost has yet be fully tabulated. The effects on lives is impossible to calculate.===