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From 1890 through 2006, the Orleans Levee Board was the body of commissioners that oversaw the Orleans Levee District (OLD) which supervised the levee and floodwall system in Orleans Parish, Louisiana. The role of the OLD has changed over time but the primary purpose of the board was to protect New Orleans from flooding, and to protect and operate the equipment placed and assigned for that purpose. In the wake of the catastrophic levee failures in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, two new regional flood protection authorities were created to replace the multiple parochial levee boards, including Orleans Parish's Levee Board. Most of the Orleans Levee District now falls under the jurisdiction of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - East, charged with the oversight of all flood-protection infrastructure for Greater New Orleans on the East Bank of the Mississippi River. The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - West possesses the same metro-wide jurisdiction for the West Bank of the Mississippi, and it includes that portion of the Orleans Levee District on the West Bank (i.e., Algiers). Until the end of 2006, the Orleans Levee Board was a major governmental entity which functioned independently of municipal government in and around Orleans Parish. (Orleans Parish is coextensive with the city of New Orleans; their boundaries are one and the same). When Hurricana Katrina arrived in New Orleans, the OLB enjoyed ‘relatively cushy finances, pumped millions into road projects, bridges, a marina and ill-fated studies of everything from a movie studio to a fiber-optic network to a man-made island near Lake Pontchartrain’s south shore’.〔http://www.parlouisiana.com/s3web/1002087/docs/par%20news/TimesPic10012006.pdf〕 This would seem to describe how far-reaching the OLB was in its commercial interests, and it is clear that members of the OLB attended meetings to discuss issues not specifically related to engineering and flood protection. It also was becoming apparent that perhaps a different form of levee board governance might be more appropriate for a major marine terminal like New Orleans. Nevertheless, the issue of whether the members of the OLB Engineering Committee acted incompetently or negligently has not been conclusively demonstrated or proven. ==History== The pre-Katrina Orleans Levee District (OLD), governed by the Orleans Levee Board (OLB), owned considerable assets, mainly real estate, a peculiarity that stems from its history. The Orleans Levee District was created by the Louisiana legislature in 1890 for the purpose of protecting the low-lying city of New Orleans from floods. At that time, communities along the Mississippi River were largely in charge of creating their own levees to protect themselves, as no unified levee system existed. Most neighboring parishes had (and some still have) similar parochial levee boards. In the early twentieth century, the OLD reclaimed a portion of Lake Pontchartrain, a 24-mile wide lake north of New Orleans. The OLD developed the land and sold it to raise money to build and improve levees. Starting in the 1920s, the Board undertook a massive flood-protection initiative involving the construction of a stepped seawall several hundred feet north of a portion of the existing south shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The intervening area was filled to several feet above sea level and was to serve as a "super levee" protecting the city from the Lake's storm surge. The Lake Vista, Lake Oaks, Lake Terrace, East and West Lakeshore subdivisions and other property between Robert E. Lee Blvd and Lake Pontchartrain are all examples of the OLB's developed properties. In 1924, the state legislature authorized the OLB to acquire 33,000 acres (130 km²) of land on the east bank of the Mississippi River about south of New Orleans in order to build the Bohemia Spillway between the River and the Gulf of Mexico. (''1924 La. Acts 99''). Approximately half of this land was public property transferred from the state; the other half was either expropriated, or purchased under threat of expropriation, from private owners according to a legal finding. (''1928 La. Acts 246; 1942 La. Acts 311''). In the aftermath of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the U.S. Congress gave the United States Army Corps of Engineers supervision and control over the design and construction of flood-control infrastructure throughout the Mississippi River Valley. In 1934, New Orleans Lakefront Airport opened on land dredged from Lake Pontchartrain by the Levee Board, part of a larger "lakefill" land-reclamation project initiated to construct a super levee for the protection of the northern perimeter of the city. The airport was originally named "Shushan Airport" after Orleans Levee Board president Abraham Lazar Shushan; it was renamed "New Orleans Airport" after Shushan's indictment for corruption in the Louisiana Scandals of the late 1930s. Governor Jimmie Davis, in his second term from 1960 to 1964, named the New Orleans attorney Gerald J. Gallinghouse as the president of the levee board. In that capacity, Gallinghouse delivered more than 300 speeches warning of the need to be prepared for weather disasters, another of which was on its way, Hurricane Betsy.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Gerald Joseph Gallinghouse )〕 After extensive flooding during Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Congress ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers henceforth to design and build flood protection in the ''Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project''. The OLB became the local sponsor, and its duties regarding flood protection were now limited to collecting 30% cost-share for project design and construction and maintaining the completed structures. Despite Congress’s mandate that the Corps now had the authority to design/build flood protection, the OLB still retained extensive assets which had to be managed. A 2002 lawsuit detailed the Orleans Levee Board's considerable independent financial means. From the Levee Board's Legal Statement at trial: :"With regard to the more general question of the levee district's budget, the Orleans Levee District receives very little funding from the state. The levee district generates its own revenues from the Lakefront Airport, a casino, leases of property, fees from boat slips and marinas, and taxes. The district also receives income from various investment accounts currently worth $57 million. The levee board does not dispute these facts. At oral argument, counsel for the levee board pointed out that the district receives some state funds, even though they are usually in the form of capital outlays dedicated to specific projects. Because the state funds are already earmarked for other purposes, the state monies cannot be used to pay a judgment against the levee district. See Hudson, 174 F.3d at 688-89." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Orleans Levee Board」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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