Bush's campaign last year after serving as his chief of staff in Texas. "I wanted to take a step back," said Allbaugh, who managed George W. He said he didn't see any harm in giving the developers one last chance to present their data. He said that at the time, he was too busy dealing with the deadly Tropical Storm Allison to focus properly on the complex issues surrounding the South Carolina project. Graham (R-S.C.) and other supporters of the firm's Green Diamond project. In an interview, Allbaugh said he was not influenced by his general counsel's meeting with Douglas Wendel, president of the Myrtle Beach-based development firm Burroughs & Chapin, or by his own talks with Rep. On June 19, one day after the lead developer met with Allbaugh's top aide, general counsel Michael Brown - and one day before FEMA was to issue its final ruling at a public meeting in Columbia - Allbaugh canceled the meeting and ordered a one-month "cooling-off period." He also decided that the developers could present new data after all, even though the agency's deadline for new information had passed four months earlier. Allbaugh, the process is open again, and the project's politically connected developers will get another chance to make their case. The agency would announce its final ruling June 20, Buckley declared: "It is now time to bring this process to a close."īut thanks to a last-minute intervention by FEMA Director Joe M. "We have received a large amount of scientific and technical data, and we feel very comfortable making a decision based on those data," wrote Michael Buckley, director of a FEMA technical services division. The developers were pleading to present more data to show that their mammoth "city-within-a-city" would be safe from a major flood, but agency officials kept replying, no, too late, don't bother. ![]() Last month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was about to deal a devastating blow to a $4 billion development project in a Columbia, S.C., flood plain.
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