As far as I could find this is a new situation. I live on the east coast and the hype around Irene all the way up the coast allowed them to get stuff put in everywhere. What kind of stuff? Who knows. They just say "sensors". Think about this. They had almost 300 sensors on hand to get in before Irene? It's August. They've had months. Could have been done any time, or state by state or whatever. No, they rush in to do something fast while nobody is paying any attention whatsoever and even if they did question something, well, there's a major hurricane coming, we have no time to debate this, etc. Who would questions a usgs guy (besides glp'ers, lol) if they saw one with equipment near a bridge doing official looking things before a majorly hyped hurricane?