LONDON -- As we wait to see what effect Isaac will have on the Army Corps of Engineers $10 billion-plus "hurricane risk reduction system" in New Orleans, I can't help thinking about last week's news release from the activist group levees.org. Attempting to find out the rationale behind the Corps' repeated assertions that local officials prevented it, pre-Katrina, from building a more robust system than the one that catastrophically collapsed in 2005, levees.org filed a FOIA request for supporting documents.
What had been on the public record up to then was an admission by Lt. Gen Strock, the only Corps official ever publicly to take responsibility for the disaster (just before he retired), that the allegation may have been based on nothing more than "something I heard." The Corps' response to the FOIA request was a recommendation by the local PR official for the agency to revisit a Corps-sponsored chronology of the doomed "protection system."
"Buried" in there, according to levees.org, was the story of the E99 test. That was a 1985 examination by the Corps of the efficacy of supporting so-called I-wall structures -- straight-line vertical floodwalls -- with sheets of metal driven 17 feet into the soil below. What the test showed was that at that depth, in the swampy soil of southern Louisiana, the I-wall leaned. The Corps chose to interpret that as good enough, and it was walls just like that, with sheetpile driven no deeper, that failed in 2005 (today, sheetpile under floodwalls is driven three or four times deeper).
The activist organization points out that the decision not to use deeper sheetpile saved the Corps $100 million. Of course, the resultant disaster ultimately cost the nation in direct federal money more than $120 billion.
The question that keeps recurring to me is: Was the Corps being evil? Or were they responding rationally to the pressures and incentives of a then-Republican administration dedicated to notions of small government and rooting out "waste, fraud and abuse"?
A profit-driven private sector, we know, has inherent incentives toward efficiency. "Lean and mean" is the goal. Sometimes, as we've seen in our broadcast industry, that has perverse results: tape-delayed Olympics coverage was profitable and efficient, delaying events until the maximum number of eyeballs was available. A similar drive accounts for the complaint aired on the TVNewser website today that network news departments are stretching to cover "two major news stories" -- the RNC and Isaac -- "simultaneously."
Government is, or is supposed to be, different. If efficiency means some people don't get to watch Olympics events live, no big deal. If slashing costs means that two simultaneous big news stories -- imagine that happening! -- don't get full coverage, there's always the Internet. But when government adopts efficiency as its top priority, decisions like the Corps' get made. And people die.
Inspectors general inside federal agencies do, and should, always keep an eye out for outrageous excesses of spending and shortages of judgment and oversight. But a federal government that sends the message to its agencies that nothing is more important than running like a business may end up with something leaner, and meaner, than we need.
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Robert Reich: George W. Bush as Hurricane Isaac
http://www.gfdrr.org/gfdrr/sites/gfdrr.org/files/urbanfloods/pdf/Cities%20and%20Flooding%20Guidebook.pdf
Govt can't really be run like a business because it has no competition. If the army corps were private, it would be out of business. And unfortunately govt agencies are too dependent on what politicians want - pork for home district projects or some new development vision. In CA, the bus lines, transit systems and freeways are broken but the governor and legislature want to spend ~$200B to build a "cool" new bullet train that will be a financial albatross with tiny ridership.
Please keep up your investigations. Shining a bright spot light on these agencies is perhaps our only hope. But like our looming Medicare, SS, and state pension unfunded liabilities may be too wonkish or boring to get as much attention as Todd Akin or birth certificates
What an utterly ridiculous comment.
Sorry, but your attempt to project "moral superiority," failed. Big time.
Come back when you've spent a fraction the time, that Harry has spent working and caring about the welfare of the people in LA.
Worst post ever, NRR...
Problem. Water is pumped out of NO proper. The water thus surrounds the levee system. What flooded? The areas just outside the new levees where all the water went. Now they want new levees.
OK so they get them. Where does the water go? Outside the levees. What floods next time? That area.
Pushing the water out of the “saved” areas floods the surrounding areas. Always will.
There comes a point mankind cannot pump water as fast as Mother Nature can rain it down. Certain areas will just need to be designated Flood Zones. Build at your own risk. Or else abandon living there.
We cannot levee the whole world.
$14 billion is really not that much when spread out over an entire nation of tax payers. Heck, the Mars Rover, Curiosity, cost $2.5 billion.
And we're still gonna need that port leading inland up the Mississippi in the future, the same way Jefferson recognized we needed it when he signed the Louisiana Purchase. How much to move that port further inland?
I don't have any figures, but I'd imagine it would be far more expensive than simply replenishing those protective wetlands that were stripped, not by nature, but by man. Far cheaper to simply maintain those flood protection systems.
These are not easy challenges our coasts will be facing in the future, but saying these major cities should "...be designated Flood Zones. Build at your own risk." is far too simplistic."
And if you think NO has been vocal about demanding the Feds live up to their legal commitment to protect that city and port, just wait until Wall Street is threatened by the rising Atlantic. Broadway. The UN.
And there's a gazillion ways the Atlantic finds it's way into NYC.
What do you call 500 Army Corps Of Engineers' designers, huddled inside the "safe" zone of one of their flood protection constructions during a Cat 5 hurricane?
Justice
One was jammed by a foreign object. However the Army Corps has no idea of the source of the aluminum foil wrapped zucchini.
The other pump failed in a test when the motor was run up to a speed of Eleven.
You could just as well mention the bailout of the domestic auto industry and the subsequent management changes in those companies.
A lot of science and engineering can't be simplified to the point where someone outside the field, especially someone who doesn't speak the language of mathematics or understand the details of the field, can even understand what is being said and must base his decision upon the power point abilities of the presenters. In technical fields like science, engineering and math, there is little correlation between a nerd's ability to express himself and what he actually understands.
Don't expect the Army Corps of Engineers to ever do world class engineering again, it is no longer in their organizational skill set.
Are you aware of the businesses portfolio of companies like P&G and Unilever?
Do you think oil & gas even entertains this model of business development?
I'll be more than happy to 'show you' otherwise.
They have been caught in the act of fudging those numbers. But, that's the theory of how the line is drawn.
Those discussions are out there. The people of Lafitte, La. were recently introduced the harshness of the math. One of the ways to soften the math is to be represented by someone whose ass the Corps must kiss.
But as to the question of whether any government would leave a whole swathe of its constituents to fall under the waves... for that, my sighing heart thinks "yes". I cynically think that war is a tool to reduce the population bottom-up, and a means of profiteering (from both sides of the conflict, often)... and if a government would do that? Letting a tragedy happen...? Well, maybe they'd tell themselves that it was only a sin of omission...