Reasons to Trust the Corps, Continued

Today's entry in the surprise-a-week derby from the US Army Corps of Engineers -- the people who last week admitted blame for faulty design and construction of the levees and floodwalls that breached in New Orleans, and are now engaged in fixing the very same "system" -- is that the promised pumps, which would substitute for the city's own huge pumps which would be sidelined if the Corps-built floodgates had to be closed in event of a storm surge, won't be arriving -- no, not on time, that promise was broken weeks ago -- won't be arriving on the new, later schedule, either. The reason, according to the T-P: the Corps didn't notice when it issued its original schedule that the site of the pumps was a tight place to work. An absence of eyeballing.

"Our earlier schedule was based on a government estimate made before site and soil conditions were known," said Setliff, the Task Force Guardian commander overseeing floodgate construction.

Hell, even stupid little movies do location scouting before they start shooting.

For those who wonder why New Orleanians have long since become inured to FEMA but can still raise a healthy amount of ire at the Corps, here's just another reason. At some point in time, some smart politician is going to figure out that there's a national constituency to be built of communities ravaged by the fine work of the Corps. That time, clearly, is not now.