Katrina Victims: Justice is Coming

With Midwest levees bursting along hundreds of miles of the Upper Mississippi River Valley, the natural question is:  Who is responsible for this latest catastrophic flooding of America?

The answer is complicated by the fact that this region-like much of the nation-has a hodge-podge of flood protection levees of varying shapes, sizes and materials built by federal and local governments as well as private landowners.  As Monica Davey of the New York Times recently wrote, "the levees are owned and maintained by all sorts of towns, agencies, and even individual farmers" and "offer a patchwork of unpredictable protections.  Some are tall and earthen, others aging and sandy, and many along tributaries uncataloged by federal officials." http://www.boomertowne.com/news-stocks-weather/newsarticle.aspx?articleId=445926

The recent catastrophic flooding of communities and farmland in Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri has been caused by overtopping and breaches of both Army Corps and other levees.  Similarly, in the Great Flood of 1993, both federal and non-federal levees were overtopped and failed.  Twenty of the 275 federal levees (mostly Army Corp of Engineers) s and 767 out of 1091 other levees were compromised.

Following the 1993 devastating flooding that flooded nine heartland states along the Mississippi and caused $15 billion in damages, President Clinton commissioned a task force to investigate and recommend reforms.  In its 272-page report, the prestigious expert panel urged a more uniform, centralized approach to controlling flood waters along the Mississippi and its tributaries.  The main recommendation was to give primary responsibility over these levees to the Army Corps.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the catastrophic flooding of Greater New Orleans, Congress charged the Army Corps with the task of inventorying and inspecting all federal and non-federal  levees.  Recently, these supposed  federal  flood protection gurus admitted that they had no idea where many of these levees were located-much less their condition.

So, when the Army Corps starts pointing its muddy fingers at state and local authorities for the latest flood calamity, its discredited leadership ought to look in the mirror.  What they will see is a fossilized, inflexible, and secretive agency whose current senior management is not intellectually fit for the job of protecting Americans from river or hurricane storm flooding.

And don't expect a lame duck President to do anything to reform the Army Corps.  Mr. Bush is too busy blaming trial lawyers for a myriad of the nation's woes from rising health care costs to frustrating the war on terror. http://www.boomertowne.com/news-stocks-weather/newsarticle.aspx?articleId=445926

That leaves Congress to reform the Army Corps. Forget it. Those pols are too busy earmarking bloated water pork projects for their home districts and states.