Pork Barrel Spending and the Katrina Flood:
In his post below on the Washington Post story on spending by the Army Corps of Engineers in Louisiana, David writes:
If I'm not mistaken, however, the article doesn't provide any reason to conclude that the pork barrel spending facilitated or caused the flooding of New Orleans. I'm no expert on the question, of course, but my sense is that the flooding resulted primarily from the combination of a) long-term government planning for only a Category 3 Hurricane hitting New Orleans and b) a Category 4 hurricane hitting New Orleans. The article notes that the Army Corps of Engineers had started to study the feasibility of upgrading the levees for a higher level of protection, but the study was obviously too late. If that's right, then the primary problem that led to the flooding would seem to be more poor long-term risk planning or just plain bad luck than pork barrel spending.
[T]he article suggests that the Corps of Engineers exists almost entirely to fund pork barrel projects. So much for those who argue that the essential problem was parsimonious Republicans or a weak state. The essential problem (beyond Mother Nature), as is often the case, was short-sighted politicians.I read the article a bit differently. As I see it, the article makes the point that while the Army Corps of Engineers put lots of resources into Louisiana, "much" of it aimed at keeping New Orleans dry, some of the money was put towards other projects that may or may not have been needed. The article doesn't say exactly how much, but says that "hundreds of millions" of the $1.9 billion spent by the Army Corps of Engineers in Louisiana was unrelated to keeping New Orleans dry.
If I'm not mistaken, however, the article doesn't provide any reason to conclude that the pork barrel spending facilitated or caused the flooding of New Orleans. I'm no expert on the question, of course, but my sense is that the flooding resulted primarily from the combination of a) long-term government planning for only a Category 3 Hurricane hitting New Orleans and b) a Category 4 hurricane hitting New Orleans. The article notes that the Army Corps of Engineers had started to study the feasibility of upgrading the levees for a higher level of protection, but the study was obviously too late. If that's right, then the primary problem that led to the flooding would seem to be more poor long-term risk planning or just plain bad luck than pork barrel spending.
If that is the case, isn't right to say that the New Orleans water defenses didn't even stand up to a Cat 2 hurricane?
The Cat 3 planning hoped to hold back a storm surge, and that higher storm surges would overtop the water defenses. This didn't happen with Katrina. The water defenses were not overtopped, which a Cat 4 hurricane wind would have done. The water defenses worked for that.
What went wrong is that one of the newly rebuilt canal sea walls burst open.
People who seek to make the large issue -- obviously GW Bush's team blew it in the short term immediate crisis -- of river/delta management a partisan one are on the wrong boat.
There was much contention between the Corps and academic experts at LSU over exactly what to do. This made it easy to do nothing and spend the money somewhere else. A parallel should be drawn to the similar situation in Venice, where debate raged and nothing was done for decades.
The media doesn't get it, but the problem in N.O. was caused by Cat 5 storm surge. Wind damage depends on Cat/speed at landfall, but storm surge is caused by the wind over coastal water (fetch).
Overall, the storm surge wasn't anywhere near what it would have taken to overflow the levee system.
My response is to agree with the first clause but wonder if in fact it makes no sense for society at large to encourage people to live in such dangerous spots — considering our vast national un-funded needs — and that we shouldn't spend our limited treasure on maintaining such outposts.
One immediate solution for NO since it is there and abandoning it totally involves other enormous social costs (and posed as a question as I lack sufficient technical knowledge to be sure) is to fill its low-lying areas so that it becomes above sea-level.
see my post at
Floodproof New Orleans by filling parts of it?
It makes sense if that dangerous spot is the highest navigable point for oceangoing vessels on a river that serves as the main transportation hub for bulk goods for half the nation. Even if relocatable commerce were to relocate, and if there were a decision not to revive the tourism and convention business-- and NO is a central location with generally clement weather and lots of things to do at night-- it might be difficult or impossible to find alternate port facilities.
On the other hand, if we want to have a long-term viable location for a city there, we have to do 2 things:
1) Dynamite all of the levees and channels and lose the navigable connection between Mississippi River shipping and the Gulf of Mexico. (Perhaps offload all of the cargo onto trains or other transport and shuttle it to the sea?)
2) All building in the citys must be built on stilts to allow the Mississippi mud to flow through and continuously lay down silt on top of the ground and underneath the buildings. No roads will be allowed unless they are also suspended. Basically nothing can be in contact with the ground that would impede the flow of silt.
It looks to me like from an ecologic point of view, the only positive thing that has happened to the Mississippi delta in the last 200 years was in 1927 when they dynamited the levees because of the Freat Flood. Of course that wasn't real good for the 2-legged inhabitants, was it...
cathy :-)
I would offer that the causal chain extends further than you are allowing. The cause was short-sighted politicians. As a result they spent money on pork projects rather than being prepared for any category of storm.
I think anyone would be hard pressed to argue that had all the pork funding been used then their would have been no flooding. But I think the argument is a marginal one. Each dollar spent on projects unrelated to flooding means one less dollar was spent on a project that may have helped lessen the overall damage.