Article The Army Corps of Engineers has failed New Orleans - The Lens (1 Viewer)

[SharonT]

The Army Corps of Engineers has failed New Orleans
Opinion By Harry Shearer | 20 hours ago
The Lens

We got lucky. After threatening over 20 inches of rain, Barry turned into barely a drizzle in New Orleans. Meanwhile, Governor John Bel Edwards has taken to the airwaves to extol the performance of our $14B flood defense. But let’s not get giddy. What really saved us was the influx of dry wind from northeast of the incipient hurricane, apparently a natural occurrence. As to the works of man, what follows is a wakeup call.

Isaac was primarily a rainfall event in New Orleans. The Army Corps of Engineers, the agency I just referred to, embedded reporters from the New York Times and CBS News at one of the pump stations at the outfall canals, and the reporters dutifully wrote down and repeated the Corps’ conclusion, post-Isaac: “the new system works.” Were it not for a local engineer, Matt McBride, who ran a blog with the potent title, Fix The Pumps, we would never have known the rest of the story.

McBride filed a Freedom of Information request for internal Corps communications during Isaac. They revealed a loss of remote sensing of the water levels in the three “outfall” canals during the rainstorm, and a “hair on fire” scenario about whether the water in the canals was rising past the new, lower “safe” level.

and

It’s important for us to be aware of the big picture. It’s not only New Orleans the Corps has failed. According to the recent book “Paving Paradise,” the agency was tasked with enforcing the “no net loss of wetlands” provision of the 1973 Clean Water Act in Florida. The result, over the ensuing decades: a massive net loss in wetlands, propelled by the Corps decision to redefine applicants for development permits as its “clients” and its enforcement duties as “client service”. Along the flood plain of the Missouri River in the Upper Midwest, a historically high river and water releases from Corps-controlled dams is teaching local farmers that the agency prioritizes barge traffic over flood control.

Back in Florida, the agency helped spur policies and projects that seriously degraded the Everglades. And, as with the Los Angeles River — an “occasional river” which the Corps entombed in concrete following a 1937 flood — the organization got paid to, in effect, nearly destroy something, and is now getting paid to try to restore it. You could call that a business model.

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I had heard talk of the subsidence issue last week during the debate over what was the exact level of the Mississippi and how close we were to topping the levees. Common sense says the levees don't have magical powers not to subside like the rest of the land, and we assume "someone" is on top of that. Officials were kinda quick to dismiss any skepticism, which to me is not a good sign. With so many pieces to juggle, natural (subsidence, rising oceans, snow melt and spring rains, tropical storms) and man-made (engineering, maintenance, human decision making) it would be easy to cherry-pick one variable to declare either victory or doom.

Who do we trust to keep track of the big picture?

 

[efil4stnias]

Who do we trust to keep track of the big picture?

Mother Nature.

its inevitable. She will correct all the wrongs at some point.

 

[Mr. Sparkle]

The Corps has a lot of issues, and I agree with some of the criticisms Shearer lays out.

But its also worth noting that we are STILL in a major flood stage - the longest recorded high water in history - and yet we have had zero loss of life due to riverine flooding in Louisiana this year (maybe the entire country).

This year's water is basically worse than 1927 but the Corps and the levees they oversee have successfully kept us from flooding out entirely on a scale greater than Katrina.

It comes at a cost (see coastal erosion due to lack of sediment) but saying there is a trade-off is different than saying the Corps failed in all respects.

 

[GeauxWhoDats]

Still true.

Open bids to Private Engineering Firms that get paid contingent on actual long term results and watch how things get fixed properly.

 

[Meachemdat]

Currently dealing with the Corps on an elementary school.
What a complete joke...I feel sorry for those kids, it's easily the worst built building I've ever seen.