[Mb-civic] No consequences for Katrina disaster - Jeff Jacoby - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  No consequences for Katrina disaster

By Jeff Jacoby  |  January 11, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

AN E-MAIL THAT showed up in my inbox the other day contained a 
photograph of the modern floodgates that keep Venice from being 
inundated by the Adriatic Sea. Below it was a picture of Holland's 
high-tech dams, which rise as much as 40 feet above the waves. A third 
photo showed London's futuristic-looking flood barriers, a series of 
semicircular silver gates along the Thames that can be raised or lowered 
as needed to regulate tidal heaves surging up from the North Sea.

Following these images of impressive European flood control technology 
came a picture from New Orleans. It showed a section of a broken, 
low-tech, decidedly unimpressive concrete levee surrounded by water. 
Sneered an accompanying message: ''Way to go, Corps of Engineers!"

Whether it is fair to compare New Orleans's flood-control system with 
Europe's, or whether those European barriers are as effective as they 
are photogenic, I couldn't say. Nonetheless, that e-mail is a good 
reminder of a key truth about the Katrina disaster: It was mostly the 
result of government failure.

The flooding that devastated New Orleans was caused not by Mother Nature 
but by defective infrastructure -- infrastructure built and operated by 
the federal government, such as the now-infamous 17th Street Canal 
levee. When the Army Corps of Engineers designed that levee, it made 
critical mistakes. It badly underestimated soil strength, for example, 
which led to the use of sheet pilings that were too flimsy, resulting in 
floodwalls unable to withstand the water Katrina hurled toward the city.

Worse, the ''obviously faulty designs," as the New Orleans 
Times-Picayune termed them on Dec. 30, were flagged during a design 
review by the Corps of Engineers' regional office, which ordered the 
engineers in New Orleans to correct their plans. But they didn't. When 
the chief engineer in New Orleans balked, the Times-Picayune found, 
''his superiors dropped the issue."

Compounding that structural weakness was the dreadfully misguided 
Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a 76-mile long manmade river created by 
the federal government 40 years ago to speed navigation. For decades, 
critics warned that the canal was a flood disaster waiting to happen -- 
a giant ''funnel" that would accelerate and intensify any storm surge 
headed toward the New Orleans levees. Sure enough, when Katrina hit, the 
canal greatly magnified the height and speed of the wall of water that 
slammed into the levees. Entire sections of the wall gave way, leading 
to the destruction of a major American city. And all of it made possible 
by your tax dollars at work.

Could such appalling errors ever occur in the private sector? Of course 
they could, and had the New Orleans levee system been in private hands, 
there is no guarantee that Katrina wouldn't have proved just as 
catastrophic. But failure would have had consequences -- financial 
reverses, firings, loss of market share, costly lawsuits. A private 
corporation whose incompetence leads to dire results can expect to pay a 
price for its bungling, but there is no market discipline in the public 
sector, where dissatisfied ''customers" -- better known as taxpayers -- 
generally cannot take their business elsewhere or refuse to keep paying.

If levees are to be built, says Walter Block, an economist at Loyola 
University of New Orleans, the job should be carried out ''by an 
economic entity that can lose funding, and thus put its very existence 
at risk if it errs. This can only apply to the market -- never the 
state." But of course neither the Corps of Engineers nor any other 
government agency is going to lose its funding, or face any penalty. On 
the contrary, they will be rewarded with more money and authority -- the 
government's usual response to its own failures.

Indeed, in the aftermath of Katrina plenty of voices clamor for more 
government and more central planning -- from Ted Kennedy's call for a 
new, Cabinet-level Gulf Coast Redevelopment Authority to the USA Today 
editorial wishing New Orleans had ''a singular vision of how to rebuild 
and a take-charge leader." An AP headline summed up the prevailing 
attitude: ''Katrina Ushers in Return of Big Government."

And how is big government handling things, post-Katrina? Well, the New 
York Times reports that in Louisiana communities that hired private 
contractors to clear away the debris left by the storm, 70 percent of 
the cleanup is complete. In those that are relying on the Army Corps of 
Engineers, the job is only 45 percent done. Biloxi, Miss., which turned 
to private operators, now has ''whole neighborhoods . . . primed for new 
development. But in Pascagoula, 25 miles east, only about 25 residential 
lots have been cleared."

Pascagoula's cleanup, needless to say, is being handled by the feds.


http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/11/no_consequences_for_katrina_disaster/
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