Inadequate funding is a choice we and our leadership make, the consequences of this choice are not to just sit here and do nothing but elevate or relocate. Staying put with inadequate protection is both dumb and irresponsible and American taxpayers shouldn't stand for it. Do Louisianaians really want to base their safety on handouts?
It wasn't so much construction and maintenance as design and leadership that sank New Orleans. As the Corp's IPET study concluded. Flood protection was, and remains, a system in name only. The Corps' calling it's new approach a flood "risk reduction" system is an oxymoron. Real systems deal with 100% of the risk and allocate it to solutions with stakeholder (resident) understanding and concurrence.
And it isn't just the Corps. No one, at any level, has stood up and said the problem that must be solved is safety of people and property and I own that problem. The state's latest focus on wetlands recovery shows that safety isn't even on their radar.
If there's one real fault for which the Corps, as an institution of professionakl civil engineers, is squarely to blame is that all these engineers, at all levels have utterly disregarded their prime ethical cannon to hold safety paramount.
If the Corps' professional staff would just remember and act on that creed, New Orleans could once more expect a straight story about affordable safety. Until then it is each resident's obligation to act wisely and responsibly because no one will do it for us.
Posted on Jarvis DeBerry: Did a corrupt Orleans Levee Board cause flooding? Will a corrupt Corps of Engineers? on August 18, 2009, 11:24AM
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