Editorial: Efforts To Reform Corps Won’t Go Away

Journal readers who perused last week’s story “Can A ‘Dutch’ Model Change The Corps?” were given insight into water resource project conflicts that have persisted for centuries. The WJ story focused on reformation efforts by Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who wants to change the way the Corps does business and criticizes its military approach to building levees. As WJ writer David Murray wrote, “She praises the ‘holistic’ Dutch model of managing water.”

Though storm damage to the Gulf Coast in recent years obviously influenced her growing interest in Corps reform, she believes the issue is “finding an engineering model that will work for the whole country.”

Attractive to some is the Dutch method of using multiple levels of protection, with levees being only one element and the practice of using, in some areas at least, protection against so-called 10,000-year floods. The Corps and the Federal Emergency Management Agency currently use a 100-year flood protection standard.

Sparks are flying over efforts to change the Corps, but history shows that smoke and fire have always accompanied the issue of who will manage water-resource projects and how they will do it. Engineers of the highest rank haven’t always agreed on how the job should be done.

James Buchanan Eads, builder of the famous Eads bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis and a man who was once ranked as one of the five greatest engineers of all time, was at war constantly with Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, who eventually became chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In The Rising Tide, author John M. Barry points out that Eads’ reputation was “far greater than Humphreys’.” On the other hand, Humphreys had labored for 11 years over a massive and revolutionary report about the Mississippi. As Barry wrote, their struggle became “personal, rich with hatred and contempt.”

Highly controversial in the early 1800s was the question of whether the use of levees was good or bad. That question may never be answered to everyone’s satisfaction, but levees have been part of the landscape for centuries. By 1812, for example, “levees in Louisiana began just below New Orleans and extended 155 miles north on the east bank of the river and 180 miles on the west bank,” Barry wrote. With hundreds of years of controversy over levees, is it any wonder that sparks are still flying?

Joining Sen. Landrieu in her Corps reform efforts is Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, who testified with Landrieu at a June 16 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing chaired by California Sen. Barbara Boxer. Speaking for the Corps was Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh, Mississippi Valley Division engineer.

Landrieu criticizes the way the Corps rotates personnel just as they get to know a region. This obviously reflects the military method of operations and, in our view, removes from the mix personnel with valuable information and experience. Landrieu would like to extend the tour of duty of the New Orleans District commander to six to 10 years. She also believes project approval should be part of a comprehensive plan and not based on stand-alone plans.

Landrieu, who has visited the Netherlands twice (in January 2006 and May 2009), is impressed with Dutch methods of providing protection. The Dutch plan includes less protection for less-populated areas and higher protection for more densely populated areas.

Critics of the Dutch plan say it would not work in the U.S. for a variety of reasons, one being that storms along the Gulf are stronger than they are in the North Sea. One critic wrote that systems that provide 10,000-year protection in Holland would provide only 100-year protection in the U.S. But he, too, has his critics. Some say our population would not favor any plan that offered more protection to some areas and less for others (which to us seems reasonable), and that would result in political controversies. The aftermath of Katrina and other hurricanes inspired the battle cry for Corps reform to a higher pitch.

After following Corps activities for more than a century, we find it difficult to believe that the agency has left many stones unturned in its search for better methods to protect us from storms and floods. Rather, the multilayered ogre called government makes timely progress virtually impossible. From the birth of an idea, some projects go for decades without approval. Another bad aspect is that under environmental law, anyone can file a lawsuit saying that a project harms the environment or endangered species. We must keep in mind that the issues of whether or not levees work and how water projects are approved and financed are separate issues.

Sen. Landrieu and her colleagues have done a masterful job at revving up attention to a need for change some desire. Serious efforts should be undertaken to simplify the introduction, evaluation and eventual authorization or rejection of water projects. Unnecessary delays must be eliminated. Do we need to change the entire levee system approach? The answer may not be soon forthcoming. Whoever has the political power to affect change will probably do so.

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