Infinite MonkeysI saw an AP story today critical of the Bush administration supposedly cutting back on Corps flood control projects (the AP story by Andrew Taylor at least notes that Carter and Clinton did the same), it probably is worth pointing out that the political interest in flood control projects generally lasts from the moment of the flood until the sun starts to shine and things dry up. At that point the issue is generally forgotten by the politicians and the press and they move on to something else.
After the January 1997 floods, there was a flurry of activity in the California legislature and among the politicans. But within weeks, when the sun came out and the flood dangers passed, the issue generally is forgotten by all but the legislators whose constituents were the ones flooded.
More importantly, I cannot think of any flood control project, whether it be construction, remediation, etc., that could be completed in five years from the date of appropriation, unless the design of the project and the EIR's and property acquisitions are already done, which is unlikely. Hell, the various engineering, environmental, etc., studies can't even get done in that time, not to mention the contracting and construction. (And more months are lost every year when the weather makes construction impossible.)
Generally, the Corps of Engineers appropriation is not the end of the process. In the flood control projects I have seen in California, the Corps will cost share 45%, and the state will be required to pony up the other 55% and indemnify the Corps (they will do the work and turn the levees over to the State). Not sure if that was the case with the Louisiana levees, but my guess is that it is.
If the people want flood control NOW, then support waivers of the environmental restrictions (mitigation for some damn bug that nobody has ever seen) that do nothing but add to the cost of the project and slow it down by years. From the time a problem is identified until the time it is fixed can easily take ten years or more.
And maybe the Republican Congress could scale back on the wasteful pork barrell spending too? What a thought.
See Michelle Malkin's post "The Blame Game" which includes
EYE OF THE STORM; LEVEE-BUILDING DELAYS LEAVE WEST BANK VUNERABLE. By Pam Louwagie, West Bank bureau (New Orleans Times Picayune), June 1, 1999
Michelle summariezes the article
The Times-Picayune's articles make clear that throughout much of the 1990s, officials in Louisiana couldn't come up with state money needed to match federal funds. The resignation of Rep. Bob Livingston in December 1998 didn't help. (Livingston was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee; federal funding for flood control projects was one of his pet projects.) Nor did environmental laws, such as the Migratory Bird Act of 1918. (Construction on a hurricane protection levee in St. Charles Parish was halted for months because a great egret nesting area sat in the levee's path.)
Posted by JamesPh. at September 1, 2005 10:21 PMAb-so-freakin'-lutely waive the majority of the "environmental" concerns with regard to immediate levee projects! But let's not stop there. The current oil & gas situation highlights our country's need to stop playing namby-pamby games and not get, but allow some new refining capacity to be developed somewhere and soon.
Someone recently described the petroleum drilling and refining operations we've been living with as "balanced on a knife's edge." That's true. But according to a gang of vacationing oil & gas industry engineers and geo-physycists I met last year in Bryce Canyon Nat Park, it's not so much the companies' greed-induced squeezing of every last dime out of production that causes the tight margin. Rather, it's regulation; reams, gobs, tons, avalanches of it; federal and state; environmental and otherwise. Add the unavoidable spectre of the N.I.M.B.Y. factor and it all equals paralysis.
I pray that others in leadership will follow the example of what Our (usually) Ridiculous Governor has authorized here in Arizona. She lifted (albeit temporarily) our stiflingly expensive and shortage-inducing requirement that we use only a super-special, supposedly cleaner, additive-riddled gas-a-hol type blend that hardly anyone actually produces and almost no one else anywhere uses.
After watching several features on how many poor communityies in rural Mississippi were populated by those dependant on government or pension checks, and how Katrina's arrival at the end of the month left many without enough (however poorly managed) discretionary cash to make getting out of town a worthy financial risk, I refuse to feel like a greedy American consumption-hog when I argue that gasoline being as cheap as possible is a matter of civic responsiblility. Screw those letter-to-the-editor writers I read just last week (before Katrina) in the AZ Repulic who argue that they'd be happy to pay up to six bucks a gallon if the oil companies' profits were capped and the rest of the price was made up of taxes ear-marked for "alternative fuel development."
Don't even get me started on ANWR.
Posted by: Monkey Brad at September 2, 2005 08:11 PM