Libertarian on N.O.
I'm not sure I agree with everything he says. To be honest, my mind is spinning from this whole Katrina fall-out. It'll probably provide fodder for rumination for many years. Rockwell appears to make some good points, though, and he provides some solid facts:
The levees that failed and caused New Orleans to be flooded, bringing a humanitarian crisis not seen in our country in modern times, were owned and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers. The original levees surrounding this city below sea level were erected in 1718, and have been variously expanded since.
But who knew that a direct hit by a hurricane would cause them to break? Many people, it turns out. Ivor van Heerden of Louisiana State University, reports Newsday, "has developed flooding models for New Orleans, was among those issuing dire predictions as Katrina approached, warnings that turned out to be grimly accurate. He predicted that floodwaters would overcome the levee system, fill the low-lying areas of the city and then remain trapped there well after the storm passed ”“ creating a giant, stagnant pool contaminated with debris, sewage and other hazardous materials."
Newsday goes on: "Van Heerden and other experts put some of the blame on the Mississippi River levees themselves, because they channel silt directly into the Gulf of Mexico that otherwise would stabilize land along the riverside and slow the sinking of the coastline."
He is hardly some lone nut. National Geographic ran a large article on the topic last year that begins with a war-of-the-worlds scenario that reads precisely like this week's news from New Orleans. It is the Army Corps of Engineers that has been responsible for the dwindling of the coastline that has required the levees to be constantly reinforced with higher walls. But one problem: no one bothered to do this since 1965. That's only the beginning of the problems created by the Corps' levee management, the history of which was documented by Mark Thornton following the last flood in 1999.
Only the public sector can preside over a situation this precarious and display utter and complete inertia. What do these people have to lose? They are not real owners. There are no profits or losses at stake. They do not have to answer to risk-obsessed insurance companies who insist on premiums matching even the most remote contingencies. So long as it seems to work, they are glad to go about their business in the soporific style famous to all public sectors everywhere.
Link.
