Blame the tree-huggers!

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The Lawsuit That Sank New Orleans

By DAVID SCHOENBROD
September 26, 2005

After Hurricane Betsy swamped New Orleans in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson stroked its citizens ("this nation grieves for its neighbors") and pledged federal protection. The Army Corps of Engineers designed a Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Barrier to shield the city with flood gates like those that protect the Netherlands from the North Sea. Congress provided funding and construction began. But work stopped in 1977 when a federal judge ruled, in a suit brought by Save Our Wetlands, that the Corps' environmental impact statement was deficient. Joannes Westerink, a professor of civil engineering at Notre Dame, believes the barrier would have been an "effective barrier" against Katrina's fury.

All this was reported in the Los Angeles Times on Sept. 9. The reactions of environmental advocates and federal agencies show why we would be a lot safer if the federal government did a lot less.

Speaking for environmentalists, the Center for Progressive Reform called the charges in the Los Angeles Times "pure fiction" because the judge stopped construction only until the Corps prepared a satisfactory environmental analysis. The Corps instead dropped the barrier in favor of levees that were less controversial, but which failed. So, the Center argues, fault lies with the Corps' bumbling rather than with the environmentalist lawsuit.

That's not fair. The Corps cannot stop a project, conduct a lengthy study, go back to court, and then be sure it can pick up where it left off. Large federal projects ordinarily cannot proceed unless executives and legislatures at several levels of government agree on the same course of action at the same time. That's why litigation delay can kill necessary projects. However responsibility is apportioned, but for the lawsuit, New Orleans would have had the hurricane barrier.

The federal government's reaction was equally unsophisticated. The Corps denied that the originally planned barrier would have saved the city from Katrina, but nonetheless affirmed that it was starting design of a similar barrier to protect against future hurricanes. The Department of Justice emailed field offices asking for evidence of "claims brought by environmental groups" against other Corps projects to protect New Orleans. A Sierra Club attorney complained, "Why are they trying to smear us like this?" The answer: because some federal officials think that the Corps can act more rationally if freed from interference by environmentalists.

Yet the Corps hardly has a record of rationality. It claims that Katrina produced surges higher than the levees that Congress funded it to build. But Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center found that "the flooding of most of New Orleans" came from breaches of floodwalls on canals adjoining Lake Pontchartrain; Katrina's surges did not pour over the levees but breached them because the Corps' floodwalls were shoddy. The barrier stopped by the lawsuit was designed to keep storm surges out of the lake, so it would have reduced the pressure on these floodwalls. And now, as we have seen, Hurricane Rita drove new surges into the lake.

The Corps actually contributed to increased pressure from the surges on Lake Pontchartrain by building the little-used Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a 76-mile long canal that destroyed 20,000 acres of wetlands. The Corps causes floods across the country by destroying wetlands and channeling rivers. Meanwhile, the federal government encourages construction in flood plains by providing flood insurance.

National environmentalist groups and federal agencies share the belief that federal power is a force for good. Their disagreement is merely over who should wield that power -- activists or bureaucrats?

But federal power is often a force for bad. State governments are no paragons, but federal intervention often makes things worse by erasing lines of responsibility. No member of Congress, except those from areas actually flooded, is apt to pay a political price for fiscal joy rides such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, which crowd out essential flood-control projects. Legislators in the state capital know more about what Louisiana needs and are more apt to be voted out for their mistakes. When Washington decides which projects to fund, state officials can take credit for bringing in federal bucks and blame the feds for the mistakes in priorities.

Congress marinates its pork by ordering federal agencies to engage in elaborate planning in pursuit of environment quality and other worthy objectives. That has benefits -- the Corps, for example, is less apt to destroy wetlands -- but also has key detriments. Objectives worthy in the abstract clash in the real world, and so trade-offs are necessary. But with the feds in control, local officials cannot make the trade-offs in the context of the real project in their backyard. Instead, federal officials start with abstractions laid down in Washington. Decisions always come slowly -- and are vulnerable to litigation.

There are some things only the federal government can do, but it tends to do much more than the strictly necessary. Alice Rivlin, President Clinton's director of Office of Management and Budget, argued that Congress should return many programs, including some environmental ones, to the states in order to "focus the energies of the federal government on the parts of the task for which it has a distinct advantage, and rely on the states for activities they are more likely to carry out successfully."

A good place to start downsizing the federal government is with aid to Katrina's victims. Having set them up for disaster, the feds can't, now, deny them aid. They should not tell them how or where to spend it. A federal government that maimed a great city ought not to have the conceit to think that it can micromanage its future.