Rotten To The Corps?

No, this is not a post about Louisiana politics, but it might as well be.

The Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force released a report on Friday where it recommends that the whole levee system in south-east Louisiana is evaluated, not just where the breaches occured. Because if the repaired sections are made stonger, other sections left untouched will be more likely to break in case of a storm.

According to The Advocate,

The report encourages researchers to look at the whole system, not just the failures.

“While a few places failed, that doesn’t mean other places won’t fail in the future,� said Wayne Clough, committee chairman for the National Academy and president of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

There could be sections of levee that were close to failing but didn’t simply because another section failed first and relieved the pressure, Clough said.

In addition, the corps is rebuilding damaged and failed sections of levee in ways that make those sections stronger and more stable, he said.

That could just change the locations of future levee failures, which is why the “big picture� approach is important, Clough said.

This makes a lot of sense. So much sense in fact that one wonders why the Corps hasn't been inviestigating the whole levee system from the get-go.