Michael T. Martin

Last night I saw The Big Uneasy, Harry Shearer’s documentary about the levee failures after Hurricane Katrina. We all know that it was the faulty levees and not the storm itself that put 80% of New Orleans underwater but the extent of the Army Corps of Engineers negligence and outright denial of any preceding problems was, and still is, incomprehensible. 

A certain part of the documentary focused on Dutch Dialogues, a partnership between Wagoneer and Ball, a leading New Orleans architecture firm, and a team of Dutch water engineers. While I really like their ideas and plans for water management in the City of New Orleans I think organizationally they are untenable.

The advantage that the Dutch have in their water management strategy is that their entire nation is at risk. Seems like a strange advantage but think about it in terms of organizing support for money allocation and political support. New Orleans severe disadvantage is that we are only one city, and while many many other cities in the United States are at risk from faulty levees (another elucidation from The Big Uneasy), New Orleans is the most publicly memorable example. Trying to convince the American public that New Orleans was worth saving the first time was arduous and difficult (and insane: there’s nowhere else like this place, but that’s a different post). Imagine going back to Congress and asking for massive amounts of money to reengineer the city in the way the Dutch have done? it would be impossible. 

What I’m getting at is that because every citizen in the Netherlands faces the threat of water, providing public money to those projects is easier than in New Orleans. Because we are one city in the United States, and one that often takes a beating in terms of “why rebuild it?”, “why are New Orleanians so lazy?”, etc., trying to get the public to support a huge project funded by federal dollars will be a difficult sell.

Engineering solutions are a necessity and should be funded by the federal government, considering they have consistently let the Army Corps of Engineers design faulty levees without repercussions. The real question is if any of the necessary steps will actually be taken and if so, by whom with what political courage?