Here's a related article from 2001 Scientific American that has been floating around the office recently.

Today I finally took the time to read it, and find the content quite similar to the 2004 article referenced below (flood is inevitable, wetlands restoration is essential, ...).

And these are just the popular press acknowledgments of the risks, so clearly the hazards were clear for years to anyone paying attention.

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So, who's "job" is it to pay attention?  I would start with the people closest to the action.

An unattributed source mentioned the national Sierra Club opposition to precautionary measures;  one could infer their homes weren't at risk and one might question the legal standing of such organizations to the disposition of local concerns.  The NGM in October 2004 mentioned local fish farmers opposition to mitigating steps;  I presume they were among those flooded out when the levy broke, so perhaps there is a just god (too callous?  let me tell you about the man who enters a talent agent's office to describe a new act ...).

National politics has an attention span of about a month, while projects like this require attention over decades.  So why are any of us surprised that Bush and the FMEA screwed the pooch?  It's a huge bureaucracy led by politicos and will always be that way.  Meanwhile people make plans expecting the FMEA to help out somehow in all their local emergencies.

New Orleans has floods which are very predictable.  Cliff's earlier post clearly revealed who had the most economic interest at stake - the port system and shippers, while the other references show huge economic interest by oil and agriculture concerns.  They are the ones who had the most to lose, but I'm not overly surprised they did not make it happen - why pay for insurance if the feds will bail you out?

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Unattributed source:

"The national Sierra Club was one of several environmental groups who [successfully] sued the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a 1996 plan to raise and fortify Mississippi River levees.

The Army Corps was planning to upgrade 303 miles of levees along the river in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. This was needed, a Corps spokesman told the Baton Rouge, La., newspaper The Advocate, because “a failure could wreak catastrophic consequences on Louisiana and Mississippi which the states would be decades in overcoming, if they overcame them at all.”

But a suit filed by environmental groups at the U.S. District Court in New Orleans claimed the Corps had not looked at “the impact on bottomland hardwood wetlands.” The lawsuit stated, “Bottomland hardwood forests must be protected and restored if the Louisiana black bear is to survive as a species, and if we are to ensure continued support for source population of all birds breeding in the lower Mississippi River valley.”

In addition to the Sierra Club, other parties to the suit were the group American Rivers, the Mississippi River Basin Alliance, and the Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi Wildlife Federations.  The lawsuit was settled in 1997 with the Corps agreeing to hold off on the work while doing environmental impact studies."