ARMY CORPS REFORM

In its report on Hurricane Katrina, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Susan Collins, recommends more independent review of Army Corps of Engineers construction of levees like those that failed in New Orleans. Such reviews are also supported by the National Academy of Sciences and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

With the Army Corps this week proposing a massive levee system across Louisiana to protect from future hurricanes and major reconstruction work being planned around New Orleans, now is the time for Congress to make these recommendations a reality.

In its own evaluation of the performance of the New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Protection System, the corps wrote that the city’s levees failed because of poor design and flawed construction. For example, the corps did not account for poor soil quality or that the ground was sinking in some areas. It did not reconsider the height of the levees after being warned of this sinking, according to the report. Failure of the levees flooded huge portions of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Sen. Collins’ committee found dozens of failures before and during the hurricane. On the levees, it said “the performance of many levees and floodwalls could have been greatly improved, ‘and some of the failures likely prevented, with relatively inexpensive modifications,'” citing the finding of an American Society of Civil Engineers and National Science Foundation preliminary report on the levee system.

An independent review of the levee design and construction may have identified the need for such “inexpensive modifications” before the inadequate flood protection system was built and, ultimately failed. The Hurricane Katrina levee failures are the largest and most recent example of problems with Army Corps projects.

Now Congress has a chance to fix this problem. Following on Collins’ recommendations, Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold have an amendment to the Water Resources Development Act. Their amendment requires independent peer review of Army Corps projects. The review would be done concurrent with the required public comment period so as not to slow projects down. Additional technical review would be done as necessary.

The amendment also sets up a system to prioritize projects. The Army Corps of Engineers annually spends about $2 billion on construction projects for flood control, navigation and environmental restoration. It has a backlog of $58 billion worth of projects authorized by Congress. Through funding earmarks, Congress now decides what projects the corps does each year.

The McCain-Feingold amendment would create an interagency task force to prioritize projects based on national significance, among other factors, to minimize political influence.

The Bush administration supports the peer review and prioritization reforms. So should the Senate.