Government engineers: fixers or followers?

The flooding management system in the lower Mississippi River is still the largest endeavor ever by the Army Corp of Engineers. Most people don’t know that America already has its own Great Wall of China—underwater—that cost $70 billion and several centuries to construct. By 1937 the Corps had begun building levees along both sides of the river, as journalist John McPhee wrote after a trip to Louisiana 60 years later, “the levees were each about as long as the Great Wall…in many places higher and in cross-section ten times as large.” The project was a flagship for its time, but successful by no means. Since then, the Corps have spend time and money on additional structures to the worsening area, including channels and diversion structures. Today, the Corps continue fighting a battle against the forces of nature, the extent of which no person could fathom.

When I imagine the Army Corps of Engineering, I imagine a “Bob the Builder” type of figure, with a hard hat and a catchphrase: “Can we fix it?” “Yes we can!” While this is a positive attitude to have, at some point it becomes redundant. Especially when the overconfidence is only a public and economic easement tactic. In 1973, a long-standing District Engineer in New Orleans privately told McPhee that “there’s danger of losing the whole thing,” when talking about rivers’ control structures riddled in scour holes. However, in the same year, when the Corps general was asked by legislators about the control structure, he responded, “The Corps of Engineers can make the Mississippi River go anywhere the Corps directs it to go.” However, the Corps is made up of an army of civilians with only about 2 percent being army personnel. 

The civilians in charge of monitoring and constructing the Corps tremendous projects are paid on an hourly wage, may be limited to sleeping bags as sleeping arrangements, and moving around the U.S. as much as 75 percent of the working year. With this type of job offer, it is unlikely that the country's top engineers are flocking to work on the most challenging problems we face.

While in private interviews many civilian Corps are happy to joke about the instability of their work, the official Corps stand on the matter is this: Congress say, Corps can do. This mentality has continued despite perpetual failure; they’ve got to listen to the boss. In their case, however, the “boss” is untrained in the professional field which it is commanding, thus Congress and the President have made requests far beyond what is plausible. When the project leaders return to Congress asking for more money, the blame is turned back on the Corps for doing the risky, innovative engineering that was needed to fulfill the nonsensical goals. It’s a process McPhee referred to as “planned chaos.” The disconnected process creates a never ending feedback of failing to control nature, paying for unintended consequences, then going back to the drawing board with new funds and new risky ideas. It is necessary to ensure that ecological and geological professionals can help engineers and developers avoid the burdens of ignoring forces of nature, rather than continue to exacerbate them through experiment.

The levee model used in the Mississippi has not only failed, but has actually exacerbated the problem it were contracted to fix. According to the General Accounting Office, “that levees increase flood levels is subject to little disagreement.” Unfortunately, despite opposing knowledge, unsustainable urban and levee development on floodplains has continued in other parts of the U.S. For example, since 1993 there have been 18,000 acres of floodplain development planned or built on previously inundated (flooded) land. With the planned and existing levees, the National Flood Insurance Program allowed for almost unlimited development across the floodplain as long at it sits in a levee-enclosed area. This approval from the federal government encourages developers to see the area as low risk, and sparked investments in the fragile St. Louis floodplains. At least $2.2 billion in new development, and a population growth of 23 percent, has occurred on floodplain lands that were underwater in 1993. This is a disaster asking for more climate refugees like those that will need to be eventually relocated from the tip of Louisiana. Living in these environments could be compared to building on the edge of an iceberg: we know it’s going under, but not exactly when.

Had the EPA been able to asses the construction of the Southern Louisiana industrial zone, our current burdens may have been avoided. If manufacturers decided to take earth’s sensitivities into account as a part of their business plan, our tax dollars could go to protecting our own homes. Instead, our money is being used to protect the infrastructural interests of some of the largest polluters in our time. As Senator Feingold of Wisconsin pleaded on the Senate floor in 2007, after $23 billion more was approved for the Engineers unadulterated use without any reform to prevent past mistakes, “How many more flawed projects or wasted dollars will it take before we say enough is enough?”

Eliza Grace is a Trinity junior. Her column, "the green wave" runs on alternate Thursdays.