While Susan Hutchison did her best to blame Dow Constantine for the woeful condition of the Howard Hanson Dam, residents and businesses in the Green River Valley may have deeper pockets to sue should the worst happen during the current flood season.
In a groundbreaking decision, a federal judge ruled late Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers’ mismanagement of maintenance at the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet was directly responsible for flood damage in St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina.
The Army Corps of Engineers was also responsible for building and maintaining the Howard Hanson Dam, and presumably is responsible for letting it slide into its current state of neglect. And no doubt victims’ attorneys would look to the example in New Orleans should the dam’s failure result in significant flooding downstream.
I wonder how many of those same citizens complain about taxes – which pay for stuff like constructing and maintaining dams on the Green River…
Dams and impoundments are very expensive infrastructure items, and there’s simply not enough money to go around. The public would be shocked if they knew how flimsy and shoddy many dams and levees actually are.
When you say “dam” most people visualize the mountains of concrete poured at Grand Coulee and Glen Canyon. But most dams are nothing but piled-up dirt. Bulldozers push whatever soil happens to exist at the site into a ridge that stops up the stream flow, much like a kid playing with pebbles in the gutter. But dirt is porous, some of the backed-up water goes through it, and dirt-fill dams have been known to erode away to the point where they wash out and the whole reservoir abruptly comes downstream.
Why are dams built that way? Because there isn’t enough money in the universe to build them all of concrete. And, anyway, even concrete dams can fail; the Glen Canyon Dam is anchored rather poorly to the canyon sides, due to the poor quality of the rock, and the concrete-rock joints are leaking, so federal engineers are worried about a possible dam failure there.
Dam failures — especially at earthfill dams, which is what most dams are — are fairly common and a fact of life. Dams also have limited economic and physical lifespans. This is something everyone should understand before jumping on the dam-building bandwagon.
Any potential relevance depends on the principal purpose of the dam.
The District Court found for the plaintiffs because the waterway in question was developed for navigation (a shortcut to the Gulf) rather than flood control. Apparently, the Corps cannot be sued over failures in flood control projects, but that’s not the case when other types of projects fail and result in floods.
Even if the Howard Hanson Dam isn’t mainly a flood-control structure, the New Orleans case will be revisited in Appeals Court and perhaps even the Supreme Court. The decision could be reversed or revised. Therefore, no other federal jurisdiction will apply this decision as a precedent at this point.
@1 The self-sufficient rugged individualists in the Yakima Valley and elsewhere in eastern Washington want the federal government to build four giant impoundments at a cost of $16 billion to make more cheap irrigation water available — to be paid for by urban taxpayers and ratepayers, of course. Believe me, all those eastern Washington Republican farmers are fucking socialists. Every last one of ’em.
I could live with their federal dependency and reliance on urban welfare payments — if they’d be honest about what they are.
“But we pay taxes too!” they’ll proclaim. No, they don’t — not to the tune of the billions spent on them. There aren’t enough taxpayers in eastern Washington, and they don’t begin to pay enough taxes, to cover all the government largesse that comes their way. Not within a country mile.
In the western U.S., the federal money spent on reclamation projects amounts to more than $2 million per farm. That’s capital the farmers didn’t have to put up, a gift from urban taxpayers. I wish someone would give me $2 million to invest or start a business with. I could do well with that kind of free capital, too.
In one of yesterday’s threads, a couple of the trolls ranted about how the rich get that way by “working hard” and “earning” their money. The reality is far different. It’s true the big money is made in business, but running a lucrative business is — to a great degree — a matter of being good at gaming the system to take advantage of subsidies and tax breaks.
There are people who live in fancy, pricey homes on Mercer Island and in Seward Park who own agricultural properties in eastern Washington. They’ve leveraged tax breaks and subsidies, paid for by other taxpayers, into personal wealth. Through use of crop subsidies, subsidized rates for water and electricity, various farm support programs, financial leverage, subsidized loans, and other freebies, they’ve positioned themselves to take all of the profit (if there is any) while passing off most (or all) of the risks and losses to others. And, every time they drive over the pass to eastern Washington to visit friends or go hunting or fishing, they get a “business expense” tax deduction by claiming it’s a “business trip.”
Succeeding in business by finding customers and selling goods or services at a profit in a competitive market is for saps and suckers. The smart money doesn’t do that; they go to where the subsidies and tax breaks are.
I know a remodeling contractor who owns a $50,000 fishing boat. He likes to fish for salmon and sturgeon on the Columbia River, which requires a big expensive boat. Here’s what he did. He paid $240 for a state “guide” license. He paid a few more bucks for a web site and a few ads. Every year, he takes a few paying customers out in his boat to go fishing. Of course, the revenue from this barely covers his expenses, and doesn’t begin to pay for the $50,000 boat. But what it does do is turn the boat into a tax deduction. Whereas for the recreational boater or fisherman, a boat is pure expense. This is just one example of how people set up sideline “businesses” to milk the tax code in ways that wage earners can’t even dream about.
And, of course, all these people are conservatives; and some probably are teabaggers. There’s nothing they enjoy more than protesting taxes they don’t even pay. It’s a sport in itself.
Roger–
You were a bottom-feeding State Government Attorney who represented DSHS..
And you are name-calling?
Priceless!!
@4
The Black Rock dams would actually flood productive farmland. They pit upstream users against downstream (flooded out) users on the Yakima.
The fine folks in the Yakima valley would like to see the Bumping Lake dam expanded as well. Expanding Bumping Lake has been studied, and shot down, a couple of times before.
Shouldn’t all these people in the Kent and Auburn Valleys show some personal responsibility for their actions? I mean they did build their stuff in very flat valleys, next to a river with a history of flooding.
@11 Why do you assume I worked for DSHS? I didn’t.
@12 That won’t stop them. Money is never an object when you’re spending someone else’s money — in this case, big-city taxpayers’ money.
Mr. Cynical @ 11,
But, but, but, but, Cynical, wasn’t your wife a bottom-feeding, unionized school teacher in the
socialistpublic school system?And you are name-calling?
Priceless!!
That ruling probably would not help flooding claims here. The Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet that allowed the flooding in that part of NO was man-made and then not maintained. Without the Outlet, flood waters couldn’t have reached the city so easily, as it acts as a bypass to the Gulf.
Before the Howard Hanson Dam, flooding was an every year occurrence in the valley. The Dam allowed folks to build in the area with some level of safety.