Sacramento and New Orleans are 2,000 miles apart. But when the Crescent City was submerged in what the media insisted on calling "toxic gumbo" following Hurricane Katrina, it brought overdue attention to the neglected levees of California's Delta. That's the good news. The bad news is that estimates for the amount of money needed to completely fix the Delta levees could range up to $1.5 trillion, according to Ron Ott, deputy director of the California Bay-Delta Authority. Ott came up with that shocking figure by comparing the Delta system to Holland; that country is in the midst of investing $2.5...