Dam Environmentalists (Why there's no hope for the obvious solution to New Orleans flooding)

GIVEN THE PASTING PRESIDENT BUSH has taken over the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, one might have assumed the president's critics were in agreement about how to prevent such disasters. But for years now, the left has been deeply ambivalent about the most logical and time-tested mitigator against the threat of city-wide and regional floods: dams.

How could dams, embraced by everyone from beavers to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, be a source of contention? Ask the environmentalists. Their campaign against dams has gained influence and stalled, decommissioned, or otherwise limited the construction of many dams and levees, including one project that could have made a significant difference during Katrina's pounding of New Orleans. This animus against dams also continues to skew spending and construction priorities to make such disasters more likely in the future.

Until recently, dams were the pride of the left, and for good reason: They provide electricity, irrigation, and, of course, bulwarks against flooding. In 1964, presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was thought to have committed campaign suicide when he proposed privatizing the Tennessee Valley Authority, which had been built with New Deal dollars. Local voters, grateful to the TVA for providing power and controlling wild rivers, didn't much like Goldwater's argument.

Now a position far more radical has become respectable. In Deep Water: The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment, a new book receiving rave reviews from the mainstream press, Jacques Leslie assails all dams as "loaded weapons aimed down rivers" and calls for rivers to be allowed to return to their natural flows. Leslie, who was a Vietnam war correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and has written for magazines such as Harper's and the Washington Monthly, takes on what he calls the "Rooseveltian vision, arising out of the New Deal, built into the Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority, enthralled with its seeming capacity to foster prosperity by subjugating nature." He concludes by inveighing against dams as "relics of the twentieth century, like Stalinism and gasoline-powered cars, symbols of the allure of technology and its transience . . . of the delusion that humans are exempt from nature's dominion."

Most New Deal programs are considered sacred on the left, as George Bush learned recently when he tried to reform Social Security. But liberals conveniently forget Roosevelt's no-nonsense views on dealing with nature. At the 1935 dedication of Hoover Dam, FDR hailed the taming of a "turbulent, dangerous river" and the "completion of the greatest dam in the world." He proudly noted that the dam on the Colorado River was "altering the geography of a whole region," calling what had existed before "cactus-covered waste" and "an unpeopled, forbidding desert."

Roosevelt also defended public works such as dams on the now-discredited Keynesian ground that they create jobs (the New Deal did not bring down overall unemployment, which only returned to pre-Depression levels with World War II), but he was generally pragmatic about nature in its pristine state. About the river he said bluntly that "the Colorado added little of value to the region this dam serves." In the spring, he said, farmers "awaited with dread the coming of a flood, and at the end of nearly every summer they feared a shortage of water that would destroy their crops."

But to Leslie, damming the Colorado River was a damn shame, and he pushes for returning it "to its virgin state: tempestuous, fickle, and in some stretches astonishing." He acknowledges that if you took away the dams and the hydroelectric power they provide, you would also "take away modern Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix" as well as the nearby former desert outpost known as Las Vegas. But in exchange for this major subtraction from civilization as we know it, Americans would be able to marvel at a "free-flowing river" and "an unparalleled depository of marine life."

What does the left-wing website Salon, a consistent defender of New Deal programs, have to say about Leslie's savaging of Roosevelt's achievement? (And what does a West Coast webzine make of a book that proposes cutting off a major power source for Los Angeles?) Salon heaps praise on Leslie, stating in a September article that "the modern dam, in short, has come to signify both the majesty and folly of our age's drive to conquer nature."

Leslie and Salon aren't alone. Support for dam removal and opposition to new dams have become a staple among modern environmentalists, giving rise to organizations whose only agenda is to stop dams. American Rivers, for example, brags about how many dams have been decommissioned and has as its slogan "Rivers Unplugged." The Berkeley-based International Rivers Network does similar work in Third World countries, where dams are even more crucial for power and flood control. This sea change on dams illustrates a larger shift of the left concerning technology and the nature of man.

The same weekend that Salon ran its glowing notice for Jacques Leslie's rants against artificial barriers on natural rivers, it also ran an article about a recent antiwar protest in Washington under the headline "'Make Levees, Not War.'" This was a popular trope at the time, with leftie antiwar spokesmen charging that money for the war in Iraq could have gone to building levees as well as their favorite social programs. Yet one of the main obstacles, before Katrina, to building and fortifying levees, as well as creating more innovative flood barriers, was put up by environmentalists.

In 1977, the group Save Our Wetlands successfully sued the Army Corps of Engineers to halt the construction of large floodgates intended to prevent Gulf of Mexico storms from overwhelming Lake Pontchartrain and flooding New Orleans. The gates, the environmentalists said, would have hurt wetlands and marine life, although the Corps had already done an environmental assessment to the satisfaction of environmental regulators. Many experts believe the gates could have greatly reduced the impact of Katrina. "It probably would have given [the people of New Orleans] a better shot," says Daniel Canfield, a renowned professor of aquatic sciences at the University of Florida.

Then, in the 1990s, the Army Corps of Engineers tried to upgrade 303 miles of levees along the Mississippi River, telling the Baton Rouge Advocate in 1996 that a levee "failure could wreak catastrophic consequences on Louisiana and Mississippi." But the anti-dam American Rivers, along with eco-groups such as the Sierra Club and state chapters of the National Wildlife Federation, sued, alleging harm to "bottomland hardwood wetlands." This resulted in the Corps doing another environmental impact study and holding off some work for two years.

The Corps compromised with the anti-dam activists in other ways. As Ron Utt notes in a Heritage Foundation study, the Corps began spending hundreds of millions of dollars on environmentally correct projects like "aquatic ecosystems" instead of flood control. The distraction from the Corps's mission continued from the Clinton to the Bush administration and is something Bush can legitimately be blamed for.

Even now, with Katrina a recent memory, efforts to protect New Orleans are being turned into eco-boondoggles, though the media seems not to have noticed. Bills from Louisiana senators Mary Landrieu, Democrat, and David Vitter, Republican, couple money to fortify levees with millions of dollars to restore a vast swath of "coastal wetlands." These were not wetlands destroyed by Katrina, but land that started disappearing, from both natural and manmade causes, in the 1930s. The argument is made that the wetlands (which used to be called swamps) can help absorb floodwater before it gets to the city. But the University of Florida's Canfield says that while wetlands are valuable for marine life, they are vastly overrated for flood protection. "If they're already wet, and filled with water, they provide no extra protection," he says.

Leslie and other dam opponents say land-sinking and the buildup of sediment caused by dams show the futility of attempts to artificially control rivers. It's true that engineering isn't perfect, and there are always new challenges that require upkeep. But to refute the claim that dams are "dinosaurs," all we have to do is look to Western Europe, usually a favorite reference point for liberal activists and the media. There has, however, been a good deal of silence about European efforts on flood control, while the few reports that have addressed this subject largely focused on the amount of money Europe spends.

But what the countries spend it on is more important: dams, walls, and gates. After a North Sea storm in 1953, the Netherlands, half of which is below sea level, set out to dam every last major body of water. The last of these were ultramodern dams built in the 1980s. In the United States, The Weekly Standard was virtually alone in suggesting that Lake Pontchartrain could be dammed along Dutch lines. (See James R. Stoner Jr., "Love in the Ruins," September 26, 2005.) London, which sits below the high tide of the Atlantic waterways, has also had severe problems with the flooding of the Thames River. So, in the '80s, gates were built that can rise as high as five stories. The Dutch and the British are sensitive to the environment, but only to a point. They try to regulate water levels to accommodate the native fish. But neither country is undertaking massive projects to restore swamps or, in the eco parlance, "wetlands."

The environmentalist crusade against dams is curious for other reasons. The same activists who campaign for hydrogen-powered cars, for example, rail against the hydroelectricity produced by dams. As environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook pointed out in his 1995 book A Moment on the Earth, a dam "burns no fossil fuel and emits no greenhouse gases, smog or toxic or solid wastes." Take away dams, and folks will have to rely on other energy sources such as coal, which, as we know from the recent tragedy in West Virginia, has its own environmental and safety concerns.

Citing the Dutch and British experience, Canfield says the anti-dam movement is not mainly about science, but rather philosophy, or even theology. "It's a belief structure," he says. What motivates anti-dam activists is abstract talk about man not interfering in the "ecosystem" or leaving a "footprint" on the planet. But without humans asserting themselves, nature will leave plenty of its own footprints, like Katrina, as it stomps at will over human beings and wildlife alike.

John Berlau, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is writing a book on the health risks of environmentalism.

The older levees held, but all of the canal breaks were at points reengineered by the Army Corp within the past decade. Surely we had a right to expect the levees paid for by our tax dollars to be soundly built.

My understanding is that these recently rebuilt levees were either mis-engineered or the specs were not followed.

We may have a huge scandal coming up if it turns out somebody pocketed the money that should have gone into building them properly. This could not have been done, of course, without inspectors on the take.

"Flood Insurance was (and is) denied to those that insisted on remaining on the designated flood plain areas.."

You also can get flood insurance unless you mitigate with various building techniques.

Well your beloved po' are also a big part of the problem. When flood insurance people tried to get the people of the Keys to mitigate by removing illegal enclosures it was advocates for the po' that fought and still fights the mitigation. I'd say the po' and the rich subsidize each other. If people along the coast had to upgrade to code there would be a heck of a lot less damage. The rich are subsidizing the po' 'cause the rich have to spend money on all this new construction to mitigate. I pay big time for flood insurance yety also have paid to build to code. I'm in favor of market rate flood insurance. But it is the po' that would have a cow.

Wow. Great article. People talk about the Dutch. What they would do is to build a dike along Rigolets; drain the Lake for farm land (with Windmills), crisscross it with back up dikes and flood gates. There would be a sea wall along the Gulf Coast. Also with farm lands inside with backup dikes and farm lands.

My recollection is that the Missouri / Mississippi floods were described as "100 year floods", meaning such flooding is only expected once every century..
Not sure whether I believe that or not, but if it is the case, evacuating river flood plains was a silly and stupid gesture, and refusing flood insurance was bad policy..

Changes in weather patterns due to global warming (natural climate change) may have something to say about that, though..

This concept of 100 year floods is almost always misunderstood. If I flip a coin there is one chance out of two that it comes up heads and one chance out of two that it comes up tails. Over a very long series of flips I expect half of the flips to be heads and half to be tails. However, if I make 10 flips and 9 are heads and one is tails on the next flip there is still a fifty-fifty chance of heads or tails on that one flip.

The same goes for weather patterns. If you just had a one-in-one-hundred-year flood the chances for next year is still one-in-one-hundred. That is not to say that over tens of thousands of years the average is not one hundred-year flood every hundred years ON AVERAGE.

This is a hard statistical concept for most people.

Insurance companies understand the concept of probability studies quite well.. They understand the odds..

Let's look at the Missouri/Mississippi floods..
Actual flooding shows that the last "100 year" flood actually happened about 50 years prior.. and another about 50 years prior to that..( this is from my memory, so not 100% accurate.. )
Seems the 100 year floods are closer to 50 year floods if one goes by actual statistics..

That's why I noted that Climate Change may very well alter the probabilities of flooding in the Missouri/Mississippi valley areas..

Even so, insurance companies surely have a "handle" on the math, and undestand the odds are in their favor most of the time..
It's much like running a Las Vegas Casino..
Sure, you're going to have some spectacular jackpots now and then, but you know that in the long run, the house wins, big time..

If insurance companies are unwilling to sell flood insurance, they must know something they aren't telling the general public..

"Seems the 100 year floods are closer to 50 year floods if one goes by actual statistics.."

Not really two events, even 20 events, are not enough to plug into a statistical model. You could get 10 consecutive 100 year floods.

I grew up in the heart of TVA country. The TVA bought up all the land up to a certain elevation around the lakes it constructed. NOW....that land has been being sold over the last 70 years to people from out of the area.

I guess letting a hillbilly keep his lakefront property was wrong.

Goldwater was right then, and even though he's dead, he's still correct.

I don't think we'll be saying THAT about the neocon/liberal northeastern controlled GOP in thirty years.

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