In this week’s Time magazine, the article The Big Blank Canvas says levee board consolidation “was an essential signal to Congress that money sent to Louisiana would not drop down a sinkhole.”  That statement is another example of the Myth of the Levee Boards.

Louisiana has no control over federal flood protection money. Louisiana reformed their levee boards because its citizens discovered they needed to more carefully watch and monitor the US Army Corps of Engineers.  The Corps is the sole authority over designing and building New Orleans’ flood protection and only the Corps spends federal money for the levees.  The old levee boards were little more than grass cutters and tax collectors who raised and paid Louisiana’s share of the cost of the levees (30%).  However, the new levee boards will have engineering expertise, university appointed personnel, wider authority and a clear mission of safety.  Most importantly the new levee boards will carefully check and recheck everything the Corps does in the future because we have learned that we cannot blindly trust the Corps to build the levees right.

Sandy Rosenthal
Founder, Levees.Org