New and broader role needed for Army Corps of Engineers…

California and Louisiana have much in common, and not just that both are internationally renowned tourist destinations. In both states, communities, industry and the environment bear significant risk from floods and poorly designed flood-control projects…

…While hurricanes are not a threat to California, levees in the San Francisco Bay Delta estuary are subject to tidal surges that can be intensified by storm runoff. Like New Orleans, Sacramento is dependent on the levees tht surround it. A levee failure could leave millions of East Bay and South Bay residents with only emergency supplies because their water supply delivery systems also depend on the levees.  The state’s ecosystems suffer as well…

…The Army Corp of Engineers needs serious reform, as does the Water Resources Development Act that governs its activites, which is up for reauthorization this year…This system  should be backed up by an independent and robust peer review of the Corps’ scientific and engineering analysis on major projects and integrated with rewritten criteria for flood-control projects that stop encouraging development in flood-prone areas…

To read this entire article from March 4, 2007:

sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2007/03/04/EDG8IOE16I1.DTL

This article appeared on page E-5 of the San Francisco Chronicle.