The billions in federal money that flow each year to water projects _ flood control, navigation enhancement and so on _ are allocated by pork-barrel politics at its purest. Members of Congress back one another's pet projects in return for support of their own; the Army Corps of Engineers builds the needed economic case. Even the White House has little influence in the matter.
And the voters seem pretty much OK with this, as long as their areas get their fair share, so senators and congressmen find no gain in opposing a dumb idea that brings home a bargeload of money.
But it's still tax money, of which a large portion is routinely spent in ways that fair-minded people, should they pay attention, would recognize as giveaways to special business interests. Alas, only the most dubious or lavish among these boondoggles gets more than fleeting press attention.
Alaska's famous quarter-billion-dollar "bridge to nowhere" is perhaps the most notorious recent example. But that absurdity is a trifle when laid against continuing revelations from coastal Louisiana, where decades of federal investment not only failed to protect a great city from long-predicted disaster, but made things worse.
Early headlines after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita pointed to cuts in spending for flood-control projects. These cuts were surely ill-considered but, in the end, a secondary factor. Louisiana was still receiving its customary biggest share of all the states, and for years its delegates in Washington steered too much of it to projects with popular short-term payoffs. Though amply staffed with people who knew better, the Corps took its typically cooperative stance.
Thus, levees designed for weaker storms than everybody knew would come. Thus, shipping canals that breached and eroded wetland buffers in the Gulf; one of these, the fabled "Mr. GO," built to give tankers a time-saving shortcut between the Mississippi River and the Gulf, is said to have increased Katrina's seawater surge by 2 feet. Thus, floodwall designs so flawed they allowed the city to flood from the north, after the hurricane itself had passed by.
It has been said that insanity consists in repeating familiar mistakes while hoping for different results. Congress could begin to change this pattern by adopting modest reforms proposed by Sens. John McCain, D-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., requiring independent review of large projects, and setting formal national priorities. But sponsors and lobbyists are pressing hard to get the pork barrel packed by Memorial Day.
The solution, it seems to us, is a potent, independent board like the one that picks military bases for mothballing _ sparing lawmakers the task of putting the national good ahead of local preference. The chief difference being that what's at stake in a base closing _ in lost lives and property, environmental ruin, wasted resources _ is ever so much smaller.
