Katrina

In pondering the events that transpired in New Orleans two years ago this week what is really shocking is not the lack of governmental response to suffering, our governments don't respond to suffering any more, but the neglect of such a vital item of infrastructure as the seawall system there.

We all pretty much understand what New Orleans is all about from a cultural perspective, home to many poor minority people, playground for drunken students in February, and somewhat classy alternative to Las Vegas when we set out to be naughty. But from a national economic perspective, its ports are an integral part of the engine that keeps us afloat.

The Mississippi River drains about half of the United States and the portion it drains produces most of the grain and livestock products we ship overseas. This is a huge part of our foreign exports and one that we can ill do without. Yet the Army Corps of Engineers, charged with maintaining the Engineering works that protect our ports failed in its job.

What is happened here, among other failures, is a failure to properly prioritize assets. Since business schools came into vogue in the Eighties, the emphasis has been on what is measurable and not on what is most important. Thus the Corps fell into the trap of "measuring" its performance in terms of percentages of particular tasks accomplished. The seawalls in New Orleans were lumped with similar facilities across the nation and percentages of all facilities being built or maintained was the criteria.

They are not alone in this and, as we have seen in the case of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, these percentages denoting good performance don't really mean much, they are, in fact, quite flexible. An agency can redefine good performance on its own with only cursory oversight. In the process, managers who do well in meeting these measurable goals are rewarded above those making sound judgments.

The neglect of the seawalls was particularly egregious given their importance to the nation's economy. The Corps has known for nearly half a century that the Mississippi River delta is very precarious and has chosen stop gap measures and has scrimped on maintenance anyway. One day the river will change its course dramatically and we will not be prepared. This is not simply a matter of protecting the lives and livelihoods of a lot of poor people, or of protecting a tourist attraction. This will have serious economic and geopolitical impacts when it happens.