If It Keeps on Raining, Levee's Going to Break

The loss of New Orleans wasn't just a tragedy. It was a plan.

Jonathan Rauch | September 19, 2005

(Page 2 of 2)

In any given year, then, figure that the expected economic cost of the swamping of New Orleans is $1 billion (divide the $200 billion cost over 200 years). A $2 billion levee project could be expected to pay for itself, probabilistically speaking, in two years; a $14 billion Delta restoration project, in 14 years.

But wait. New Orleans's 200-year flood might take place a century from now instead of right away (remember, this analysis is from a pre-Katrina standpoint), and money lost in the future matters less to us than money lost today. At an interest rate of 3 percent, Viscusi says, the present value of averting $1 billion in expected annual damage forever is $33 billion; at 5 percent, $20 billion; at 10 percent, $10 billion. Any of those numbers is higher than the estimated cost of hurricane-proofing the levees, and all but the smallest are higher than restoring the Delta.

Now, recall that those calculations reflect only tangible monetary cost. They do not account for inconvenience, pain and trauma, lives uprooted, and, above all, lives lost. Even a superbly organized evacuation would leave thousands of people behind. Moving nursing home patients, emptying hospitals, and losing control of the streets are dangerous at best. To all of which, add the psychic and cultural blow of leaving one of the country's most historic cities an empty ruin.

Strock told reporters that decisions about the levees were based on "whether it's worth the cost to the benefit, and then striking the right level of protection." Unless one uses very optimistic assessments of hurricane odds and economic costs, and also places a low value on human costs, New Orleans did not strike the right level of protection. Even in foresight, Naomi's characterization of New Orleans's vulnerability as "tantamount to negligence" appears justified. A far larger flood-prevention program should have been under way.

"This was not a close call," Viscusi says. "It's a no-brainer that you do this."

The immediate problem is to identify and bury the dead, tend to the refugees, and decide whether and how to rebuild. ("Whatever rebuilding is done in New Orleans, nothing very fancy should go there," says Richard A. Posner, a federal appeals court judge and the author of last year's book Catastrophe: Risk and Response.) After that should come a revision of America's disaster strategy no less sweeping than the post-9/11 revision of America's security strategy.

For example, Congress should create an independent Disaster Review Board to perform and publish an annual inventory of catastrophic vulnerabilities, highlighting in red all the places where, as in New Orleans, more prevention or mitigation makes sense. The board should prioritize spending and send an overall disaster budget to Congress every year for an up-or-down vote, forcing politicians to confront the issue. If population centers lie over the San Andreas Fault, in the shadow of Mount Rainier (an active volcano that could devastate the Seattle area), or on the floodplains of the Mississippi, the disaster board should be able to propose protecting them, requiring them to protect themselves, or encouraging them to move.

If there is another New Orleans out there, the public should know about it and should have to think about it. Katrina should change American habits of mind forever.

© Copyright 2006 National Journal

Jonathan Rauch is a senior writer and columnist for National Journal and a frequent contributor to Reason. The article was originally published by National Journal.