Why didn't I read this in the Post? Seems to me Grunwald's message about the Corps' incompetence vis-a-vis New Orleans needs to reach the wider audience that platform provides.

Sorry, but Mr. Grunwald has it wrong: like the rest of the Armed Forces, the Corp of Engineers takes its orders from the Executive branch and the Legislative branch of the Federal Government. While they may propose projects that enhance their funding (like any other agency), the resposibility goes directly to those folks in Congress who treat the Federal budget as their private play-money. I find it strange that in his article, Grunwald repeatedly fingers the Louisiana politicians as the source of the bad decisions and worse allocation of funds, then turns around and acts as if the Corps had any choice except to do what they were told?
An article written by someone who has never worked inside a bureaucracy.

You state that the Army Corps spends money "carrying out  POLITICIANS' pet projects"  - So why are they getting your blame? Why turn the focus away from the ELECTED politicians? A member of the Army Corps is doing a paid job, just like most other people in the country. The politicians are the ones who decide what the job is.

Compare your article with Ehren Wataba. He is getting into massive trouble and facing years in jail for REFUSING to do what the politicians tell him.  I don't suppose members of the Army corps would  be jailed for putting their tools down - would they?  But they would surely be putting themselves into the Army of the Unemployed - and I don't imagine their references would help even the most competent to get back into the earning ranks very quickly.

I can't understand why anybody so clearheaded as the Grist team would protect corrupt politicians.  I am totally confused - I thought you were beyond this blindness.

Apart from that I love your work.

Have to agree with the previous posters to a large extent.  I'm sure some blame can lay with the career bureaucrats within ACOE, but if they get their dictate from politicians then that's that.

I work within a city agency in NYC and let's say I am an environmentalist within a very non-environmentally-aware agency.  A lot of advocates can't understand how backwards our agency is.  But the fact of the matter is that if the mayor were to decide that he was setting a new policy course for our agency, the agency would change its tune in a minute.  There isn't really a nefarious conspiracy in the agency -- may be some of the higher-ups here are not the most environmentally aware, but if the mayor told them to change agency policy to favor sustainable solutions, they would make it happen immediately.

What a mess the Corps and FEMA seems to be in. The experiences I have had with the CORPS AND FEMA have not been good.  One example NO RESPONSE from FEMA to a registered letter concerning abuse of the floodplains (with proof) in Lincoln, Nebraska where MILLIONS of yard of fill has and is being placed in the floodplain areas surrounding Lincoln.  The older residential areas (100 years) supposedly protected by levees constructed with POUROUS CLAY which origionally afforded 100 year protection and has now been down graded to 35 to 50 year protection as a result of development of the floodplain.  To make matters worse, for years no records were kept regarding the amounts of fill being placed in the floodplain.  REMEMBER, CONGRESS PUSHED AND APPROVED development in floodplains.

jesus.  the army corp of engineers is merely one rotted cog in a delapidated wheel of neglect and corruption.  there can never be enough blame to go around for all the groups, agencies, individuals, politicians and general neer-do-wells who contributed to tens of thousands of people dying in new orleans. (that's right--tens of thousands are the numbers of dead people you will never know about for sure because they were left to die in their houses, which are now about to be bull-dozed in an above-ground burial of their thought-to-be-worthless lives and of the culture they represented that gave new orleans part of its flavor and spice.)

the a.c.e. built a faulty, shoddy levee system at the behest of politicians--federal and possibly state--who funded them to do so.  they are servants just like the traditional service workers who had their houses washed away by a cat 3 hurricane.

the blame for the murder of all those people in new orleans lies in a much larger, much less easy to alter system of capitalism and power-mongering that breeds greed and kills all symblance of humanity.  every person who could have remembered they were human and that humans like them were about to die in a natural catastrophe, yet didn't do anything to stop the carnage is deserving of some of the blame, whether s/he be a politician or your neighbor who left you behind to care for yourself.  (this country is after all about the 'every man or woman for her or himself' modus operandi, right?)

when will new orleans get a levee system like denmark?  when more oil and energy producers relocate their businesses and processing plants to the lower ninth ward!  then the property and the city will be truly worthy of building a wall to protect its rich assets.

What a dopey article. The corps does what the Congress appropriates money for.  They build whateverthey are told to build, within the dollars they are given.  
Also, the 8 different levee boards in New Orleans were responsible for the mainteenance of the levees and in a few cases the engineering.  Who allows houses to be built upto the backs of the leveee walls, some corrupt louisianian politician.
The Federal gtovernment only plays second fiddle to local goverment and politicians.
The current ;evees were built to the existing standared - they replaced what was there before. Why? That's what congresss told them to do.
Oh if there was to be a new levee standard we would still be waiting for the decision to be made.....by the politicians

I have worked with the Corps.  Orders come down from the top - Congress - and if you disagree, you are eliminated somehow, transferred, demoted, fired, etc.  Our elected political representatives are the people we should blame.  Sure it would be nice if the individual Corps personnel took a stance, but those that try are usually easily eliminated - some poor little guy is out of a job and the project moves on just as some politician has directed.  It's a shameful bureaucratic mess, but I think you have to blame those at the top - Congress.  That's where the mess begins!  

Over the Labor Day weekend I had the pleasure of watching, for the first time, "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington".  I naively thought the widespread corruption we see in Congress now was a new thing...ha!  The story, written in 1939, could have been written yesterday. We need to yell soooo much louder about the unethical behavior of our elected officials, and CHANGE this system.  It is not a partisan thing.  It continues year after year after year...

As a displaced Katrina person who lived at the foot of one of these rotten corps levees in New Orleans, I was surprised to find this article on the Levees.org site, and I must say it is the best overview of the issues I've seen on the issue of Corps (or government as a whole) liability.  Note that the mainstream media won't touch this issue of Corps or government liability with a 10-foot pole, though the city has just slapped a $77 BILLION damages claim on the Corps of Engineers.

This author has analyzed the situation correctly.
If the citizens of New Orleans had been informed that our levees were engineered to be only suitable for cows, then forced to sign a waiver before purchasing property within the levee system, only THEN would I say that this is not a liability issue.

However, it is our tax money (as well as yours) that pays for Corps pork all over our blessed nation, as so aptly pointed out by the writer.  And we are blissfully ignorant of how bad it really all is.  If you think this is only about New Orleans, google Sacramento levees and you'll find out just how precarious our flood control situation is ALL OVER this country.

New Orleanians were not given a chance to know that their flood protection projects were shi**y.  Now we know.  And people, including my former neighbors, are still doggedly rebuilding on coastal and low lands (the propensity for change is not among New Orleanians' best attributes -- but it sure makes for good food, architecture and music!).  The feds wouldn't continue to subsidize this stupid development with cheap insurance it would never happen -- more rottenness with your tax money.  

Want more evidence?  Look into the Corps' soil sampling on the New Orleans levees.  You may come away concluding that the engineers actually perpetrated fraud to make the project fit the budget, by making the soils look far stronger than they actually are and thereby allowing the levees to be weaker than they needed to be in reality. And the wheel of government bureaucracy grinds on.  

So though some of you passionately say the blame ultimately lies at Congress' feet; the truth is that Congress only knows what the Corps tells them, and like any organism, the Corps is primarily interested in self-preservation.  It is the entire pork-barrel funded system that is "rotten to the corps" as the author so aptly title the article.

Thank you for the well-written article!