Posted On: March 27, 2007, 4:41 pm CDT

Posted By: SMM

Once again, Louisiana is seeking to place the blame for lack of proper flood control policies and procedures on someone else.

Louisiana has spent the past 50 years hogging the flood control money for the Mississippi River basin.

It is not the Corp of Engineer's fault that the state of Louisiana chose to allow people to build houses below sea level.

It is not the Corp of Engineer's fault that subsidance is increasing in the delta area.

What the 'learned engineers' fail to point out in their report (or perhaps the media failed to address) is that some areas of New Orleans have sunk more than 15 feet since the levees were built.

The state of Louisiana failed to fund money to rebuild the levees as they sunk. After all, once the Corp of Engineers had finished the projects it was the states responsibility to maintain then.

I live in the Mississippi valley too - in the St. Louis area. After our 1000 year flood in 1993 we moved people out of the river bottoms and raised taxes to build higher levees. The entire town of Valmeyer, IL relocated to the top of the bluffs above the old city!

I don't have much sympathy for people who choose to live below sealevel and won't pay for adequate levees. Why should the rest of the country pay for their foolishness?