Le Show; 2007-04-22

From deep inside your radio, this is Lesho, we occasionally discuss the state of the city of New Orleans and what happened to it and what's going forward. And I'm honored to have as a guest today in Berkeley, California, a gentleman whose name is very well known, I think, to most informed New Orleansians because of his work on what happened here and obviously well known to those in the profession as well. He's Dr. Bob Bees, director of the UC Berkeley Center for Catastrophic Risk Management and engineer nationally known for his work as leader of the independent, levy investigation team that examined the causes of what happened here in New Orleans in 2005. Dr. Be, thank you for joining me today. It's a pleasure to be here. And the proximate cause of my inviting you to be here today is two words that you either uttered or were at least alleged in the local newspaper to have uttered when the United States Army Corps of Engineers revealed that a section of sheetpiling along one side of the 17th

street canal was substantially shorter than had been expected or was in the design, I guess. And you were quoted as saying, this gives me the heebie-jeebies. I guess when I first heard those words, I said, oh, and then we'd have to put X, X, X. And what exactly for the layman and I'm the laest of laypeople, what does this mean? What were they revealing? Well, I think where, as more time goes by, as we look deeper and deeper into the system, the flood protection system that we're discovering more and more things that concern all of us. And certainly turning up the short sheets as we call them that we depend on to one, hold up the flood walls, the two, two, act as a seepage barrier when we see those things

showing up short. We have instant recollections of the breaches that developed in the drainage canals around New Orleans. So to get this was an unpleasant surprise. Now, as I read the newspaper article, they were saying, well, this is a good thing because this keeps the sheet piling at least five feet away from a layer of sand. And that's what's called for in our design specs. And my initial thought was, well, wouldn't you want to drive it deeper than the sand layer as opposed to stop it on top of the sand layer? Am I screwed up in that conclusion? Absolutely not. In fact, you're, I think, right on as many people are coming to realize, the greater New Orleans area sits on top of that bed of sand. In sand, we know it is very permeable. Water flows through it very, very easily. Now, on top of that bed of sand are two or more

buried swamps. There's used to be a freshwater swamp area thanks to the early Mississippi River. And so those swamps are sitting on top of the buried sand layer. They too potentially are very, very permeable. In particular, as we found out around the London canal, the 17th street canal and over to the industrial canal. And it's because of all of the organic material that's trapped within those layers. Then of course, on top of that, we put fill and people's homes now exist on top of that fill. Now, one of the things that it's an early alert that short sheet pilotlings are not a good idea is in the repair areas at the breach or the dead breach and that have now been reworked by the core. We're driving sheet piloting to 50 in some cases 70 feet below the sea level. And as you point out, very, very deep down into that sand. And that's so the

sheet piloting can act as a cuddle for giving the water a much longer, more tortureous path to have to follow as high water starts to develop around the city. So the repair, I think we'll call it that layer of sensibility tells us that stopping sheet piloting just on top of a potential sand can blow out is not a good thing today. You reminded me as you were talking of two words that sort of jumped out of me as I was rereading the ILIT report today. And the report describes a lot of the faults, a lot of the construction and design flaws in the system and says that they recur so much that they seem to be pervasive features of the system and many of the flaws yet to be discovered. How are they doing in discovering those flaws now almost a year since that report was issued? Well, I think again, it's a function of time number one and resources number two.

And of course, one of the most important resources are knowing good background and experience people to look at data to gather data to analyze that information correctly. And so I think as time those resources are becoming more available to the core, they're discovering more, more the pervasiveness of the flaws that certainly we and other groups discovered as we came into New Orleans following Katrina. Now, let's do a little background. You and a couple other groups came into the city as you say. Were you sent here? Did you volunteer to come here with what mandate did you arrive here? You could say we were sent there and I think we were sent there because we cared. In my case, my career did begin with US Army Corps of Engineers year 1955. And so I worked for the core in Southern Florida, learning how to help build canals and pump stations and how drag lines

and those kinds of things work. I left the core and we'll call it the world leads me to New Orleans where I was living in 1960 working for a shell oil company. In 1965, Hurricane Betsy comes along. We had a home out in Pine Village behind the Lakefront Airport and after we evacuated it midnight, the night that Betsy came ashore, the day following I had to avoid and swim back into our home. The home was a total loss. Insurance would not even talk to us all the belongings were a loss. So and I think some of us saw Katrina happen in the misery that was certainly becoming evident. We were sent there by our consciences and by our drive for caring. Many of the

engineers that continued to work on that study for almost the next year, I think we're driven by those same motives. We did the work pro bono. We had enough funding to cover our travel expenses, most of it, although our wives charge cards, so that we did sneak some through on their side. We were there because we cared, we wanted to find out what had caused the single largest disaster involving a civil engineered system in the history of the United States. And in the end, I think we understood. And the understanding said, well, it certainly went farther than as Lieutenant General Stark commented. This was an engineering failure. I know this was in fact much deeper than an engineering failure. There certainly were engineering failures,

but this involved a massive meltdown of organizational institutional elements that didn't have the right stuff and the right places at the right time. We were hoping it wouldn't happen, and we got caught hoping and hope is no defense against hurricane flooding. General Strach was at the time head of the Army Corps of Engineers, am I correct? Yes, that's correct. This is obviously an oversimplified binary choice, but one reads so many people, including this week, the recoveries are of New Orleans speaking at a convention of city planners in Philadelphia, referring to what happened to New Orleans as a natural disaster by what Lieutenant General Strach and you just said, that inclines one to say that this was not a natural disaster. This was a man-made disaster. Am I misinterpreting you? No, again, you're right on Harry. It's led me to explain, and some of my colleagues have

joined this course, that there are no natural disasters. Now for sure, there are natural hazards, and certainly hurricanes and the global warming and rising sea level and subsidence. Those are all natural hazards, but it's when we take these natural hazards and combine them with human, we'll call it in some cases, arrogance, but frequently, hubrits, you get those two things together. It's an explosive combination and disasters will happen either sooner or later. And of course, if you take a disaster and combine that yet with more hubrits and arrogance, you have catastrophes, and I think that's the sad story we saw as we first arrived in New Orleans in early September. Another pair of words that I've heard attributed to you, I think Dr. Von Hearden in his book, Attributum to you, that had the man-made engineered systems not failed the

basic overall effect that Katrina would have had on New Orleans would have been, quote, wet ankles. You got it. It's a way of saying that if everything we had in place, even as incomplete as it was, was not so pervasively flawed, that is, it had been able to stand up and do its job. Our firm conviction is we would have had some missing shangles, some certainly some broken window glance, some wet carpets, but certainly not the catastrophe that we're facing today, that we understand in round numbers is responsible for the death of 2,000 Americans. Total cost, our estimate, both direct and indirect, says it's a 400 to 500 billion US dollar disaster catastrophe. One of the major flaws that your team's report called attention to was the use of porous, in many cases, sandy soils in building the levees that ended up being the sites of

these breaches. And then last January, was it not you who said that the core was using similarly sandy soils and their reconstruction of part of the industrial canal levee? And also the Mississippi River Gulf outlet protective levee for St. Bernard Perich, the answer is yes. And they denied it for a couple months and then finally said, oh, we're using better soil now? The answer to that is yes. Let's enumerate for the listeners, some of the faults that you found in the structures. First we already mentioned the use of these sandy soils, the use of so-called eye walls as the support structures rather than supposedly more robust tea walls. Which of these was more crucial in the problems that developed? Well, they all played a part. And in some areas, the permeable foundations are including sandy

soils that had been used in construction of the levees were responsible in a primary way for the breaches that we saw. In other areas, the eye walls that were perched atop these kinds of levees played primary roles. If and nothing else, giving us what turned out to be a very false sense of security, the eye walls were pervasively flawed because in fact the design thinking was pervasively flawed. We ultimately traced this mystery back to full scale flood wall tests. The Army Corps of Engineers had run back in the mid-1980s. But then as we turned and looked at the design methods that had been used to put those walls together and lead to the construction specifications, the resulted in the walls that we finally saw. Those design specs and guidelines did not include

the insights from that test data that had been gathered back in the mid-1980s. So, here's the information existing and we call that noble thanks. And to the design engineers, it was unknown. So you call it an unknown noble. And as it was... That sounds almost, that sounds almost Rumsfeldian. Well, in fact, we think Donald Rumsfeld might have been reading some of our work because long before he came out with unknown nobles and unknown nobles, we actually had cited that as part of what was going on in New Orleans. But back to this unknown noble, Ed Link, the man led the interagency performance evaluation task force for the US Army Corps of Engineers, explained it as we did not connect the dots, which meant the information was there, existed. The tracks were clearly available for consumption and use, but for some sets of reasons

we didn't connect those dots. So here, even in the face of information, instrumentation and data, we're failing to connect the dots. And you say, well, you know, this doesn't seem sensible. What's going on here? And I think I got some of the best insight into this through a one-on-one conversation I had with a career core engineer. And he looked at many, he said, Bob, the core of engineers are not like it was back in the 1950s when you and your father were with us. By the way, my father was a career core officer employee for his entire life. He said, in the times since you've been here, we have taken engineering out of the core of engineers. And I thought that was a very, very remarkable and wise statement. And you'd say, well,

how did that happen? And the answer is, well, maybe we got preoccupied with better faster cheaper, which is, well, we're behind budget. We're behind on our schedules. We're obviously having trouble with our contracting project management. So let's train our interest and focus on project management. And in that process, we launched a great deal of the devoted, in-depth world-leading engineering that used to characterize and typify work done by our colleagues at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. More with Dr. B in a moment. But now news from outside the bubble. Dayline London. A coroner has called it inexcusable that United States authorities have failed to release evidence about the first British casualties of the Iraq War. And who Walker was speaking at the

reopening of an inquest into a fatal helicopter crash in March four years ago. Eight British servicemen died, along with four U.S. Marines that co-weight. American authorities would not give evidence or provide relevant videotape to the court despite all efforts by the Ministry of Defense, corny the coroner. The coroner Andrew Walker said he'd been refused permission to use American evidence that would help his inquiry. He said despite strenuous attempts by his often and the Ministry of Defense, the U.S. had again said it would not provide any American witnesses for his hearing. Footage film by an embedded Fox News crew was also being withheld, he added. Well that's probably a good thing. On behalf of one of the families of the one of the soldiers killed, he says the U.S.'s attitude is inexplicable. It gives the impression of a cover-up.

News from outside the bubble, ladies and gentlemen, a copyrighted feature of this broadcast. This is a show we're speaking today with Dr. Bob B, who is professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley and an expert on what happened in New Orleans. People ask me when I raise this subject and I do, you know, to a tiresome degree of frequency. Would they just at the Army Corps being deliberate? They screw up deliberately? Are they just that incompetent? Well I'd say first on the deliberate side, if you meant deliberate, I'm going to embed flaws that will injure in some cases. There were, I think, 700 Corps of Engineers families that

were flooded out by this disaster and I think it's not fair to say they deliberately invoked this level of pain either on themselves or on to their families and their colleagues in that area. It could have been in one way construed as deliberate because we were thinking. We were trying to reason and understand how to work this problem in a way that would allow the work to go forward and would allow us to continue to be happy in our lives. So in that sense, yes, there was a deliberate action going on. We weren't a bunch of stumbling or around idiots not thinking. Now on the other side of incompetence, you'd say, well, that's a pretty strong statement and I think I couldn't make that statement either. It's a way of saying that there are even today and I've met them talked with them and in fact have a great deal of, I would even call it love and

affection for them. There are some splendid engineers in the Corps of Engineers. These are people that have deep inside, deep knowledge, deep experience. Only they're outnumbered. There's not enough of them. The research that used to feed them, the professional involvement at the technical level in which they used to be leaders is now absent. Now on the other side, they're working on project management and at that point you'd say, well, why are you concerned about their Bob? And I guess it's because my career now spanning 53 years tells me you can't manage what you can't do. In order to properly manage something, I have to know as much, if not more than the people that I'm depending on to do that work for me. And at this point, if we again, we don't have the science and engineering underpinnings for that management of budgets and schedules, but we can expect problems.

And I think we've seen those problems surface, not only in New Orleans, but in a very alarming way elsewhere around the United States. So, no, I don't think it's deliberate. No, I don't think it's pure incompetence, but we've actually got a combination of these two things. And that's what I was struggling to call arrogance and hubris. The report that your team issued calls for changes in all of the organizations that have an ore in this water and local state and national. And in the time since Katrina, the Louisiana voters have reorganized the local levy boards into sort of super levy boards. And there have been other organizational changes at the state and local level that impinge on this stuff. How's the core doing organizationally changing in ways that you might want to see? Well, I've been watching this very, very closely tracking it

from, I'll call it both the outside and as close as I can from the inside, because the core is what I would call very much like a family. And of course, as soon as you start looking into family, the family changes because you're looking at them. So you need to both watch what they're doing, watch how things are going from outside the window. So speak, but you have to understand what's happening inside. So I've tried to track that as carefully as I can. The second thing pops out in the tension between my father and myself. There's a military arm in the core of engineers, approximately a thousand. I think just absolutely splendid people. I can't even stand in their footsteps or in their shadows. They oversee about 35,000 civilian employees. Many of those people are very, very good, excellent, devoted in many ways or like what I call

teachers and preachers. They're called to the calling of government service and in their cases, their engineers and scientists. Now, as the core has begun to see, well, I need to in fact do things to improve the core. And here again, I think one of my heroes is Lieutenant General Strock who was a former head of the US Army Corps of Engineers, but he came forward with what I call Strock's 12 Commandments. And here are 12 Commandments, if you will, that certainly he saw and he was getting advice from other groups that they saw could lead to very, very important improvements within the core. So I saw that come out and I applauded and smiled and said thank you, General Strock. But then I began to check signals from, we'll call it the inside of the family. And particularly watching what the family was doing at the local levels of actually

repairing the levees and constructing new defensive works. And at that point, I think we've had a slip between the spoon and the tongue, which is a way of saying that those good intentions that have been started chiefly from the military leadership that comprises that so important part of the core is still finding a great deal of difficulty, working its way all the way down to the people that are every day having to face doing the work. So far, the symptoms have not been encouraging. We've seen repeated promises for things like we want outside peer review and in-depth studies of what we're doing. And yet when you go to do that, a lot of pushback starts to show up, both I'll call it formal and informal pushback. When you say, well, why did you choose a factor of safety of 1.3 is being okay to approve the, quote,

safe water level in the 17th street canal. The answer comes back, well, that's what we have used before. But then you said and say, well, you've received report after report telling you, that's not okay. That's far too low a factor of safety, even for this element in the protective work. So I think the frustration is good intentions, very fine leadership, but we're still having a great deal of trouble seeing the important institutional behavioral changes that have to happen out on the levy, so to speak, to make sure that this time when we get a protective system in place, it's something that all of us can rely on. So we're having trouble. Another of the recommendations in your report seems to use the phrase in-house with great frequency in describing resources and abilities that the Army Corps of Engineers should have, which leads me to ask, has the Corps been over outsourcing? Yes. And again, that was part of what I'd call the

institutional organizational environment in which the Corps was working. Here, groups like the government accountability office, again, I love that bunch and the office of management and budgets are saying, well, you're behind schedule, you're way over budget, you need to improve that part. So we want you to do that and we want you to become a modern business better, faster, cheaper, but we also want you to do it within your, essentially, your current manpower, peoplepower levels. And at that point, of course, we shifted the focus and you'd start to say, okay, so we shifted the focus. So what? The answer then turns to say, well, how am I going to, in fact, reward people that are technically scientifically challenged if I'm doing all of the work outsourced? Why would they come to work for me if all of the exciting work, so to speak, is being done by

contractors? Well, at that point, of course, you now start a brain drain leading to the outside that you have to have inside. And you'd say, well, how do you overcome that? And the answer is, well, one, you have to pay scales that will attract those people for a career. And so we said, well, one of the first things is you have to quit paying pittance wages and you've got to pay these people reasonable salaries so that the ones that are driven for technical quality and professionalism want to spend a career inside of the core. And then you say, well, once you've paid them, you then have to give them challenging work so they can build their experience in background. And at that point, you now have something that can begin to do good jobs of technical supervision oversight management of external contractors. So we think there's a very important sort of organizational institutional thing that has to happen if you are, in fact, going to successfully

help the core rehabilitate themselves to do the kinds of proud work that they have done in the past. There's another phrase that sort of leapt out from rereading that report that seemed to be almost a masterpiece of diplomatic prose. The report calls for the maintenance of a deliberate culture of diligence. What did you mean by that? What were you saying there? You just gave me goosebumps hearing because I wrote those words. And it actually happened out in the earlier all-call it conflict that developed over the soils that were being put into the Mississippi River Gulf outlet protective levees for St. Bernard Parish. We were riding back in after one of my first visits out there with the Corps of Engineers with us. And before we went out there,

I asked my colleague Ray Seed to stop at the grocery store and we picked up some baggies and went to a nearby nursery and got a very expensive trial. So Bob could have something to dig in the sand with and something to put that material into. Namely the gallon baggies we got at the grocery store. So we get out there. Bob goes down on the levee, starts digging soil. Nobody will following because there's a swarm of mosquitoes around Bob and up on the top of the levee, the wind's blowing. So the same place is to be on the top of the levee, not down there with that old man who's digging in the soil. So gather up the soils, put them in the back of the mules or vehicles we were using to transport it along the top of the levee, go riding back into the pickup point at Bayou Bienvenue. And I kept thinking, well I wonder when somebody's going to ask me what I've

been doing because I've been collecting this soil, putting it in baggies. I put it in the bag in front of everybody. Nobody's asking. Well as we were riding back in of course I was listening to the conversation go on. There were five people at that point and the vehicle were riding on and they were talking about a hunting deer. And we were discussing do you hunt deer with her without bait, which means you bait them before there's these and then when they come out for the bait and then you got something to hunt. And the other thing, he hunt deer with her without dogs. And I was sitting there thinking, well I wonder if we're going to discuss hunting with her without good soils. I finally get the bags of soil in the back of the car that we had rented to go on the trip. No one ever questioned me. And at that point I thought oh my god maybe we're worried about the wrong

things. In essence our main focus is not keeping or learning how to keep water friendly and how to construct quality engineered things that not only ourselves can be proud of but our families and our cities and societies we work in but we're really worried about you might call it the externalities to that flood friendly vision. At that point diligence hit my head and I thought okay it's just obvious that we've got our eye on the wrong ball here. Dr. Bobbi from UC Berkeley will be back with him moments from now here on the show. But now it's time for the apologies of the week. I think in the recipients of apologies this week the Jews win. Dateline London, British singer Brian Ferry apologized for remarks he made in an interview with a German newspaper in which he praised the Nazis iconography as quote just amazing and quote

really beautiful. Unquote. The 61 year old lead singer of Roxy Music said quote the way the Nazis staged themselves and presented themselves my lord. In a statement this week Ferry said he was quote deeply upset about the negative publicity. The interview triggered and added quote I apologize unreservedly for any offense caused by my comments on Nazi iconography which was solely made from an art history perspective. I like every right-minded individual find the Nazi regime and all it stood for evil and abhorrent. But lovely no he didn't say to let me talk. Dateline New York the Bronx bureau president said this week that a top German official has apologized him for an army instructors videotaped in directions to a soldier to imagine blacks in the Bronx as he was firing a machine gun. Adolfo Karyan Jr. praised the apology from the German council general and the recent dismissal of the instructor as positive steps. Let us now move forward Karyan said the widely viewed video clip on YouTube shows the instructor in a soldier dressed in camouflage the instructor tells the soldier in German you are

in the Bronx a black van is stopping in front of you three African Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways act. The soldier fires his machine gun and yells an obscenity several times English at one point the instructor tells the soldier to curse louder and back to the Jews GOP presidential candidate Tommy Thompson apologized to a Jewish audience this week after saying that making money is quote sort of part of the Jewish tradition unquote at the outside of speech to a reformed Jewish group the former Wisconsin governor told an audience quote I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money you know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that I enjoy that mark caused murmurs and disbelief in the room Thompson a Roman Catholic returned to the podium shortly after the speech was over after someone from the organization spoke to him quote I didn't in any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things unquote Tommy Thompson what I was referring to latest gentleman is the accomplishments of the

Jewish religion and the Jewish people you've been outstanding business people and I compliment you for that and if anybody took what I said wrong I apologize I may have mischaracterized it you are very successful I applaud you for that now Tommy about the grammar research and motion limited says the glitch that crashed its black very email system this week was prompted by the installation of some new software and the failure of a backup system company apologized to customers for the inconvenience and said it is identified certain aspects of its testing monitoring and recovery processes that will be enhanced and deadline grant rapids Michigan secret service is serious about protecting the president just asked W O O D radio's Rick Beckett and Scott winners the talk show owes to apologize this week for an earlier remark in a discussion about the Virginia Tech gunman Beckett reportedly said a crazy person and grant rapids could make a name for himself by shooting at the president that brought this secret service to the radio station

the station received only one complaint apparently not from the secret service still Beckett apologized we apologize for any concern and any inconvenience we may have caused he said and that's all there is to say who called the secret service remains unclear the apologies of the week latest gentleman it's a copyrighted feature of this broadcast back to our interview with Dr. Bobby from the UC Berkeley Center for Catastrophic Risk Management there's there's a swirling kind of sub-rosa debate about whether rebuilding New Orleans rebuilding the protective structures that enable New Orleans to be rebuilt is a fool's errand in the face of coastal wetlands erosion global warming rising rising ocean levels all of that is this basically the bureaucratic and engineering equivalent of pissing up a rope how do you come down on that and and all the things being equal would you be buying a home

and and settling in New Orleans at this point knowing what you know good question I return from one of the trips I had made two new Orleans and I can't count how many trips and time that I spent down there but came back and I gave the problem of protecting New Orleans to my graduate class and the class has a title long kind of sounds like a university of human and organizational factors in the quality and reliability of engineered systems so that's a way of saying that class focuses on the human factors that provide how engineered systems work or don't work so I came back from New Orleans and said okay I want you to protect New Orleans so the class goes away works a couple of weeks comes back and says okay we got the answer Bob and I said okay what is it and they said well well you want to build 40 to 50 foot high levees around the primary area of New Orleans

and they were up in front of the class talking I broke out in a big smile and then started laughing and they said well why are you laughing and I said well first of all I'd call that the traditional civil engineering approach and I joke in class a lot about brute force and ignorance and here you've built me into a prison I in fact used to love to sail coming in and out of the Orleans municipal yacht harbor and I said I can't even get my damn boat out of the yacht harbor anymore you've destroyed my view and my quality of life in addition you have built a system that can't be justified economically you can't convince the United States to pour more money than this reasonable end to protect this area number two you can't defend it for 100 years or subsidence and rising sea level and those kinds of things make this an unsustainable system

and one of the class members looks back at me and says well if you're so smart what's the answer and I said I'm not that smart that's why you're here and we're working together so they came back in about four weeks and they said we've got the answer and I said okay tell me again and they said well this time our levees only need to be 15 to 20 feet high and I thought hmm and then they said well how are you going to do this and they said well the first thing that we want to do is restore selected barrier beaches and then we want to start restoring some of the wet lens that are so effective at absorbing surge and damping out wave energy and then there are some areas where we can improve land bridges and perhaps even turn things like highways and overpasses into defensive structures some places we need modern gates we need to have improved pump facilities for god sakes some areas we should not re-enhabit because we

can't reasonably re-occupy them and defend them we need to open up some areas for water because water like space at the end the levees are 15 to 20 feet high they're properly armored and defended we can continue to maintain them for a hundred years the United States will look at it and say yes this is something that we can afford and the United States might also learn then to accept the next more difficult thing and that is this is not a quick fix that this is something that's going to take maybe 50 years to get into place it's going to require continuing awareness and diligence to make improvements to catch up with things that we didn't do right and correct them as we move forward but you end up with a system that is what I would call nature and people friendly now I have reestablished a vital cultural center of the United States and that's certainly

typified by New Orleans to me and I have learned how to preserve that I have learned what the word united in the United States really means and said aha we've got a system here that embarks on a partnership with nature embarks and reinforces a partnership with the United States that requires vision and leadership and I give that vision and leadership to my students I hope that we are able to capture that because if we do then we have something that makes rebuilding New Orleans makes the work that's underway by one of my former colleagues there the rebuilding are about rebuilding homes that starts to make it all make sense and in the end we have a world class system that has a beautiful environment surrounding it and within it if we

can see that vision and make it happen something proud will happen here if we don't then you can expect darkness chaos and stumbling around in the dark and so far I see an awful lot of stumbling and dark in in this environment of darkness and stumbling you and and team Louisiana led by Dr. Von here and functioned for about a year as oversight monitors of the work that was going on to rebuild the so-called hurricane protection system who's performing oversight on the corps work now well I think there are tragically few people there are people that have been brought in to do oversight and the 17th Street Canal safe water level discussion article that you were reading about that was done in the Times Vicki Un by Sheila Grissit I think characterizes it

the corps said well we're having one of our district offices do a peer review of our work and I'm sitting there thinking as I heard those words same thinking same results because of the people that are doing the peer review have the same thinking templates and background that has potentially created a problem then you can expect not to see that problem highlighted so you need to as you truly understand what quality assurance and quality control are about you need to invite people in that don't think like you and in fact you need to invite people in that don't agree with you so that out of that intelligent discourse and the needs to be intelligent and it needs to be constructive and it also needs to drop we'll call it egos and arrogance at that point you now develop a debate that's over quality science and engineering and that's called get the right answer I don't care about who's right that level of peer review quality assurance

is disastrously thin right now a new Louisiana flood protection authority the so-called united levy board has started and they've got some very very fine people that are within that activity recently I said well why don't we have them start to do this and a new thing started to pop up and it said well if we do it and we get involved in the peer review therefore we now are starting to accept some legal liability for the outcomes and at that point I thought oh my god here we go again because here you won't be able to do the peer review because you think if it fails then you could be held liable and I'm sitting there thinking well again after 53 years if I build something and it falls down I don't care about a lawyer or a law I am liable so here again is now an institutional organizational thing that's showing up in the peer review mystery another

one that's particularly alarming I turned to many of my colleagues who all freely admit or much better engineers and scientists and I am that participated in the investigation both paid and unpaid and said well will you help do the peer reviews and they turned to me and said well Bob we can't and I'd say well why and they'd say well we still want to work with the core in the future we still want to get research from them and we want to have a chance of working in a collaborative way with the core and you know Bob you're just continuing to make a bunch of enemies and you know friends and enemies don't get along so well and so I'm thinking here again is another critical flaw that shows up in the organization institutional thinking that won't invite all college intelligent a deliberative a disagreement and debate understanding that it's really the right

answer not the right person that you're after and that's not showing up there are a few people in the greater New Orleans area southern Louisiana area god bless them that are still on the trail of getting the right answer not caring who's right but the defense is tissue paper thin talk to be what you're describing sounds to me like the result of an agency that did something very wrong and has not yet been held in the strictest or the loosest sense accountable the issue you're bringing forward I think is very important and I think the answer is for most complex things is it's kind of complex but I'll try and and put it on on several levels one is at the personal level when you're lying down at night and you're bed or you're living in St.

Bernard Parish you're working for the core and you look up at the ceiling and you say you know what happened certainly was not okay and I think many of those people have had that introspection and self-reflection and I think they don't feel proud and I don't think they feel good about it but the next day you go to the office you're with your colleagues you're trying to stand proud do good things and at that point a new level begins to show up and you might call it well I've got to be a little bit better than maybe I was and at that point you're trying to press the pass and start to recognize how much better you might be in the future so I think what we're seeing is your caught in that sort of tension now the other one that I've seen a lot of and I'll tell it as a quick story to show how it happens I was 16 years old just got a driver's license my father who was a core officer said Bob you can use a car to go out on a date

but you got to have our brand new Chevrolet back in by midnight I come dragging back in at four in the morning and I turn off the ignition coast into the driveway open and close the doors quietly unlock the front door quietly walk into the living room he turns on the light he's sitting in the living room in a chair and says Bob where have you been and what have you been doing anything I said after that was not even close to the truth and I think part of what I observe here is a natural human and organizational tendency to try and push to the background the truth because we know that if we do come forward and admit it we are in fact endangering ourselves so a lot of what I continue to see is defensive elements and until those defenses sort of get dropped either

by time or by intent nonsenseable kinds of things will continue to happen I'm trying to reconcile what you've just said with the normal way that mistakes are dealt with and what one could laughingly call the real world where somebody somebody loses their job if a major screw up occurs I mean Don Eimes was lost his job for for screwing up on the air a screw up that as far as we know didn't kill anybody who was lost their job at the Army Corps of Engineers I did come or I do come from the commercial world I work for a royal debt shell for almost 20 years and the scenario that you paint there is exact there's responsibility and with it accountability and it says well if you do good you get good if you do

bad you get bad now in this particular system there's not quite that going on and hence that accountability that goes along with it is sheltered by a number of things one of the things disagreeably for me personally that I've been having to learn about recently or the immunity provisions protect the Corps of Engineers from liability due to flooding and that's a way of saying that there are a multitude of defenses I wish our flood protection had as many defenses in it that protect them from liability due to flooding so here institutionally and even legally we build in not for these reasons but things that tend to encourage people not to recognize the accountability that is going along with the activities they are conducting in this meeting that I just wrapped

up before coming here I turned to one of my colleagues and said well it's even worse and I just described legally none of the engineers and the Corps of Engineers are required by state law to be licensed and my colleagues looked at me and they said is that true here in California and they said oh yeah it's true in all of the states none of the federal engineers are required to abide by local engineering registration and practice requirements well here's yet another institutional thing that we have built in that tends to encourage people not to recognize that when they build a levy that levy is expected to work and if it doesn't work you could lose your your job you could lose your life and at that point we tend to get a lot softer than perhaps we should. Dr. Bee I know you've got classes to teach I want to ask one question finally we've been talking

about New Orleans and Louisiana but of course the Corps a couple months ago issued a report saying that there were more than a hundred levy's around America that might have flaws some of them in the Sacramento Valley of California would you be buying property in the Sacramento Valley at this point in time. Well in fact that reminds me of the question and it was a good way to put it would I buy a home in New Orleans and the answer is yes would I reoccupy New Orleans the answer is an immediate yes would I do it and the way I've done it in the past the answer is immediate no which says I would occupy some areas there are some areas I would not allow to occupy and give the people the feeling I was protecting them I'd say if you want to live there maybe it's lower St. Bernard Parish I encourage you to build high and strong but you're on your own don't look to theme or flood protection insurance to take care of you so you got to tell people what the risks are that they face they have to acknowledge them and to agree to them

what I buy home in Sacramento certainly I would would I permit some of the development that is happening in the Sacramento Valley certainly I wouldn't would I continue to dip my freshwater drinking straws that feed the California aqueduct freshwater supply system for Los Angeles San Diego would I continue to allow that to exist within that we'll call it eerily similar to New Orleans system absolutely not I would take a proactive action I would overcome my arrogance and hubris I would say I need to learn how to cooperate with nature and I need to get ahead of the ball this time not be behind and under the ball so yes I would rebuild both areas but not in the same way I've done it in the past Dr. Bobby I can't thank you enough for sharing your time with us today Harry I can't thank you enough for sharing your time and your listeners time with both of us today best of luck to you sir thank you

ladies down in this week the British government announced they were they were stopping the usage of the term war on terror and at the same time in Tampa the phrase coined by former cent comm commander John Abysade the long war has been abandoned by his successor Admiral William Fallon Fallon says the term is inconsistent with the goal of reducing US military presence says the idea we're going to be involved in a long war at the current level of operations is not likely and unhelpful he says we didn't feel the term long war captured the nuance unquote best candidate for replacement the wrong war and from the new scientist the active compound in marijuana can slow the growth of lung tumors

in mice or maybe it's just it seems slower ladies and gentlemen that's going to put a cap on this addition to the show the program returns next week at the same time over these same stations on the usin 440 cable system in Japan an NPR worldwide throughout Europe and mighty 104 and Berlin around the world to the facilities the American forces network company down the East Coast of North America on the shortwave giant WBCQ the planet available as a free download at www.audible.com slash the show available on your computer via the internet at two different locations live and archive whenever you want at harry share dot com and kcrw dot com and available as a free podcast at kcrw dot com and it would be just like getting rid of arrogance and hubris if you degree to join with me then what do you already thank you very much uh the email address for this broadcast is le mail le mail at interworld.net

le show internet services by steve maca tip of the le show shop oh this is going to be a long list because this was a tri-coastal broadcast to Andrew Chadwick here at W.A.M.U. in Washington to Jeffrey Talbot at audio works in New Orleans to Dr. Bob B at UC Berkeley to Pam Hallsted and to Helen Santani at www. in New Orleans le show playlists when we play them are real at harry share dot com le show comes to you from century of progress productions and originates through the facilities

of kcrw Santa Monica a community recognized around the world as the home of the homeless keep those ankles dry you