Roy,
I was with you on savaging the weenie Republican response to the demagogic Democratic response to the hyperventilating media response to the graceless Bush response to Katrina ? until you got to the point where you advocated purely private levees.
Not to be combative, but I don?t yet understand how such a system could work in practice. How would private levee operators be compensated by users, of which there are thousands or even millions, mostly unknowing? Through a private market for flood insurance?
Since toughening a levee against rupture makes other levees along the same water system more likely to rupture (just basic hydraulics, as I understand it), how would a private market for flood control be structured? If communities upriver have strong levees that make downriver levees likely to break, will individual homeowners downriver have standing to sue, in federal court assuming multi-state issues? Do we really want judges deciding the appropriate stress levels of flood-control equipment rather than engineers and politicians who have to stand for re-election?
Help me out here.
