Those of us who have been following the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ insistence that the Trinity River levees are unsafe will get a giggle out of a report that Fort Worth’s levees — which don’t involve a highway and which have generally received high marks for maintenance — could well be deemed unsafe as well.
“The current inspection methodology of the last year or two indicates it would be very surprising if the Fort Worth Floodway system came through unscathed,” a former Corps official told the Star-Telegram newspaper.
In other words, despite the best efforts of Dallas officials to make it seem as if the Corps has it in for the city, it doesn’t. It’s applying the same, more stringent standards throughout the country. This has often gone unreported in Dallas, where city officials seem to want to hold their breath until they turn blue or the Corps changes its mind.
In fact, the story quotes one flood control expert as saying that local officials throughout the U.S. are so angry that their levees have failed inspection that many of them have been using political muscle to cut corps funding to delay the inspection process. The Corps has said that 124 levee systems in 16 states failed inspection. But, said the expert, deadly flooding in Nashville will probably make their efforts moot.