It's simply great mate waiting on the levee

I received the following e-mail blast today from City Council member Angela Hunt:

"I was very concerned to see that the U.S. Corps of Engineers have deemed the safety of Dallas' levees 'unacceptable.' The Corps revised their safety standards after the Katrina tragedy, and re-evaluated Dallas' levees under this new system. They announced the results of their review yesterday.

"I was surprised that our levees failed to meet the new standards since the Mayor just got back from lobbying our Congressional delegation to pressure the Corps into speeding up their safety evaluation of the Trinity toll road, which is to be built within the levees. If you've been following this issue, you know that no major road like this has ever been built within a levee system. Knowing that our levees do not meet the Corps' new safety standards, I think it's irresponsible to lobby the Corps to speed up what should be a thoughtful, deliberate safety review of an untested engineering design like the toll road. Rushing to pour millions of tons of concrete into an already unsafe levee system is a dangerous plan that could have dire consequences.

"In light of the Corps' safety analysis, it is clear that we need to fix our levees NOW. Not next year, not five years from now, not after a catastrophic flood, but today. But the toll road is holding up our levee improvements. We fix all the safety problems with our levees until the design of this toll road is completed. As long as the toll road is part of the equation, all those parts have to be built to work together, and if we don't have the design for the road, we can't plan the design for the levees, and we certainly can't start fix them.

"The fact is, this toll road project is dead. There's no funding for it. Despite the Mayor's assurances during the Trinity referendum to the contrary, the NTTA just admitted that the toll road is facing a billion dollar funding shortfall. If the Corps is allowed to do their job without political manipulation, the toll road will likely face even more delays as a result of their new safety review. If we continue on this course, if we ignore the obvious warning signs and stubbornly plow ahead, the safety needs of our levees will continue to languish and be held hostage by this white elephant of a toll road for years to come. The dirt will not fly. The Mayor's 2013 deadline for toll road completion will come and go, the toll road cost will double again, and the funding gap will increase exponentially. In another ten years, 2019, future city officials will reluctantly admit that putting the toll road between the levees is not a viable, fundable option. The toll road will finally die with a whimper, and we will have wasted twenty years and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars without the levee improvements we so desperately need. It's time to change course and admit today that this toll road won't work, and find a better way to address our transportation needs without delaying or compromising the safety of our flood levees."

I wish I could share Ms. Hunt's view that the toll road project is dead. I distinctly heard City Manager Mary Suhm tell the Dallas City Council today "The toll road will be built" and the money is available to construct it. I'm not sure where she is coming from, but when she is that sure about something, she is correct 99.99 percent of the time.

I also don't think, like writers from the Advocate and the Observer seem to think, that this assessment from the Corps of Engineers kills the road. This just says there are problems with the levees along the Trinity that need to be rectified. This, to me, is more like someone who wants to repaint his frame house but then discovers there's some rotten wood in parts that needs to be replaced. So, before he repaints his house, he needs to replace the rotting wood. The Corps this time around is simply telling the city to replace the rotting wood in its levees before doing anything else. But the Corps didn't tell the City -- at least, not yet -- it can't repaint its house.

I do, however, emphatically agree that the soundness of our levees is more important than any other part of the Trinity River Corridor Project -- any part, including the toll road, the bird sanctuary, the soccer fields, the fake lakes, the Calatrava bridges, anything. In my wildest imagination, I can't foresee a Katrina-like catastrophe happening here, but, then, I'll bet many people in New Orleans never foresaw it happening there either. Bringing the levees up to standard must be Priority No. 1 for the Trinity River Corridor Project and I would hope the City Council would refuse to approve any other parts of the project until the levee problem is fixed to the Corps' satisfaction.