Lawsuits Are Partly to Blame in New Orleans

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr isn't somebody I'd usually quote. But his column today about Al Gore makes a compelling case against the environmental movement.

"The very day he spoke (to the Sierra Club), a congressional task force reported that the levees that failed in New Orleans would have been raised higher and strengthened in 1986 by the Army Corps of Engineers were it not for a lawsuit filed by environmentalists led by who else but the Sierra Club. Among those 'leaders of our country to be held accountable for the flooding' would Al include the Sierra Club? Or Save the Wetlands, which according to the LA Times, were responsible for a 1977 lawsuit that stopped a federally funded plan to protect the city with a massive hurricane barrier. A judge found this have to wait until a better environmental impact statement was filed.

Now, because those who would have improved hurricane protection in New Orleans were prevented by the environmentalist rigorists, the wetlands are polluted and imperiled and New Orleans has suffered the damage that practical minds have been trying to prevent for three decades."