by Martin Doyle
16Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters, 353–55.
17Details of revenue, expenditures, and economic status of the Potomac Canal from R. J. Kapsch, The Potomac Canal (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2007), 242–52.
18“Valuation, Taxation, and Public Indebtedness, VII,” Tenth Census of the United States, 1880 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1884), 523–26.
19James Madison, Federalist No. 41, in The Federalist Papers, 254–55.
20Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 23, in The Federalist Papers, 149.
21Hamilton, Federalist No. 30, in The Federalist Papers, 184.
22Hamilton, Federalist No. 24, in The Federalist Papers, 157.
23Shallat provides a thorough history of the formative years of the Corps of Engineers and its ontogeny; see particularly T. Shallat, Structures in the Stream: Water, Science, and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 30–42, 79–100.
24K. Baumgardt, “Robert E. Lee: A Personal Look at Baltimore’s ‘First’ Engineer,” in Baltimore Civil Engineering History, ed. B. G. Dennis and M. C. Fenton (New York: American Society of Civil Engineers, 2005), 53–64.
25Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78, in The Federalist Papers, 465.
26Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 80, in The Federalist Papers, 479.
27W. F. Swindler, The Constitution and Chief Justice Marshall (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1978), 77–86, 358–74.
Chapter 2: Life on the Mississippi
1During some years in the 1830s and 1840s, the values of exports from New Orleans actually exceeded those of New York. G. R. Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York: Rinehart, 1951), 7–9.
2J. Mak and G. Walton, “Steamboats and the great productivity surge in river transportation,” Journal of Economic History 32, no. 3 (1972): 619–40.
3Mak and Walton, “Steamboats and the great productivity surge,” 619–40.
4These values and estimates were for the lower part of the Missouri River, a particularly nasty river to navigate. P. O’Neil, The Rivermen (New York: Time-Life Books, 1975): 83, 130, 144.
5See generally Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, Federalist No. 35 and 36, in The Federalist Papers, 207–20.
6Alexander Hamilton, quote from Federalist No. 31, in The Federalist Papers, 190.
7F. G. Hill, Roads, Rail, and Waterways: The Army Engineers and Early Transportation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957), 18–36, 163, 184–85, 195.
8M. Twain, Life on the Mississippi (New York: The Modern Library, 1994), 212.
9S. B. Carter et al., Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present: Millennial Edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chap. Df, table Df, 690–91.
10National Research Council, The Missouri River Ecosystem (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2002), 10–11.
11M. Grunwald, “An Agency of Unchecked Clout; Water Projects Roll Past Economic, Environmental Concerns,” Washington Post, September 10, 2000. J. A. Hird, “The political economy of pork: Project selection at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” American Political Science Review 85 (1991): 441–50.
12For the years 1925–1957: C. E. Landon, “Freight traffic on the Ohio River,” Financial Analysts Journal (1961): 51–56. For years since 1975: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Waterborne Commerce of the United States, Annual Data (Alexandria, VA: Institute for Water Resources, 2015), table 3-2.
Chapter 3: The Rise of the Levees
1W. Wilson, “The study of administration,” Political Science Quarterly 56 (1941): 505.
2For general evolution of federalism, see D. J. Elazar, “Opening the third century of American federalism: Issues and prospects,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 209 (1990): 11–21. Also see J. Kincaid, “From cooperative to coercive federalism,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 509 (1990): 139–52.
3The organization and finances of levee districts have received limited historical attention. Harrison’s work is the primary effort at analyzing available records in the Lower Mississippi River region. R. W. Harrison, Alluvial Empire, Volume One: A Study of the State and Local Efforts Toward Land Development in the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River (Little Rock, AR: Pioneer Press, 1961), 89–92. A general overview with far less financial information is also available: R. W. Harrison, “Flood control in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta,” Southern Economic Journal 17 (1950): 148–58.
4Many districts in the Upper Midwest and the Illinois River valley are referred to as “drainage districts” because they had the combined tasks of first converting flooded wetlands into farmable property and then keeping river water out. J. Thompson, Wetlands Drainage, River Modification, and the Sectoral Conflict in the Lower Illinois Valley, 1890–1930 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), 10–11. For a description of levee construction at the Sacramento River, see R. Kelley, Battling the Inland Sea: American Political Culture, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley 1850–1986 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 10–15.
5Thompson, Wetlands Drainage, River Modification, and Sectoral Conflict, 16. I have corrected the misspellings that occurred in the original.
6G. D. Lewis, Charles Ellet, Jr.: The Engineer as Individualist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1968), 12–23.
7C. D. Calsoyas, “The mathematical theory of monopoly in 1839: Charles Ellet, Jr.,” Journal of Political Economy 57 (1950), 170.
8J. M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 33–37.
9Lewis, Charles Ellet, 134–43.
10The full title was even more intimidating: A. A. Humphreys and H. L. Abbot, Report Upon the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River; upon the Protection of the Alluvial Region against Overflow; and upon Deepening the Mouths: Based upon Surveys and Investigations Made under the Acts of Congress Directing the Topographical and Hydrographical Surveys of the Delta of the Mississippi, with such Investigations as Might Lead to Determine the Most Practicable Plan for Securing it from Inundation, and the Best Mode of Deepening the Channels at the Mouths of the River (Washington, DC: United States Army Professional Papers of the Topographical Engineers), 1876. Abbot quote is from M. Reuss, “Andrew A. Humphreys and the development of hydraulic engineering: Politics and technology in the Army Corps of Engineers, 1850–1950,” Technology and Culture 26 (1985): 9.
11Humphreys and Abbot, Report on the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River, 192.
12C. Ellet, The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers: Containing Plans for the Protection of the Delta from Inundation; and Investigating the Practicability and Cost of Improving the Navigation of the Ohio and Other Rivers by Means of Reservoirs (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Grambo and Company), 1853.
13M. Reuss, Wetlands, Farmlands, and Shifting Federal Policy: A Brief Review (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1994), 3–5.
14Ellet, The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, 28.
15For the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Floodplain Management Assessment of the Upper Mississippi River and the Lower Missouri Rivers and Tributaries (Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis–St. Paul District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1995), 2–6. For the Illinois River: Thompson, Wetlands Drainage, River Modification, and Sectoral Conflict, 59–60.
Chapter 4: Flood Control
1For scientific expertise of levee district engineers: W. Starling, “Flood heights in the Mississippi River, with especial reference to the reach between Helena and Vicksburg,” Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers XX (1889): 195–228. Probabilities for flooding went from roughly once every 3 years to once every 6 years, based on an inventory of Mississippi levee district crevasse data. R. W. Harrison, Alluvial Empire, Volume One: A Study of the State and Local Efforts Toward Land Development in t
he Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River (Little Rock, AR: Pioneer Press, 1961), 116–18, table III-5. Years include 1867, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1890, 1897, 1903, 1912, 1913, and 1927.
2For impacts in the northeast and Midwest, see J. L. Arnold, The Evolution of the 1936 Flood Control Act (Alexandria, VA: Office of History, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1988), 17–18. For Sacramento River, see R. Kelley, Battling the Inland Sea: American Political Culture, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley 1850–1986 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 268–69, 277. In the late nineteenth century, the federal government tasked two commissions to begin addressing complaints about the lack of a federal role in flood control: the Mississippi River Commission and the California Debris Commission. Both groups were made up of appointed officers from the Corps of Engineers and charged with developing plans to reduce the flooding as a mechanism of sustaining navigation. Neither commission was to do the actual work; rather, they were to provide planning and technical information that the states were responsible for implementing. Both groups were attempts to strike a balance between national government engagement and state government responsibilities; but their actions were always under the guise of navigation, in which the federal government had a clear role. M. D. Mitchell, “Land and water policies in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta,” Geographical Review 84 (1994): 412–18.
3The most compelling account of the 1927 flood is J. M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997). For additional statistics on areas flooded and impacts, see Harrison, Alluvial Empire, 148–49.
4Arnold, Evolution of the 1936 Flood Control Act, 18; C. A. Camillo, Divine Providence: The 2011 Flood in the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project (Vicksburg: Mississippi River Commission, 2012), 16–17.
5M. Grunwald, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 191–96.
6R. M. Smith, “The politics of Pittsburgh flood control, 1908–1936,” Pennsylvania History 42 (1975): 5; Arnold, Evolution of the 1936 Flood Control Act, 58–65.
7Federal restraint in flood control had begun to unravel with the first Flood Control Act in 1917, which authorized $45 million for the Mississippi River and another $5.6 million for the Sacramento River. While limited in geographic scope and continuing to focus on levees alone, the 1917 act was revolutionary in openly acknowledging flood control as a federal government interest. Its immediate effect was limited in part because levee districts had already accomplished so much: no work was done on the levees of the Yazoo–Mississippi Levee District following the 1917 act because their levees were already up to the specifications set by the U.S. government, and almost 70 percent of the Mississippi Levee District was already up to federal standards. Harrison, Alluvial Empire, 195, 226. The role of levees was also complicated due to the ongoing linking of levees with navigation; thus, a levees-only policy could be linked with keeping the Corps’ role restricted to navigation for interstate commerce. C. A. Camillo and M. T. Pearcy, Upon Their Shoulders: A History of the Mississippi River Commission from Its Inception Through the Advent of the Modern Mississippi River and Tributaries Project (Vicksburg: Mississippi River Commission, 2004), 85–101.
8To appreciate the growth in the size of levees, see J. D. Rogers, “Development of the New Orleans flood protection system prior to Hurricane Katrina,” Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering 134 (2008), 615.
9Camillo provides a detailed account of the 2011 flood from the perspective of the Corps of Engineers leadership, including a particular chapter focused on the river in the region of Greenville, Mississippi. Camillo, Divine Providence, 164–216.
10A number of studies have focused on the relationship between Congress and the Corps; Ferejohn’s is particularly critical and analytical. J. A. Ferejohn, Pork Barrel Politics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974), 19–21, 25–46, 233–35. For Missouri River infrastructure, see L. Cartwright, “An examination of flood damage data trends in the United States,” Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education 130 (2005): 20–25.
11National Research Council, New Directions in Water Resources Planning for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999), 19–27.
12A thorough review of the climatology and hydrology of the 1993 flood is given in S. A. Changon, The Great Flood of 1993: Causes, Impacts, and Responses (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), chaps. 2 through 4. For efforts to fight the flood, see G. A. Tobin, “The levee love affair: A stormy relationship,” Journal of American Water Resources Association 31 (1995): 363. For the spatial and economic impact of the floods and comparison to 1927 flood, see M. G. Anderson and R. H. Platt, “St. Charles County, Missouri: Federal Dollars and the 1993 Midwest Flood,” in Disasters and Democracy: The Politics of Extreme Natural Events, ed. R. H. Platt (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1999): 215–18.
13Those in urban and regional planning circles refer to this situation as the “safe development paradox”; see R. Burby, “Hurricane Katrina and the paradoxes of government disaster policy,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 604 (2006): 171–91.
14For the evolving role of FEMA and its expanding mission, see Platt (ed.), Disasters and Democracy, 16–18. Disaster relief has typically been associated with civil defense. During the Cold War it was assumed that disasters would be caused by military engagements; over time it became clear that natural disasters were chronic, and so FEMA was located in the office of the White House. Thus the return of FEMA to the Department of Homeland Security under the Bush Jr. administration should not be viewed as anomalous: R. Sylves and W. R. Cumming, “FEMA’s path to homeland security: 1979–2003,” Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 1, no. 2 (2004): 11.
15For the Stafford Act, see Platt (ed.), Disasters and Democracy, 23–26. For the number of disaster declarations, see M. A. Mayer, “Congress Should Limit the Presidential Abuse of FEMA,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 3466 (2012).
16U.S. Senate Bipartisan Task Force on Funding Disaster Relief, Federal Disaster Assistance (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), 15, 70.
17J. Chivers and N. E. Flores, “Market failure in information: The National Flood Insurance Program,” Land Economics 78, no. 4 (2005): 519–20.
18Platt (ed.), Disasters and Democracy, 31.
19The Galloway Report is formally known as the Interagency Floodplain Management Review Committee, Sharing the Challenge: Floodplain Management into the 21st Century (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994). Quote is from p. 180.
20For discussion of moral hazard in the housing crisis, see P. Krugman, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 63. For the importance of the Galloway Report in raising the idea of moral hazard in context of federal approach to natural hazards, see Burby, “Hurricane Katrina,” 180.
21Editorial, “Awash in Tax Dollars,” Raleigh News & Observer, November 11, 1997; Platt (ed.), Disasters and Democracy, 40–41.
22A. Kamen, “Nomination Stuck in the Mud,” Washington Post, April 28, 1995.
23For dimensions of drainage infrastructure, see Rogers, “Development of the New Orleans Flood Protection System,” 612. The Saucer quote is from Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge (New York: William Morrow, 2006), 13.
24The sequence of decision making for the flood control system at New Orleans dates back to the eighteenth century and is tremendously complex. The most thorough analysis of archival material, particularly the technical and engineering documents regarding the decisions made, was an investigation contracted by the Corps of Engineers. D. Woolley and L. Shabman, Decision-Making Chronology for the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project: Final Report for the Headquarters (Alexandria, VA: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2007), chap. 4: 4-1–4-27. See also J. D. Rogers et al., “Interaction between the U.S. Army Corps of E
ngineers and the Orleans Levee Board preceding the drainage canal wall failures and catastrophic flooding of New Orleans in 2005,” Water Policy 17 (2015): 707–23.
25A. Carrns, “Long Before Flood, New Orleans System Was Prime for Leaks,” Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2005.
26Platt (ed.), Disasters and Democracy, 175–76.
27Woolley and Shabman, Decision-Making Chronology, 2-49–2-50; M. Derthick, “Where federalism didn’t fail,” Public Administration Review 67 (2007), 39; University of California at Berkeley and American Society of Civil Engineers, Preliminary Report on the Performance of the New Orleans Levee Systems in Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005 (Washington, DC: National Science Foundation Report No. UCB/CITRIS-05/01, 2005), 6–2.
28The most thorough and exhaustive timeline of events during Katrina remains Brinkley, The Great Deluge. For a description of Coast Guard efforts, see pages 209–14 in that book.
29D. Alexander, “From civil defence to civil protection—and back again,” Disaster Prevention and Management 11 no. 3 (2002): 209–13.
30Chertoff quote from Brinkley, Great Deluge, 634. For the role of the National Response Plan in slowing down response to disaster, see F. F. Townsend, “A Week of Crisis—August 29–September 5,” The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned (Washington, DC: Office of the White House, 2006), 33–50.
31Limiting the use of federal troops in U.S. territory has been staunchly observed since the Posse Comitatus Act was passed in 1878.
32A. M. Giuliano, “Emergency federalism: Calling on the states in perilous times,” University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 40 (2007): 351.
33Brinkley, The Great Deluge, 413–15, 565. For Jeb Bush’s response during Hurricane Wilma, see Derthick, “Where federalism didn’t fail,” 43–45.