(Official editorial of the Advocate/Times-Picayune, Aug. 17)
Those of a certain age will remember the old Fram Oil Filter commercial: You can pay me now ($4 for a filter), or you can pay me later! ($200 for a new engine part).
Well, the same applies to a study of the Mississippi River whose funding was halted by the Trump administration. Here’s how the Louisiana papers editorialized about it last week:
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Reporting by this newspaper’s Mike Smith reminds us that for the health and economy of Louisiana, the single biggest imperative is to keep the Mississippi River on course.
Federal and state officials, led by Louisianan U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, should prioritize Mississippi River planning and projects before it’s too late. They should consider the plea of a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans and Mississippi Republican Rep. Mike Ezell. The group is asking the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development to provide at least $7.5 million for the next phase of a now-stalled federal study of the operations and needs of the lower Mississippi.
Smith’s Aug. 7 report focused on the Old River Control Structures, near Ferriday in east-central Louisiana, which keep the river from shifting its main flow away from its current course and to the Atchafalaya River basin instead. Almost overwhelmed in the massive flood of 1973 that caused one of the structure’s walls to collapse, Old River Control faces increasing pressures — literally from rising water, and figuratively from increasingly conflicting needs of downstream communities.
Old River Control is maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — as is the entire river’s levee system and its locks and spillways — which is why the first responsibility is that of federal officials.
As we editorialized in June, it is disturbing that the Trump administration has halted the comprehensive $25 million Corps study, mentioned earlier, of the lower Mississippi. In the whole scope of the federal budget, that amount is a pittance. Moreover, the study is like preventative medicine. By spending a little now, the country could avoid much larger costs in the future from a catastrophic river failure.
Frankly, with this state boasting the two most powerful members in all of the House of Representatives, namely Johnson and Scalise, there’s no good reason the study should remain in limbo. The information from the study can, in the long run, save so much money and potentially so many lives, that the Trump administration should see it as wise economic stewardship rather than as an item for the chopping block.
The study should be restarted.
State officials also need to pay close attention and prepare for the worst…. [For the full editorial, please follow this link.]
