Build better levees.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Working around the clock in a nail-biting race against the arrival of this year's hurricane season, the Army Corps of Engineers is almost done repairing the flood control levees that failed when Hurricane Katrina laid waste to New Orleans last summer.

It's a stunning engineering achievement, for which the Corps deserves praise. The $800 million project not only fulfills the Corps' promise to restore levees to pre-Katrina levels, it also improves many parts of the crucial flood protection system.

So why haven't a great many of the tens of thousands displaced by Katrina's killer floods chosen to return to New Orleans? For some, especially professionals who have other options, a levee system functioning at "pre-Katrina levels" just isn't good enough.

They're right. The entire flood protection system could, and should, be stronger than it was before the storm surge from Katrina exposed life-threatening flaws in the inadequate network of pumps, gates, concrete walls and earthen levees that were supposed to hold back the water that surrounds New Orleans.

That's not a judgment spawned by hand-wringing hindsight. The levee system should be made stronger than it was before Katrina struck because it was inadequate when it was initially constructed. Worse, the inadequacies resulted from preventable human failures.

An independent analysis of the levee system by dozens of engineers and disaster experts concluded that the Corps made serious errors in the design and construction of many levees. Some were built improperly on easily eroded soils; others did not have their interlocking steel sheets sunk deeply enough to stabilize earthen berms.

Other problems resulted from political feuding between rival agencies and chronic underfunding from Congress. Often, the money that was allocated for Louisiana water projects was wasted on pork-barrel jobs that had nothing to do with the New Orleans levee system.

The review team, led by the University of California, Berkeley, put the current $800 million Corps levee project into perspective with its conclusion that it could cost $40 billion over 40 years to build an adequate flood protection system for New Orleans. Since Katrina, Congress has appropriated $3.3 billion for levee work, and President Bush has asked for $3.9 billion more.

The UC-Berkeley report was highly critical of the Corps, calling it a "dysfunctional family." It recommended setting up an independent oversight agency to monitor flood control planning.

Independent oversight is essential to eliminate the turf battles and wasteful spending that have compromised life-and-death decisions affecting flood control.

But an even more important outcome of the investigation is the message it sends the nation that the federal government bears a clear responsibility to help all those who suffered damage as a result of the levee failures. That includes rich and poor, renter and homeowner, small business and corporation. Above all, it includes a commitment to make the city of New Orleans whole again.