forget for a second that you're talking about some of the poorest states in the nation, we live in a politically connected & corrupt system. It's like the issue with airport security, the larger the project is, the lazier, sloppier and greeder the average member of your project/crew gets. My theory on human behavior is that people get less motivated, the more other poeple are involved, Anything political, namely government, is a mulitiplier to this process. hey, politicians are not engineers, but they're gonna to be responsible for reviewing this process. What will happen? you'll get a levees that are a foot taller and 4 inches thicker AND believe me those 4 inches will be hotly debated. You will have grown men fighting tooth and nail between making the levees 4 inches thicker and 4.3 inches thicker. A fat woman will then get out of her seat and show the person next to her pictures of her children and everyone will agree that the concrete used should include the rubble from the old, destoryed buildings. The new building codes will include specs that floatable rafts be available on each floor. Then you will have blocks and blocks rezoned from residential to parks because somehow more parks will save everyone. And people will stand ontop of buildings, sharing a large, parachutte-like superman cape, and declare it unsinkable.