Byron Dorgan: “in my subcommittee that I chair on appropriations, dealing with energy and matter, we spent $2.2 billion on Corps of…”

“in my subcommittee that I chair on appropriations, dealing with energy and matter, we spent $2.2 billion on Corps of Engineers construction alone, to say nothing of maintenance, remediation, and other expenses. Just the construction in fiscal year 2008 was $2.244 billion. So we are spending a lot of money working on levees and dikes and other areas of protection. It seems to me--my colleague from Connecticut indicated this and he is absolutely correct--levees do fail, and I understand that. He is absolutely correct about that. Levees do fail. Manmade structures, from time to time, will fail. But it is also the case that some risks are substantially lowered, and there are some risks that are substantially elevated because of the condition of the levy and so on. My colleague from Louisiana is correct when she says let's not do something that is one size fits all. Again, I will use the example I think is clear. If you just finished a new flood control program that you have worked on for 10 years with a 250-year flood protection, which is more than double the protection normally required to protect against a 100-year flood, at least understand the difference between what you have done there with public funding and what might exist somewhere else, where there is higher risk.”