Carolyn Jack
Editor and CEO, Geniocity.comA project of The Genius Group LLC
Creative Nerve
Creativity gone wrong
Not all creativity is good. (I feel like Hagrid: “Harry, not all wizards are good.”) Sometimes, through unconcern, poor research, poor execution or just plain evil intentions, creative projects cause terrible harm.
And when the same creative people cause terrible harm over and over again, they need to be stopped. There are lots of individuals and groups who match the description, but the one I’m talking about right now is the of Engineers" href="http://www.usace.army.mil/Pages/Default.aspx">Army Corps of Engineers.
It seems to fall into the creative category of “appallingly misguided.” The corps has been responsible for some of the most environment-destroying projects in modern U.S. history, including Hoover Dam and the draining of the Everglades. It created the New Orleans levees that have wrecked the marshlands protecting the Mississippi Delta from hurricanes and – more horribly for humans - failed during Hurricane Katrina, drowning the city and many of its inhabitants. These poorly-thought-out creative engineering projects continue to cause problems and endless hassles for the regions affected by them.
And there are more coming. I’m particularly concerned about the new dike that will help create landfill for a shifted Port of Cleveland site and the redesign of the I-90 Innerbelt that snakes around Cleveland’s city center. The corps is necessarily involved with both and that gives me nightmares. What permanently damaging practices and structural designs will they invent next? And how much will we have to pay to undo what’s likely to cost hundreds of millions to build in the first place?
They’re as destructively constructive as beavers. The Everglades, New Orleans and the environment around Hoover Dam and the resulting Lake Mead may never recover from what they did. And Cleveland has enough problems without allowing such a shortsighted bunch to affect its future.
So now that this town is about to see some federal stimulus money for infrastructure work, I hope local residents and the local governments – city and county – will demand thorough independent studies to determine what the real effects of corps involvement in the projects will be.