Inspecting Food, Not Levees

More proof that we eat too well here in New Orleans. New Orleans has always had a reputation as one of the world's great food cities, but it may be a negative in the case of our Levee Board inspectors here. It seems that when engineers from both here and other states and Orleans Levee Board officials gathered twice a year to inspect the area levees for safety and structural integrity, the inspections lasted less time than the main event of the day- lunch in some of our fine restaurants.
Uh, the post inspection lunches of crab cakes with champagne dill sauce, white chocolate mousse with a raspberry coulis and other goodies ordered from the menus. took about as long as the cursory 5 hour drive-by of the 125 miles of levees. In fact, the Chief Engineer in charge of seeing that the levees were built to specification and are a safe, personally tended to the menus for the lunches, ensuring that there were few absentees those inspection days.
The "inspectors" apparently had hearty appetites, if poor eyesight, in not seeing the too short and leaning levees that wee supposed to prevent the kind of disastrous flooding we had with Hurricane Katrina. Lunch bills ranged into the thousands with one group of 32 (out of 55) inspectors at one restaurant ordering a prime rib entree selection that cost about $20 per person.
But the inspections were not as thorough as the dining experiences they all had. Records show the inspectors often never left an automobile that drove adjacent to the levees, instead peeking out of car windows to glance here and there at the levee that was supposed to be studied, measured, analyzed and sampled. Well, in the view of some prosecutors that kind of inspection system is criminal, given the wide spread death and destruction of property that resulted from badly built levees that broke during Hurricane Katrina.
There is an investigation to assess that criminal liability and indictments for criminal negligence and fraud may soon be coming. Sigh.. Though I suppose those levee officials aren't worried. Instead, they probably are already thinking about what meals to order from the prison mess hall they may soon inhabit.