From CNN.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) — A federal judge has thrown out a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the failure of levees in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

So when is the suit going to be filed against the Environmentalists for preventing the Army Corps of Engineers from upgrading the levees?

NRO: Greens Vs. Levees

a suit filed by environmental groups at the U.S. District Court in New Orleans claimed the Corps had not looked at “the impact on bottomland hardwood wetlands.” The lawsuit stated, “Bottomland hardwood forests must be protected and restored if the Louisiana black bear is to survive as a species, and if we are to ensure continued support for source population of all birds breeding in the lower Mississippi River valley.” In addition to the Sierra Club, other parties to the suit were the group American Rivers, the Mississippi River Basin Alliance, and the Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi Wildlife Federations.

It would seem to me that those environmentalists should be held responsible for the devastation after Katrina and the failure of the levees.

The lawsuit was settled in 1997 with the Corps agreeing to hold off on some work while doing an additional two-year environmental impact study. Whether this delay directly affected the levees that broke in New Orleans is difficult to ascertain.

But not that difficult to visualize. Ignoring the problem and pretending it will go away isn’t really a strategy. There are consequences to the choices we make in this world, despite leftists’ blindness of that fact.

But it is just one illustration of a destructive river-management philosophy that took hold in the ‘90s, influenced the Clinton administration, and had serious policy consequences. Put simply, it’s impossible to understand the delays in building levees without being aware of the opposition of the environmental groups to dams, levees, and anything that interfered with the “natural” river flow. The group American Rivers, which leads coalitions of eco-groups on river policy, has for years actually called its campaign, “Rivers Unplugged.”

Not addressing the levee problem had a direct impact on New Orleans after Katrina.

If we bring back wetlands and swamps, we’ll have a terrible mosquito problem. And then we’ll be fighting again about the use of DDT.