Is the West Bay diversion a "failure"?

Clay has some interesting background in this post, and particularly in comments, which suggests otherwise. Most discouraging to me when I read this stuff, though, is that it reinforces the suspicion that rebuilding the coast continues to be everyone's 4th or 5th priority behind shipping interests, behind the prerogatives of the oil industry, behind the Corps' own bureaucratic concerns over its image and its territory, and so on.