Much of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast looks the same as it did right after Hurricane Katrina — that is, devastated and uninhabitable. More than half of New Orleans residents have not returned.
And they won’t likely come back soon, especially if they read a report released this week by a team of scientists from the University of California-Berkeley, who blasted the city’s hurricane protection system as sacrificing the safety of residents for cost concerns. Even after $3 billion in repairs is completed, said the team, the city’s levees will still be vulnerable to Katrina-force hurricanes because of design flaws and poor maintenance. “The entire system needs a serious re-evaluation and study.”
Meanwhile, the hurricane season begins in June, and climate experts predict another very active season with several major storms in the Gulf Coast and Atlantic region.
Are federal officials counting on luck to get them through this season?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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19 Comments
Someone else said it here first.
The preznit is doing faith based disaster planning. Just pray that no more storms hit until he and his cronies have done a heck of a job and are out of office.
Isnt there a saying about “pray to god but keep rowing toward shore”?
Seems like there is lots of praying and very little rowing going on in washington.
Maybe one reason people are not returning is that they are not the “God’s will chocolate people” that Ray Nagin has decreed?
…or maybe because there is still no housing for them? Maybe because fema is stockpiling trailers in arkansas for the NEXT hurricane? The current victims? Let’em eat cake.
It’s time for officials – including Nagin – to face the fact that New Orleans in its present location is untenable. Can it be rebuilt to withstand a catagory 6 hurricane? NO!
We are dealing with the legacy of decades of poor decisions by the Army Corps pf Engineers and others – lowering the city, stripping away the protective marshes, relying on engineering to replace nature. The results of that were shown last summer – the levees were not over-topped, they just plain failed. They will do so again.
Long ago Galveston was devastated by a hurricane. Most of the rebuilding took plce further inland – what is not Houston. New Orleans redevelopment needs to be looking inland. Then we must undo much of the engineering that has led to increased subsidence and the stripping of protective marshes. Work WITH nature, not against it.
But of course it is all Bush’s fault…
So say the whiney Liberals!
Well said Ben
There is an unprecedented opportunity in New Orleans. It should be rebuilt with the environmnent and how we are changing it in mind. Too, it can make use of the very latest in materials and infrastructure from the ground up.
Good point JR …but can the economy of New Orleans support the latest and greatest in materials and infrastructure. From all that I’ve read the poor residents (the ones who couldn’t afford to go elsewhere) are the ones that have returned. I think they’re probably more concerned with where the next meal is coming from rather than if their hut can withstand another hurricane.
“decades of poor decisions”
Decades Nathan. Go whine someplace else.
I didn’t mean in any way that they should be left to their own meager means Julie.
Rebuilding a city from the ground up is at least as valuable a venture as some of our military expenditures. This should be national project and priority.
How do you “build it from the ground up” when its present location is vulnerable and below sea level? Are you going to bring in cubic miles of fill?
I did not specify what ground Ben. I agreed with you that the marshland should be allowed to return to its natural state.
My point is that it really cannot be in the present location at all. Too much damage has been done by the Corps.
Ben, that’s an excellent idea! It makes so much sense, one has to question why it’s not being discussed. While the Corps has mucked up, the ultimate problem is, New Orleans is built below sea level. I think we should move it inland, build NO into a world-class port facility, and provide mass transportation between the port and the city.
I’m not sure about the numbers, but I’ll bet New Orleans is going to cost a lot more than 9/11 and we still don’t have numbers for cost in lives. It would be a shame to lose such an historical old city, but can we afford to rebuild it, or some other big southern metroplex anytime soon?
Growth in the coastal south may succumb to financial reallity. Insurance companies are pulling out of the coastal market. Would you really build that dream home on the ocean if you couldn’t get insurance to replace it?
Building on the coast will continue, but does it have to be right at the waters edge?
Move NO 5-10 miles inland.
XXX, I think so too, Give NO a “swamp” buffer.
XXX – the reason nobody thinks of it is that the engineers at the Corps think they know better than the scientists who study the earth and its processes.
Holland is below sea level. They have been holding back the sea since the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The Army Corp of engineers could learn a lot from them, but I doubt if it would be a lesson well learned.
Of course, Holland is not run by the Bush Administration . . . yet . . . so they might be around for awhile.
There are a number of important differences between Holland and NO. Not the least of which is a huge storm surge in a Cat 5 or Cat 6 hurricane.
What was particularly stupid were the Corps actions that lowered the city further and stripped away its protective buffer marshes.
There is an old joke among scientists: We ponder the questions about the existence of God. We cannot know for sure. Engineers do not have this problem – they are convinced that they ARE God!
Consider that engineers believe that they can conquer and improve upon Nature. Whether it is the Mississippi River or Lake Ponchetrain during a storm surge or just the local Cowskin Creek. When they disregard geomorphology and try to conquer nature it invariably backfires.
Holland, like NO, has seen its fair share of flooding. They were hit in 1953 by a combination of hurricane winds and exceptionally high tides. It ended killing 1835 people. While they may not be subject to a cat 5 hurricans (Katrina was a cat 3), they have since that disaster implemented many changes to preclude the disaster from repeating: “Immediately after the devastating storm surge of 1953, a Delta Commission was appointed to advise the government on the necessary works to protect the south-western part of the country. The first step was to construct a moveable storm surge barrier in the Hollandse IJssel, east of Rotterdam. This went into operation in 1958. The next move was the closure of the Veerse Gat and the Zandkreek in 1961. This necessitated the building of great sluices to regulate the discharge of water from the major rivers. Huge dams with sluice gates were likewise completed in 1971 to close off the Haringvliet and in 1972 to protect the Brouwershavensche Gat. The Philips and Oester Dams followed in 1974 and 1987 respectively.
While what they did in Holland may not be entirelly possible in NO, there are many radical new ideas being implemented that could assist NO. The parallels are there, it just takes some thinking that is obviously out of the reach of the army corp of engineers. Look what they have done to this countries rivers with the ridiculous placement of many damms. Politics does not make a good water user.
NO should be moved inland. With global warming, not only will hurricanes become more powerful, but global sea level will rise. Turn NO into marshes to buffer storms.