Rebuilding New Orleans With Science

EccentricAnomaly writes "The New York Times has a discussion of flood control methods in use in Holland, England, and Bangladesh that could be used in the rebuilding of New Orleans. Of particular interest is the $8 billion Delta Works built by the Netherlands in response to the North Sea flood of 1953, which almost destroyed the city of Rotterdam, but for a heroic captain who plugged a breach in a dike with his ship." From the article: "While scientists hail the power of technology to thwart destructive forces, they note that flood control is a job for nature at least as much as for engineers. Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development."

Comments

after I submitted this...

[EccentricAnomaly]

I noticed another NYT story on lost cities, which would be interesting to the 'abandon New Orleans' camp:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/science/06lost.h tml

Re:Learn from nature

[AKAImBatman]

Did you read the next sentence?

Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development.

That kind of destroys the entire point of a break island. :-)

Re:Got To Go There

[Anonymous Coward]

The story is really about Two Brothers

Re:Learn from nature

[Red Flayer]

"Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development. "

Levees and floodgates, as used in the US, do not generally mitigate the damage caused by storm surges -- they are used to block flooding from inland sources like rivers.

"...some artificial barrier islands, rather than further changing the face of the earth"

Artificial barrier islands = changing the face of the earth

Barrier islands migrate into the land over time. They are really just giant versions of the sand ripples you'll see at the edge of almost any (near still) body of water. If we really want our coastlines to operate in a natural fashion, we've got to allow barrier islands to form, move to land, and respawn.

The real problem with NOLA is that the Mississippi River delta is not allowed to regenerate itself by silt deposition. Most conservationists would argue that less flood control is necessary, not more.

Re:Doing what is right

[Anonymous Coward]

We should take a lesson from this. Expanionism can be bad. Has anyone noticed the tred of increaingly powerful storms over the last 50 years? Global warming is one possible factor. I am not saying it caused Katrina, but warmer waters may have contibuted.

Of course warmer waters contributed. The question is "did we somehow make them warmer" and the answer is, "if we did, it was by an amout too small to measure."

"Trend" is much, much too strong a word to use in conjunction with weather over the past 50 years. "Noise" is a more accurate way to describe how observed weather has changed over the course of human history.

Poor planning is 100% responsible for the loss of life and property due to Hurricane Katrina. It wasn't some unforseeable accident, or America's come-uppance for not signing on to the Kyoto Economic Suicide Pact. It was the result of building a bunch of shit in a place where several hurricanes will strike within a single person's lifetime, and having no Plan B when they do.

Me too! The war in EyeRack would have qualified.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, That's $1000 per man, woman, and child living in this country that got wasted over there. And climbing.

I'd have much rather spent a _fraction_ of that money shoring up New Orleans levees, even though I don't live there and have never visited. And with the money left over I could have been not watching this disaster on a nice 42" plasma.

Should've listen to the Native Americans

[drgonzo59]

The Native American tribes told the French not to build there because they've been there enough to know...but did anyone listen?... of course not.

I understand that it was the intersection of trade routes back in the day, but what is there today? I would move away from that place, I am sure so will other people. There still will be a "New Orleans" but from now on it will be known as the "Flooded New Orleans." I don't think it will ever recover completely...

New Orleans was on the top of my list of places to visit in the next couple of years, but not anymore, I think I'll wait 10 years or so.

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[drgonzo59]

Trade routes for what? Lumber and oil. Do you really need a metropolis at the intersection of such a trade route. Do you really need 1 million people living in the path of hurricanes and below sea level because lumber and oil comes in there?

But of course you know history so well, you know that back in the day the steamboats on Mississippi where just about _the only_ reliable way to travel inland until the railroads were built, so the trade wasn't just oil, lumber and such things it was _everything_: food, consumer goods, and besides there was a large passenger transport. When is the last time you bought a ticket to travel from Ohio to New Orleans by river? That is why there was a city built there. Today there would be a small town where people who service the docks would live and not a big metropolis...

Good idea listen to the people who sold Manhattan island for some beads. -- Even better don't listen to them and build in the path of a hurricane and below sea level. You can go either way with that "Indians are stupid. -No French are the stupid ones" argument... Anyway, slashbots might have modded my post at 4, but you didn't even make past 1 last time I checked...

Re:howmuch science is needed?

[argStyopa]

OK a light hearted comment, but I just read in the NYT a great column on the contrast: NYC was hit with fire, NO hit with water.

NYC could deal with fire, because we've learned to fight fires locally. We build to prevent it, and we all pay a premium on goods and services through the system due to the costs of sprinkler systems etc in the supply chain. We spend city $$ on fire services, and emergency response capabilities.

NO couldn't deal with water, because since the 60's the Federal gov't has taken over response to floods. Local officials are reduced to writing plans that ultimately read "wait for the Feds to arrive with help".

Moreover, with an agency like FEMA, and federal subsidies for flood insurance, he makes a persuasive argument that US gov't policies have, in effect ENCOURAGED the building of homes and businesses in flood prone and coastal regions.

If those homeowners and businesses had to pay a MARKET cost for insurance, how many would have built there? And if there wasn't a FEMA (which has historically compensated flood/hurricane victims even or especially if uninsured) would people be so lasseiz-faire about their families, dwellings, and belongings in the path of destruction?

Persuasive reading.

Let's not make this a "Swamp Castle"

[sleighb0y]

" Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands."


Let's use this tragedy to move the people to some place that is safer, preferably ABOVE sea level. I can understand the "Let's rebuild it and make it stronger!" spirit, but the money it will take to rebuild and then make flood protection that we THINK is adequate ( you know, like they THOUGHT was good enough back in the late 1960's ) would be much better spent in relocation.

Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

The broken canal walls are all up near the Lake seawall built in the 1930s, reclaiming land once swamp (and lake bottom). City Park is a giant park through which the Bayou St. John still flows, along its ancient path, into the middle of town (thru some big pipes in places) to the center of the bowl, the bottom of New Orleans. All that is totally under water now: the 17th Street Canal was the main burst that flooded the town, and runs along the West edge of City Park, past the Bayou.

We should expand City Park to encompass the entire Bayou area, with no development, and lots of canals. Expand the Bayou itself in the bottom to become a giant reservoir. When storms approach, pump out the reservoir. Make all drains pass through the reservoir, a giant buffer. When rain and failed seawalls allow water into the city, funnel it into the reservoir, buying time. Pump the reservoir into the Mississippi and the Lake.

The seawalls and levees themselves are not fault-tolerant. They're static, brittle, and take the whole city with them when they break. Those walls should all have rail lines along their inhabited sides, separated from the water by the wall. When a storm approaches, dumpable sandbags can be rolled into place behind risky sections, or into broken sections, or just into staging areas for delivery by helicopter, boat or amphibious vehicle, or even human "bucket brigades" when all other vehicles fail. Ahead of the storm, the rails can carry cars of evacuees out. And the other 99.5% of the time, without emergencies, they can carry cars instead of highways (most cars on I-10 are "just passing through"), passengers and freight.

Or we can just put the Dutch in charge of the city. Then they'll do all those things I mentioned, and probably something with windmills. Amsterdam and New Orleans have a lot more in common than just negative elevation - and I'm not referring just to decades of Spanish dominion ;). But at least the Dutch will actually do it: they actually do things. Instead of leaving it up to the Army Corps of Engineers, which now must be spelled Corps e , which totally failed their mission - though it looks like they were set up for failure by the civilian leadership, for decades.

Or we can just let New Orleans rot. Along with the rest of the country. If it can happen to a city everyone loves so much, that's so important to our economy, where everyone knew it was RISK #1, why shouldn't it happen everywhere eventually - and not as slowly as in the old World Capital of Molasses.

Re:Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

Oh, no - the White House *is* the "civilian leadership", along with Rumsfeld. Personally, I want to see all those criminals drowned in an alligator tank. But that's not going to get New Orleans rebuilt right, except for the part where they're removed from office.

I've already heard that Halliburton is getting the contracts to rebuild "Baghdad by the Bayou", which is a crime itself. These people look at disaster mitigation neglect as marketing. And our lives (now undeniably) hang in the balance. We've got to get as many incumbents out of Congress in a year as possible. If the Democrats (who have their share of blood on their hands) take the House (where every seat is in an election) by greater than 10%, they could impeach Bush. Maybe force him out, if they take the Senate (where 30 seats are in an election) by greater than 10%. But at least keep Bush bottled up in defense, where he can do less damage. Then the cleanup in 2008. By then, they'll probably have pumped out New Orleans.

Re:Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

I agree that the canal walls were too low, and were designed to collapse in a F4 or F5 hurricane (whether intentionally or not is immaterial). But the fact is that they are collapsed, and your neighborhood is flooded. My old neighborhood is half flooded: at the edge of the Quarter, my house is apparently intact, and not standing in water. But across the street, Armstrong Park is a wasteland, the Treme is a swamp. Many of my friends' neighborhoods in Midcity, around the Bayou, and in the 9th Ward are under water. Fundamental changes are likely necessary to make New Orleans liveable in the 21st Century. I'm not glibly throwing out a plan without thinking of the consequences. But certainly some sacrifices have to be made. And someone's neighborhoods probably won't be coming back (many someones).

I think that reclaiming the old Back of Town from the Lake was executed in an unsustainable way. I think you misunderstand what I'm talking about: Bayou St. John isn't the source of the water flooding the neighborhoods. It's where the water goes. Rather than pretend we can fight the vast power of nature head-on, we must learn from our mistakes to do what we actually can, to get what we want. Like allow the water to enter the city when we can't prevent it, and spend our energy on making those floods controlled and manageable.

New Orleans once was already compartmentalized with neighborhood levees, as you suggest, in the wake of an earlier flood. When the next flood came through, people broke holes in the levees keeping the water in their neighborhoods (which was keeping downhill neighborhoods dry). So the next neighborhood flooded, and those levees were broken, and so on. These strategies that merely meet the force of Nature with force of engineering show how powerful ins Nature: a 90MPH/40mi-wide hurricane contains 200x the global electrical generation power; Katrina was many times bigger.

So I suggest we plan for "failover". That means sacrificing some land areas in populated New Orleans while it's manageable, rather than all of it when the crisis hits. Many of those areas we can't keep are really desireable property now: quiet, modern neighborhoods near the Park. And of course it's easy for me to say, since I already said my tearful goodbyes to the city when I moved back to NYC. But whose neighborhood should go? Just the poor people, even if their neighborhood isn't as useful a sacrifice in the engineering to protect the city?

I know what it means to miss New Orleans. I've cried often this past week, screamed at the set, sent money, helped find people, helped find people places to stay. I didn't think I could be more furious with Bush and Congress than the past 5 years, but this storm surprised even me - in revealing just how through was their failure. I've got other wheels in motion here in NYC that hopefully will have immediate and longterm benefits to saving the city - in my own relatively puny way. I hope every one of us is also doing what we can - together we can save the coolest, most unique city in America. But we have to accept that we might have to amputate to save this patient. No one's going to like it. Until I hear about a better operation, that's at least as likely to preserve her life, I'm sticking with this one, painful as it is.

Protection against the sea is half the story

[Fjan11]

... flooding caused by rivers is equally dangerous, both in New Orleans and in the Netherlands. The article mentions the Dutch Delta works, which are now in place and protect against the sea. But last decade the Netherlands had a pretty close call when flooding of the Rhine almost created a disaster of a scale similar to that in New Orleans.

Interestingly, the answer to river flooding is not building higher dikes. It is prohibitively expensive to build them high enough and you would have an "iron curtain" in your countryside. The Netherlands now has designated certain sparsely populated areas as flood zones, and built dikes around those. In case of another imminent disaster those areas will be flooded draining water form the river. The people that live there will be reimbursed, it's much cheaper than building and maintaining higher dikes.

Why build skyscrapers?

[StevenMaurer]

The low-built Pentagon was hit just like the WTC buildings on 9/11 and it didn't collapse to the ground. So if we're going to say New Orleans shouldn't be rebuilt under water, why are we building gravity-defying skyscrapers?

And remember, "nature" doesn't want so many people on the Earth. We're way beyond what most species' population limits. Should we just let half the human population die off?

Personally, I'm all in favor of respecting nature. But I don't think we should surrender to it.

Let the fishes have it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I live on the coast, not far from New Orleans. I think it should be abandoned and left to sink. However, there are many political forces at work and here and it will be rebuilt.

There is a small barrier island off of the cost where I live. Its west end gets destroyed every time a storm comes within a hundred miles. It actually erroded into several pieces this time. But, it is expensive beach front property so it will be rebuilt again - with our tax dollars.

Re:Learn from nature

[lgw]

There was actually a plan for storm surge control put together for the defense of New Orleans in the 70s (when the current levee system was planned), based on what works in Europe. It was shot down because of environmental concerns.

A similar plan was proposed this year. The New York Times hated it. Here's the quote:

Anyone who cares about responsible budgeting and the health of America's rivers and wetlands should pay attention to a bill now before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. The bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and other water-related projects - this at a time when President Bush is asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other important domestic programs. Among these projects is a $2.7 billion boondoggle on the Mississippi River that has twice flunked inspection by the National Academy of Sciences.

The Government Accountability Office and other watchdogs accuse the corps of routinely inflating the economic benefits of its projects. And environmentalists blame it for turning free-flowing rivers into lifeless canals and destroying millions of acres of wetlands - usually in the name of flood control and navigation but mostly to satisfy Congress's appetite for pork.

This is a bad piece of legislation.

Hard to tell whether it was genuineely a bad plan, or the NYT hated it simply because it was Bush's proposal, but we are at least considering the ideas used in Europe.

Re:WARNING: Ignore Nature at Your Peril

[MROD]

The problems with New Orleans runs far-far deeper than polluting etc.

New Orleans is placed on a river delta. After the sediments in a delta are deposited they are guaranteed to subside. It's a consiquence of compaction, de-watering and the isostatic response of the lithosphere below the basin to the extra load. Unless more sediment is added continuously the delta will eventually (and quite quickly in geological and indeed historical terms) sink beneath the sea.

When New Orleans was founded a few hundred years ago it was above sea level. (after all, who would found a town on a salt marsh?) Since then it's subsided continuously until today a great deal of the city is now below sea level and a great deal lower than the river (which has since built up its base by depositing sediment).

When the corps of engineers stopped the river naturally switching its channel (which it does around once every 1000 years) and straightened the current channel they put in motion a set of events which meant that the delta lost its sediment load to further out in the Gulf of Mexico as the river is flowing at a greater rate. This has caused the coastline (and all the natural defences) to not be replenished and go below the sea.

You may like to see this google cached article from a Baton Rouge newspaper in 2002. It gives a decent overview of the situation.

As a geologist, I would be in the camp which suggests that the government take this as an opportunity to move the city to higher and more stable ground and abandon the old city to be an archaeological curiosity and tourist attraction. Rebuilding it would merely prime the charge for an even bigger loss of life when, not if, the river breaks its banks. This time only the low-level lake to the north broke through which soon equalised its level.. this wouldn't happen with the great river.

How long do you want to fight a losing battle with the planet? How high do you eventually want the levees to be before you give up? When the city's subsided to the point where it's an isolated bowl in the ocean?

I know it's not going to be abandoned, there are too many politicians who have staked their carreer on the "we will rebuild it" bravardo and a King Kanute attitude.

(Before anyone corrects me about King Kanute, I know that the popular story is wrong, the King was trying to show how impotent he was rather than believing that he could actually stop the sea.)

Is technology the answer as TFA claims?

[krisamico]

The article was interesting. Before reading it, I did not know anything about the North Sea Flood or the Deltaworken that came of it. Right away, I noticed that the article takes a rather particular stance on the purpose and value of big projects such as these -- the problem is the sea, and we should invest in project such as these to keep the sea out of habitable land. I think the article would have been a lot more interesting had it included at least a cursory discussion of the fact that while technology like this has a temporary benefit, the problems caused by development in wetlands cannot be permanently solved.

IMO, the real problem with inhabited wetlands is not storm surge, but subsidence, which is what allows storm surge to inundate inhabited land. We populate the wetlands, pumping out the water which would normally bring along with it silt, which accretes, contributing the the land mass that will naturally buffer storm surge. Once inhabited, the land mass gradually subsides (sinks), making vulnerability to flooding worse. I believe that no technology will stop this.

If my opinion is a correct one, there is no prevention of such disasters, only preparedness and remediation. I live in the Los Angeles metro area, and I have the same problem. The best thing I can do is buy property on land out here that the USGS has not identified as prone to liquefaction or heavy shaking and hope for the best. I do not expect my government to build an $8 billion gadget to protect me, because there is no way for sure to know that it will even work!

What I am left wondering is whether or not the people of NO expect to be protected, and would it even be worth it to try. These people live in a dangerous area, just like me, and I think that money spent on disaster education and readiness would probably be well spent, as opposed to wasting billions fighting nature in a losing battle. Our arms are too short to box with God, so perhaps it would be better to spend money on learning to roll with the punches. Based on the chaos and loss of life I saw, I don't think anyone down there was even the least bit prepared. I see the same indolence here in L.A. where I live, and a lot of people are going to die some day because of it.

Low tech solution

[HermanAB]

Stilts. Simply mandating that all dwellings must be built 3 feet above the 2005 flood level will go a long way to mitigating damage. All houses there are built on piles and a concrete slab anyway, so just make the damn piles taller. Then if they do flood again, little damage will be done.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[electroniceric]

No one that lives in New Orleans should have been bussed to the Superdome! The same buses that took people to the Superdome should have taken them out of the city to shelters outside the flood zone.

Volume flow: to move the same number of people 10 times further in approximately the same amount of time, you need 10 times more moving capacity.

The lack of police, food, water, and medical care in the Superdome was the fault of the Mayor of the city and the Governor of the state.

Mightn't it have just a little bitty bit to do with so much of the National Guard being over in Iraq, and with FEMA being run by a group of Bush campaign workers (read their bios) with no disaster management experience?

For Pete's sake, this kind of thing is exactly FEMA's mandate: provide resources to avert and mitigate emergencies. In other words, FEMA should have had the place crawling with responders and National Guardsmen the moment the state of emergency was declared on August 26th. I'll bet you 25 bucks that the head of the agency not only keeps his job but gets a raise. Seriously, I'll make that bet.

I say this and I'm one of the people who thinks that FEMA is way too quick to offer people money to rebuild their waterfront condos every time a flood or hurricane happens. But when push comes to shove, it is our nation and our government's responsibility to avoid the kind of human tragedy that happened in New Orleans, and that job primarily belongs to FEMA.

Re:Rebuild? There's a Bright Idea.

[BulletMagnet]

I'll back him up on this. As a Sacramentan, I lived in areas that were flood prone before I bought a house in a non-flood zone. All the housing that has gone into the Natomas area (and it's a LOT - numbering in the thousands of homes) are ALL in floodzones.

In 1986, the area where my former employer is located was under 10 feet of water (hence, they never occupy building space on the 1st floor) when the levee system failed. Just over 10 years later, in 1997, we had similar record rainfall and the levees were again taxed to the brink of failure. I lived right near the river and the water was running damned near the top of the berms. We were under constant evacuation notices (not mandatory orders, but voluntary ones) I was lucky: Some of the levee system did fail in various areas of Sacramento and caused some X millions of dollars in damage.

The ACE then came in and did a fair bit of retrofit work to the existing levees by cutting them open in the centerline of the berm, trenching all the way down below the waterline, and backfilling the cut with slurry, since many of the earthen berms were weakened not by nature or or design flaw, but by burrowing animals like moles. Supposedly the digging critters could not tunnel through the slurry wall. Unfortunately, most of this work was done AFTER levee breaks during the 1997 floods.

I would wholeheartedly agree that shortsighted developers can be to blame in building up infrastructure where it shouldn't be, but if you protect it well enough (which it sounds like NO was not) it *should* stay up - but with unforseen weather patterns that the system was not designed to handle, you will end up swimming sooner or later.

Re:Learn from nature

[Rei]

Actually, FreeRepublic and other sites are misreporting the date on the article ("The Untouchable Corps", with that text, as "April 13, 2005", and heavily alter the text. The actual article was from August 19th, 2002. You can read it without paying here. If you don't believe me that they've changed it, check the New York Times for that text you cited. Congrats - you're propagating a newly created urban legend designed by right-wing groups to pretend that Bush really *was* on top, and it was the evil liberal's fault!

It wasn't "Bush's Proposal", it was a Corps proposal. The article was actually critical of Bush ("He fired (and has yet to replace) Mike Parker, the agency's civilian chief, mainly because Mr. Parker asked for too much money."). The article wasn't critical about the money, but about the environmental impact of the chosen designs. The article didn't even discuss actions on the Mississippi River or flood prevention - their big faulting of the corps was on the subject of Delaware dredging.

Re:Learn from nature

[lgw]

Specifically, the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project was funded by the Bush administration at levels far below those requested by the Army Corp of Engineers.

Specifically the Lake Ponchatrain Levee was finished some time ago, and 2005 funding was irrelevent.

Sure the Commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers says funding levels were fine, but what does he know? He's just some engineer, uneducated in the overriding requirement to hate Smirchimply McHitlerBurton and all of his actions.

GEN. STROCK: The other question is, in general is the civil works budget of the Army Corps of Engineers suffering because of the war in Iraq? Not in my opinion. And the reason I say that is that if you look at the funding levels of the corps from pre-war days of 2001 and 2002, it has been a fairly steady level. We are spending a lot of money and the Corps of Engineers is involved in the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're able to balance that with our human resources and it is not directly affecting our budget. ...

Q Two questions. Wasn't that study to look at upgrading the levees delayed for funding reasons?

GEN. STROCK: You know, I talked to the study manager about that now, and again, it's a tough thing to talk about. He feels that he has had an adequate level of funding to move that study ahead. The nature of the work we do in both the studies and the engineering, some of it is not a question of throwing money at it, there is just analysis that must be done, coordination that must occur. And so I would prefer to let the people at the level really talk about that from their perspective. But it's my understanding that that was not a significant issue in this. And even if that study had been finished three years ago, it would not have made a difference in this event.

our road-building boom of the past few decades created a car culture that leads to more driving, thus more traffic congestion, thus more demand for roads.

Our desire for freedom created a car culture. The ability to travel where you like is a significant element of freedom. The road building boom may have enabled this desire for freedom, but it didn't create it.

People want to drive because they want to get to their destination. Building more roads always reduces traffic congestion. People with an irrational hatred of cars and/or freedom will of course hate roads for what they represent.

Re:wetlands don't replace levees

[Rei]

It would require some very complicated computer models

Actually, at it's basic level, it's really mostly a volume calculation. Just integrate over the landscape and you can tell how much additional water it can take, then factor in the influx. I believe the models that they use are more complex to accurately calculate the influx and uneven water levels at different points, but the result is that a single square mile of restoration equals a reduced surge of one foot.

In short, yes, the models already exist.

and then broke

Do you not know the meaning of "just", as in "The levee didn't just break"?

Adapt!

[J05H]

Here's the deal: we need to live with nature. One aspect of this is that cities will get destroyed - the ruins of destroyed ancient cities ring the Earth.

New Orleans as it is should be adandoned. The high ground of the french quarter might be preserved. The deep water port and industrial areas like Michoud are restored. These areas have proper seawalls built with regard to natural silt flows, the rest of the city becomes Delta again. People that live in the area live the way you're supposed to in a swamp: in boats and house-barges. The swamp dwellers seem to have faired well, and came out of the woods to help evacuate the city. If the population was competent enough to live in the swamp instead of against it, they could flourish. As it is, they have probably crippled the shrimping and subsidence issues doom much of the city. Imagine a million houseboats stretching through a restored river system. People commute to work by boat, work in hi-tech, shipping and restored shrimp industries. Let the Mississippi wander as it needs, build the deep-water port out in the ocean and have lighter barges for carrying containers and oil in-shore. If people want to live there, they should adapt to life on the water.

I want to see a JMOB/SeaHub container facility in the Gulf of Mexico. This technology can be applied to housing, shipping, huge mobile hospitals, etc. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/01/07/wo_ schrope072501.asp

Josh

Re:Learn from nature

[Mr. Slippery]

Sure the Commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers says funding levels were fine, but what does he know?

In any engineering project, you never ask top management how things are going, you ask the guys on the ground. June 8, 2004 Times-Picayune:

What's new, said Morehiser [Mervin Morehiser, who manages the "Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity" levee project for the Army Corps of Engineers] and Naomi [Al Naomi, the corps' senior project manager], is that the agency has run out of money for the next round of lifts. Naomi said this is the first time a lack of money has stopped major corps work on the levees since the project began in 1967.

..."But I can tell you that we would be better off if the levees were raised, . . . and I think it's important and only fair that those people who live behind the levee know the status of these projects."

..."This project isn't expected to end for another 13 to 15 years," Morehiser said. "They aren't really finished levees at this point. We don't even turn them over to their local sponsors until we consider them stable, which is years from now."

The Bush administration's proposed fiscal 2005 budget includes only $3.9 million for the east bank hurricane project. Congress likely will increase that amount, although last year it bumped up the administration's $3 million proposal only to $5.5 million.

"I needed $11 million this year, and I got $5.5 million," Naomi said. "I need $22.5 million next year to do everything that needs doing, and the first $4.5 million of that will go to pay four contractors who couldn't get paid this year."

...The challenge now, said emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri in Jefferson Parish and Terry Tullier in New Orleans, is for southeast Louisiana somehow to persuade those who control federal spending that protection from major storms and flooding are matters of homeland security.

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay," Maestri said. "Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Re:howmuch science is needed?

[Rich0]

So... you're saying that the Free Market could have ensured that this disaster could have been much less worse? ;-)

Sure. Who would issue a mortgage on a home in an area prone to flooding if they knew the Feds wouldn't pay them off if there was a flood? Who would build a business there?

The disaster wasn't the flood - there have been floods there for the past several million years. It is only a disaster when you have a million people living in a spot that has severe flooding every 50 years or so.

You can try to move the water, or you can just move the people. Or, you can point out that anybody who builds their home there will have to rebuild it every few decades and then when the flood comes just stand and say "I told you so."

Human life is valuable. I'd support free bussing to get people out of danger even if they were idiots for being there in the first place. However, their homes are less valuable. If they're dependant on government assistance for having someplace to live, the government should at least find someplace cheaper to put them...