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Flood of regret...waves of anger - Blueprint to save New Orleans was created but never realized
Houston Chronicle ^ | September 4, 2005 | MARK FISCHETTI

Posted on 09/04/2005 1:24:35 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife

THE deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina are heart-rending. The suffering of survivors is wrenching. Property destruction is shocking. But perhaps the most agonizing part is that much of what happened in New Orleans this week might have been avoided.

Watching the TV images of the storm approaching the Mississippi Delta on last Sunday, I was sick to my stomach. Not only because I knew the hell it could unleash (I wrote an article for Scientific American in 2001 that described the very situation that was unfolding) but because I knew that a large-scale engineering plan called Coast 2050 — developed in 1998 by scientists, Army engineers, metropolitan planners and Louisiana officials — might have helped save the city, but had gone unrealized.

The debate over New Orleans' vulnerability to hurricanes has raged for a century. By the late 1990s, scientists at Louisiana State University and the University of New Orleans had perfected computer models showing exactly how a sea surge would overwhelm the levee system, and had recommended a set of solutions. The Army Corps of Engineers, which built the levees, had proposed different projects.

Yet some scientists reflexively disregarded practical considerations pointed out by the Army engineers; more often, the engineers scoffed at scientific studies indicating that the basic facts of geology and hydrology meant that significant design changes were needed.

Meanwhile, local politicians lobbied Congress for financing for myriad special interest groups, from oil companies to oyster farmers. Congress did not hear a unified voice, making it easier to turn a deaf ear.

Fed up with the splintered efforts, Len Bahr, then the head of the Louisiana Governor's Office of Coastal Activities, somehow dragged all the parties to one table in 1998 and got them to agree on a coordinated solution: Coast 2050. Completing every recommended project over a decade or more would have cost an estimated $14 billion, so Louisiana turned to the federal government.

While this may seem an astronomical sum, it isn't, in terms of large public works; in 2000 Congress began a $7 billion engineering program to refresh the dying Florida Everglades. But Congress had other priorities, Louisiana politicians had other priorities, and the magic moment of consensus was lost.

Thus, in true American fashion, we ignored an inevitable problem until disaster focused our attention. Fortunately, as we rebuild New Orleans, we can protect it — by engineering solutions that work with nature, not against it. The conceit that we can control the natural world is what made New Orleans vulnerable. For more than a century the Army Corps, with Congress' blessing, leveed the Mississippi River to prevent its annual floods, so that farms and industries could expand along its banks.

Those same floods, however, had dumped huge amounts of sediment and freshwater across the Mississippi Delta, rebuilding each year what Gulf tides and storms had worn away and holding back infusions of saltwater that kill marsh vegetation. These vast delta wetlands created a lush, hardy buffer that could absorb sea surges and weaken high winds.

The flooding at the river's mouth also sent great volumes of sediment west and east into the Gulf of Mexico, to a string of barrier islands that cut down surges and waves, compensating for regular ocean erosion. Stopping the Mississippi's floods starved the wetlands and the islands; both are rapidly disintegrating, leaving the city naked against the sea.

What can we do to restore these natural protections? Although the parties that devised Coast 2050, and other independent scientists and engineers who have floated rival plans, may disagree on details, they do concur on several major initiatives that would shield New Orleans, reconstitute the delta and, as a side benefit, improve ports and shipping lanes for the oil and natural gas industries in the Gulf of Mexico.

• Cut several channels in the levees on the Mississippi River's southern bank (the side that doesn't abut the city) and secure them with powerful floodgates that could be opened at certain times of the year to allow sediment and freshwater to flow down into the delta, re-establishing it.

• Build a new navigation channel from the Gulf into the Mississippi, about 40 miles south of New Orleans, so ships don't have to enter the river at its three southernmost tips 30 miles further away.

For decades the Corps has dredged shipping channels along those final miles to keep them navigable, creating underwater chutes that propel river sediment out into the deep ocean. The dredging could then be stopped, the river mouth would fill in naturally and sediment would again spill to the barrier islands, lengthening and widening them. Some planners also propose a modern port at the new access point that would replace those along the river that are too shallow to handle the huge new ships now being built worldwide.

• Erect huge seagates across the pair of narrow straits that connect the eastern edge of Lake Pontchartrain, north of the city, to the Gulf. Now, any hurricane that blows in from the south will push a wall of water through these straits into the huge lake, which in turn will threaten to overflow into the city.

That is what has filled the bowl that is New Orleans this past week. But seagates at the straits can stop the wall of water from flowing in. The Netherlands has built similar gates to hold back the turbulent North Sea and they work splendidly.

•Finally, and most obviously, raise, extend and strengthen the city's existing but aging levees, canal walls and pumping systems that worked so poorly in recent days.

It's hard to say how much of this work could have been completed by today had Coast 2050 become a reality. Certainly, the delta wetlands and barrier islands would not have rebounded substantially yet.

But undoubtedly progress would have been made that would have spared someone's life, someone's home, some jazz club or gumbo joint, some city district, some part of the region's unique culture that the entire country revels in. And we would have been well on our way to a long-term solution.

For there is one thing we know for sure: Hurricanes will howl through the Mississippi Delta again.

Fischetti, based in Lenox, Mass., is a contributing editor to Scientific American magazine.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Louisiana; US: Mississippi
KEYWORDS: delta; eop; hurricane; incompetence; katrina; katrinafailures; mississippidelta; neworleans; river
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1 posted on 09/04/2005 1:24:36 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

One of the reports was of levee breaches in areas that had in fact been upgraded.


2 posted on 09/04/2005 1:34:19 AM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

According to the Chicago Tribune, "Congress in 1999 authorized the corps to conduct a $12 million study to determine how much it would cost to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane, but the study isn't scheduled to get under way until 2006."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050901corps,1,7189346.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

So, do we get our money back or what?


3 posted on 09/04/2005 1:34:43 AM PDT by Venerable Bede
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

My take is that the article lays out good sugestions for what should have been done.

But its now clear that its time to start over, and move out of that bowl, move the port and the residential area out of that hole to higher ground.

Rebuilding in place requires twice the effort, because we will have to replace all the structures AS WELL AS all the proposed changes in this plan.

Had the city been 200 feet higher none of this would have happened. Why should we be stuck with the cost of rebuilding a city laid out by a drunk French engineer 200 years ago?


4 posted on 09/04/2005 1:36:52 AM PDT by konaice
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To: lepton; Venerable Bede; konaice
October 2001 - Mark Fischetti: Drowning New Orleans A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city
5 posted on 09/04/2005 1:41:53 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Great post, from what seems to be an objective source. It seemed recently that the fear over what could become of New Orleans took a more serious tone - with mainstream media stories about an impending tragedy, in CNN last year (for instance), culminating in a National Geographic eye-opener that pretty much described what we are seeing now. I think this was one wrinkle that neither local, state or federal officials knew exactly how to deal with in a practical manner. In time, they might have agreed upon a solution. Time ran out, unfortunately, on Monday night. It's really hard to think about sometimes, without getting sad/frustrated.


6 posted on 09/04/2005 1:42:39 AM PDT by buckleyfan (WFB, save us!)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife; All
HURRICANE KATRINA- archive of links Click the picture:


7 posted on 09/04/2005 1:44:49 AM PDT by backhoe
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To: buckleyfan

We've witnessed a natural disaster.

As most often happens, nothing was going to be done until there was a disaster.

Something more for the thread:

***.....And for the last 450 miles of the Mississippi's flow, the riverbed lies below sea level — 15% below sea level at Vicksburg, well over 170 feet below sea level at New Orleans. For this 450 miles the water on the bottom has no reason to flow at all. But the water above it does. This creates a tumbling effect as water spills over itself, like an enormous ever-breaking internal wave. The tumbling effect can attack a riverbank — or a flood control levee — like a buzz saw. But the final complexity of the lower Mississippi is its sediment load, and understanding it is the key not only to understanding how to control the River, but also to understanding how the soil of the Delta became to be so rich, which, without it, the blues could not have been born. Every day the River deposits between several hundred thousand and several million tons of earth in the Gulf of Mexico. At least some geologists put this figure even higher historically, at an average of more than 2 million tons a day.

By geological standards the lower Mississippi is a young, even infant stream, and runs through what is known as the Mississippi Embayment, a declivity covering approximately 35,000 square miles that begins 30 miles north of Cairo to Cape Giradeau, Missouri — geologically the true head of the Mississippi Delta — and extends to the Gulf of Mexico. At one time the Gulf itself reached to Cape Giradeau, then sea level fell. Over thousands of years the River and its tributaries have poured 1,280 cubic miles of sediment — the equivalent of 1,280 separate mountains of earth, each one mile high, one mile wide, and a mile long — into this declivity. Aided by the falling sea level, this sediment filled in the embayment and made land. Throughout the Mississippi's alluvial valley, this sedimentary deposit has an average thickness of 132 feet; in some areas the deposits reach down 350 feet. It's weight is great enough that some geologists believe its downward pressure pushed up surrounding land, thus creating hills.....***


http://www.deltabluesmuseum.org/index.cfm?page=AboutTheDelta&subID=25


8 posted on 09/04/2005 1:46:27 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

$14 billion to try to protect 500,000 people in a poorly located city is a bit much.

That's $28,000 per person.

Perhaps the city isn't where it should be.


9 posted on 09/04/2005 1:48:12 AM PDT by DB (©)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
I knew that a large-scale engineering plan called Coast 2050 — developed in 1998 by scientists, Army engineers, metropolitan planners and Louisiana officials — might have helped save the city, but had gone unrealized.

I get it, the city would be saved today if Katrina had waited until 2050.

10 posted on 09/04/2005 1:48:35 AM PDT by Mike Darancette (Mesocons for Rice '08)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

This does not sound like a Comprehensive Hurricane Plan to me...



Coast 2050 Plan

In 1998, the State of Louisiana and its Federal partners approved a coastal restoration plan entitled Coast 2050: Toward a Sustainable Coastal Louisiana. That document presented strategies jointly developed by federal, state, and local interests to address Louisiana's massive coastal land loss problem.

For the first time, solutions were proposed to address fundamental ecosystem needs in order to prevent the loss of this natural treasure. By implementing the plan's regional strategies, it is envisioned that a sustainable ecosystem will be restored in coastal Louisiana, in large part by utilizing the same natural forces that initially built the landscape.

To learn more about the Coast 2050 Plan visit the Coast 2050 web site by clicking here: http://www.coast2050.gov



called



America's WETLAND

Campaign to Save Coastal Louisiana


11 posted on 09/04/2005 1:56:43 AM PDT by kcvl
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To: Mike Darancette; All
We never know when a comet or asteroid is going to put the Earth out of commission.

Now is the time to work with Bush's Vision for Space Exploration plan. It puts us on the Moon, learning to live off the land, as we prepare to move out into space.

Is that any more far-fetched than someone telling the federal government (shipping for country passes through LA), the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans to move New Orleans or at least re-engineer everything?
12 posted on 09/04/2005 1:59:29 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

bttt


13 posted on 09/04/2005 2:00:53 AM PDT by nopardons
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To: kcvl
***....What can we do to restore these natural protections? Although the parties that devised Coast 2050, and other independent scientists and engineers who have floated rival plans, may disagree on details, they do concur on several major initiatives that would shield New Orleans, reconstitute the delta and, as a side benefit, improve ports and shipping lanes for the oil and natural gas industries in the Gulf of Mexico. ....***

Everyone has their priorities. Too bad extremists keep anything from happening. Look at drilling in Alaska and off the FL coast. We need to be doing that now.

14 posted on 09/04/2005 2:07:06 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife; sinkspur
The conceit that we can control the natural world is what made New Orleans vulnerable.

Unfortunately this is true in many part of the world. Many always believes he is a better engineer than God.

How long before we see the first 'wrongful death' lawsuit?

15 posted on 09/04/2005 2:08:19 AM PDT by NYer
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To: NYer

I'm sure lawyers are on the scent.


16 posted on 09/04/2005 2:14:12 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: DB; All

Choices engineered city's vulnerability

***.......................It all comes down to the cost-benefit calculus that flood-prone communities have to wrestle with: The cost of heightening levees can be enormous because it also requires that their bases be widened, and that often demands the purchase of more land. Expanding New Orleans' levees to protect against a Category 5 storm would cost an estimated $2.5 billion.

Some societies decide that protecting lives and property justifies the expense of expanded levees. The Dutch provide protection on the Rhine River high enough to defend against a huge flood that occurs, on average, once in 1,250 years. In New Orleans, a different calculus was at work.

"The person who decided to build the levee at that height took a reasoned judgment that 'this is what we can afford, and [if it fails] we'll repair the damages,'" said Galloway, who spent seven years on the Mississippi River Commission overseeing the Army Corps work on the lower section of the river.

"When you are short of resources, you look at it and say, 'What's a reasonable compromise for the elevation [of water] you need to protect the community against?'"

After the return of violent storms in the mid-1990s, the Army Corps did give renewed attention to whether the city's protection was adequate, launching a decade-long, $700 million project to strengthen levees and pumps.

.......Staff members for Louisiana congressional representatives of both parties agreed in interviews last week that the Army Corps' budget in Louisiana had been underfunded in recent years.

"We've always gotten money - not in the requested amounts - and in recent years it's been because of budget constraints. The budget's been stretched in many ways," said Melanie Roussell, a spokeswoman for Rep. William J. Jefferson, a Democrat whose district includes New Orleans.

Chris Paolino, a spokesman for Rep. Bobby Jindal, a Republican whose district lies just north of New Orleans, said underfunding of Army Corps projects stretched back several decades. "There's been a sense that this is a Louisiana problem, when of course there are national implications," he said. "It hasn't been the national priority it should have been."

Army Corps commander Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock said last week that the uncompleted levee-improvement projects could not be linked to the levee failures. The areas that were breached were at "full project design and were not going to be improved," Strock told reporters in a conference call. "We were just caught by a storm of an intensity which exceeded the design of the [flood protection] project we have in place." .......................***

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bal-te.how04sep04,1,4303548,print.story?coll=bal-home-headlines


17 posted on 09/04/2005 2:20:06 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: NYer

how long before we read Nagins obits?


18 posted on 09/04/2005 3:43:14 AM PDT by sure_fine (*not one to over kill the thought process*)
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To: lepton

they still were not up to protecting against a cat. 5 hurricane surge. the protection should exceed, or at least meet the threat...


19 posted on 09/04/2005 3:55:39 AM PDT by Schwaeky (The Republic, will be reorganized into the first American EMPIRE, for a safe and secure society!)
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To: Venerable Bede
That's soooo ridiculous! A STUDY that costs $12 million and takes 7 years to complete? Can we say boondoggle?
20 posted on 09/04/2005 4:03:26 AM PDT by IrishRainy
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