The Delta Project was one of the greatest post-war feats of hydraulic engineering in the Netherlands. 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. Plans for the closure of the last open estuary, the Eastern Scheldt, were also on the table, but evoked a clamour of protest from mussel and oyster farmers and environmentalists. They were fiercely opposed to closure on the grounds that it would destroy a unique tidal area and that the Eastern Scheldt was the nursery for many species of North Sea fish. Eventually a compromise was reached. A partially open storm surge barrier would be built, with huge gates that could be closed in the event of high water levels. This would preserve the ecological value of the Eastern Scheldt as a tidal area while at the same time guaranteeing the safety of Zeeland. The resulting storm surge barrier in the Eastern Scheldt is one of the biggest in the world. The components for the moveable gates, each the size of a twelve-storey block of flats, were built in special docks and floated into place before being sunk. The dam was officially opened by Queen Beatrix on 4 October 1986 and the final piece of the Delta Works jigsaw was slotted into place in 1997, when a moveable storm surge barrier was completed in the New Waterway. This consists of two vast gates which are normally kept open but can be closed when a storm is imminent.
This is exactly the point of using Dutch technology.
Of course, I have seen what they have done. I am simply saying that it would not be adequate against a storm as powerful as Katrina. And I know howe powerful North Atlantic storms are. I was aboard the QEII a couple of years ago. It was more than five hundred miles from Land-ends sailign west when the edge of a storm hit it astern. Really felt it. Really rough waters for the next two days until we were just north of the Azores.