Posted on 05/19/2006 8:00:13 PM PDT by george76
In just eight months, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has done years of work on the Katrina-battered ramparts around New Orleans.
The Corps has repaired 169 miles of damaged levee.
Replaced long stretches of inadequate concrete floodwall with a much sturdier design. Installed 70-ton gates at the mouths of ruptured drainage canals.
But it isn't good enough.
Even the man who has led the monumental effort to bring the Big Easy's hurricane protection infrastructure back to pre-Katrina standards says so.
The defenses are "better, stronger and more resilient" than ever, said Col. Lewis Setliff. "But I'm only fixing about 60 percent of the system."
By and large, Setliff is on schedule to fulfill his mission of restoring them by June 1, the beginning of the 2006 hurricane season. But there are still many weak spots in the barricades that protect New Orleans from the sea. As Hurricane Katrina dramatically illustrated, one vulnerable spot is all it takes to unleash a disaster.
Experts fear last year's catastrophe will repeat itself unless the federal government embarks on a monumental effort to keep New Orleans dry.
Engineers and scientists have called for an improved flood control system that would cost billions of dollars and take years to construct -- but that's not all. They propose an even costlier and decades-long effort to restore the dying coastal wetlands that once buffered New Orleans from violent storms.
"Louisiana is an engineered landscape. All we've got to do is engineer it a little smarter," said Ivor van Heerden, assistant director of Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center and an inveterate critic of the Corps of Engineers.
Such an effort would require a commitment by the federal government of up to 10 times what it currently plans to spend on flood control in and around New Orleans.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
There is no free lunch. Meanwhile, the powers that be are allowing building in the 10 foot below sea level zones. It is quite insane really. But hard choices, are not what government is very good a making, absent being in extremis. It simply doesn't further political careers.
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"to strengthen the New Orleans levee system to "100-year protection," meaning that there would be a 1 percent chance of the structures being overtopped in any single year.
It would take until 2010 to construct ...
The plan would protect 98 percent of the population. But it would leave out a narrow strip of land along the Mississippi River south of the city.
That area, lower Plaquemines Parish, is home to 14,000 people but would cost more than half as much as all of the other projected work to bring up to 100-year protection."
Does that assume that the city will continue to sink?
Hey,
I'm all for building Atlantis!
;-)
shhhhh... you're not supposed to look there.
Big Easy's hurricane protection infrastructure
Let them pay for it themselves.
Sink ?
It is already half under water, the other half is under..
They could move somewhere above the sea level !
That is one of the very few intelligent statements to be made about post Katrina New Orleans.
About 20%-25% of N.O. is above sea level, and most of it will continue that way for the next 100 years or so. Thus in those zones, maintaining the Big Easy is economically sensible. The present value of assets 100 years out, is close to nothing. But in 500 years, N.O. will be gone, all of it, global warming or no, unless by some miracle, the foot every 30 years of so of sinking, ceases. There is one area of N.O., or the vicinity, that is falling at a much more rapid rate, I don't remember where, something like 3 inches a year or something. That area won't pencil, to say the least.
The 'Orleans Levee District' is the landlord
of the levees, it is a state agency.
It has ultimate responsibility.
It won't be "GOOD enough" until all the corrupt pols in LA skim their graft. Read as never.
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