Posted on 09/23/2006 8:22:42 AM PDT by UpTurn
Scientists have long said the only way to restore Louisiana’s vanishing wetlands is to undo the elaborate levee system that controls the Mississippi River, not with the small projects that have been tried here and there, but with a massive diversion that would send the muddy river flooding wholesale into the state’s sediment-starved marshes.
And most of them have long dismissed the idea as impractical, unaffordable and lethal to the region’s economy. Now, they are reconsidering. In fact, when a group of researchers convened last April to consider the fate of the Louisiana coast, their recommendation was unanimous: divert the river.
Far from rejecting the idea, state officials have embraced it, motivated not just by the lessons of Hurricane Katrina but also by growing fears that global climate change will bring rising seas, accelerating land loss and worse weather.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Never ceases to amaze me how Leftist bureaucrats can continually manufacture new excuses to spend hundreds of billions of Federal Dollars on nonsense.
What does Mother Nature have to say on this?
Put it on a bunch of Louisiana school buses and move it to say......... Houston....those people miss their river.
Well, if there was some way to make it come out in Ted Kennedy's state it might be worth it.
You mean we can finally get done with the cue ball nagin??? and we can do away with William Jefferson (D) LA.? and we can do away with the school buses that were left there, that could have saved alot of lives???
WOW, I'm for moving the mighty Mississippi....right over LA.
This move is likely seen as core to the way they would intend to strengthen such power into the next several decades--by using "other people's money", that is, federal taxpayers' money.
HF
I saw the banker in charge of this effort on c-span. He was hostile in threatening the feds. Seemed to me that he would be better off to start raising money and enlisting the support of enviornmentalists.
Looks like a job for Karl Rove's terrain redesign machine.
Karl Rove, Terra-Forming Overlord
(I'm sure someone at DU thinks that)
Massachusetts already pays out more in federal taxes than it gets from the feds.
In the case of the Mississippi it's not nonsense. The river has been trying to change course for decades. The natural channel for the river is the Atchafalaya river basin flowing into the Gulf at Houma (I think?). All the efforts of the last 70 or so years by the Corps of Engineers have been to prevent the river from doing that.
Mother Nature says, "Let the Mississippi flow down its natural (now) basin, the Atchafalaya".
Thanks Toby06. My bad--next time I will check to see if an article has already been posted. Your ref is a better post. I wasted bandwidth.
I just gave the link for info, not a stick in the eye.
I am all for this and something needs to be done fast. Thankfully with the increase in offshore revenues much of those funds can go this project. It is sad because of a paperwork snafu in the Clinton years Chevron will not have to to pay royalties on that new huge field.
I fear though all we will get is talk from both the State and Federal level because no one is going to want to make the very unpopular choices
For those that want to see a awesome link section that talks about this National problem and possible solutions
www.conservativecajun.blogspot.com/
"certain. One possible location is near Davant, about 45 miles southeast of New Orleans. Another is near Empire, further down the river, where the levees could be opened. In either case the river flow into wet and marshy areas to the west. Another way would have to be found — or constructed — for ships to reach the shipping lane, possibly something engineers call a slack-water channel"
THis makes sense to me. I mean if nothing is done that whole area will be under water in the future anyway. Venice is going to have to suck it up
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