Why are small towns and farmers being sacrificed for new Orleans?
Is it because N.O. is Ray Nagin’s “Chocolate City” full of Holder’s people where the festering crime-ridden sore of the Ninth Ward must be preserved?
Naawwww....couldn’t be that, I’m sure....</sarc>
They aren't. The headline and the story are totally bogus. There are few to no real farms in the area that will be flooded. There is indeed "land that is farmed", but it is farmed as "rental land" by large farmers whose "home farms" are NOT in the floodway. All the "small towns" are surrounded by what are called "ring levees", and are safe. There "are" a few subdivisions that have been developed outside those levees, but anybody who bought or built there knew up front what the dangers were.
This is virtually nothing to do with the "Chocolate City". This has to do with the Port of New Orleans and hundreds of industrial plants in and between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, including a large portion of the country's oil refining capability. If THAT floods, we'll ALL be damned sorry.
Personal note. I'm from the area. The Morganza Floodway and Old River structures were built when I was in elementary school, and I watched them being built. When it was first used in 1973, I was in college, and drove over the Morganza control structure several times on my way home for weekends (and hundreds, if not thousands of times, when it was "not" open). The head engineer of the project was a friend of the family, and he retired there.
The mayor of New Orleans is now Mary Landrieu’s brother Mitch. All in the family. Mitch and Mary’s dad Moon was the mayor in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Because they lie in land that's been a designated floodway for 80+ years. They knew the risks.
It isn't. There is Baton Rouge, Louisiana (ever heard of it?), plus over a dozen oil refineries, including two half a million barrel per day operations, one of which, Exxon-Mobil Baton Rouge, LA is the largest oil refinery in the US, and is where the cat-cracking (catylic cracking) method of refining oil in to gasoline was invented, creating more gasoline from a barrel of oil. This country would be in a world of hurt, (you included) if these refineries were flooded. Finally, this was not an easy decision to make. Days went by while this was being discussed, unlike the sneak night decision to blow up the levee upriver.