A consortium of local, state and federal agencies is studying a $2 billion to $3 billion plan to divert sediment from the Mississippi River back into the delta. Because the river is leveed all the way to the Gulf, where sediment is dumped into deep water, nothing is left to replenish the receding delta.
In other words, the disaster is man-made. Wetland doesn't just disappear. It moves around, it grows and shrinks, but it doesn't just disappear unless army engineers get in there and make it disappear by straightening out rivers and enclosing their banks.
So what's the solution? Break down the lower levees, as you say. It's either give up the new development or lose the whole, historic city. Or, I suppose, use Democrat Senator Breaux's considerable clout to take taxpayer funds to truck and barge topsoil from uninhabited spots in the midwest and dump it into the delta. That might stave off the disaster at the cost of a hundred billion or so, until Breaux has finished his career.
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