Because of costal erosion over the last few decades the beach has literally gone from hundreds of yards away to practically on the front porch. The irony here is that Rita will have reversed years of work to improve the erosion around this area of the coast.
Thanks for the coastal erosion info - I was beginning to think that no one in LA had any sense at all.
Katrine is to Mississippi and Alabama what the Pentagon and plane down in Penn. is to WTC.
To hear Media tell it New Orleans is the only one hit by Katrine. But Mississippi was hit much worse than New Orleans. This a fact but not for the Media.
Before the Hurricane, we went to Padre Island via Corpus Christi. There were four or five foot sand dunes just off the beach.
After Hurricane Carla, the sand dunes were pushed about 100 yards back -- the storm probably washed away million of tons of sand.
Malibu Beach in California used to be a nice beach until the Movie Stars built their expensive houses to block the view of the ocean from Coast Hwy.
Then when ever a winter Pacific storm would wash away their houses, they would plead for volunteers to help save their million dollar beach homes. Of course, taxpayers subsidized this.
The Federal Government needs to condemn the houses on Malibu beach as well as parts of New Orleans.
New Orleans can always make the condemned parts of New Orleans into federally protected swamp areas to make the enviro wackos happy.
Fighting erosion is fighting gravity and entropy. It's a costly losing battle.
A study in the 80s showed that not a single beach replenishment project the Corps of Engineers did on the east coast for decades lasted even 1/2 the supposed design length, since "storms" were not counted in the calculations. Anyone near the beach knows that most of the loss occurs during storms! Beach replenishment is lunacy...and that's what we're having taught to us again with this picture. :-(
But if you ask a geologist or engineer who says, "no, it's not going to work" and one who says, "I can make it work for $3 million"...who do you think people go to? :-(