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The Termites That Sank New Orleans
A new study in American Entomologist suggests termites damaged New Orleans dikes enough for Hurricane Katrina to knock them over. The researchers first noticed termite trouble five years before Katrina struck. They found Formosan subterranean termites in floodwall seams made of bagasse—the residue from processed sugarcane. Formosan termites love the stuff.
After the 2005 breaches, the researchers inspected 100 seams, including three areas with major breaks. Seventy percent of the seams in the London Avenue Canal had been attacked by insects, and two major dike breaks occurred there during Katrina. Twenty-seven percent of seams in the ravaged 17th Street Canal also showed termite damage.
The Formosan subterranean termite is an invasive species native to China, where it damages levees. Besides eating at bagasse seams, the termites may have contributed to the destruction of the levees of New Orleans by digging networks of tunnels that funneled water and undermined the levee system. Ooops. . . The authors suggest that New Orleans' 350 miles of levees and floodwalls be surveyed for termite damage.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
As a resident of the Greater New Orleans area, I understand the damage caused by the invasion of the Formosan Termite. While these termites have caused a lot of damage to local homes, the overwhelming majority of responsibility for the failure of our levee system must fall on the US Army Corps of Engineers. It was faulty engineering that caused the levees to fail not Katrina. So while we do have a problem with the Formosan Termite, you can't place the blame on them for what was (and still is) a human failure.
One could also suggest that if the Corps of Engineers had never straightened the rivers, which brought about the necessity of levees in the first place, then the levees never would have failed. And going even further back, had people never built their houses in an area that is inherently a flood plain, then there never would have been a flood problem at all. The natural process is for the mississppi to flood - generally on a yearly basis. It's also true that hurricanes are getting worse - probably because of human activity. We don't seem to want to ever take responsibility for our actions, and now we are paying the price. Then again, the termites are still really really hungry.