Never Again? The Politics of Preventing Another Katrina
The Bush administration's lackluster response to one of the largest natural disasters in the nation's history has been to rely on stopgap measures and incompetent contractors, rather than devising a national plan to protect the U.S. coastline. Will it take another Katrina for the government to act? The conclusion of a three-part series.
Yesterday, in the second installment of his three-part series, "Storm Warning," John McQuaid visited the Netherlands, whose state-of-the-art system for protecting its coast could offer the United States lessons for buffering our own vulnerable coastal communities—that is, if the government is willing to make this a national priority. So far the president has committed to building a "flood protection system stronger than it has ever been," which, frankly, isn't saying very much. Today, in the conclusion of the series, McQuaid reports on what it will take to strengthen the nation's coastal defenses: among other things, efforts to preserve and rebuild the vanishing marshlands that act as a natural barrier to storm surges; a shake-up at the feckless U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, an agency that has carried out wasteful pork-barrel projects while ignoring those intended to keep Americans safe; and, yes, a national commitment to protecting coastal communities. The need to take bold action should have been evident after Katrina destroyed one of America's most storied cities. Sadly, it may take another Katrina before the government gets the message.
-The Editors
The term "terraforming"—reshaping the surface of another planet for human settlement—was coined by science-fiction writers. And that's not too far from what engineers must do for the Mississippi delta. They must resculpt a patchwork of degraded marshland, ruined city neighborhoods, and sprawling subdivisions into an integrated defense against flooding.
Part of the idea is to revive the process that built the Mississippi delta in the first place. When New Orleans was founded, rising, silt-laden water overflowed the riverbanks each spring, refreshing and expanding the marshes. The river levees constricted this flow in the 19th century, and the entire delta started slowly sinking back into the sea. Now scientists want to try strategically breaching the levees, diverting river water over the marshes to deposit silt once again. Those projects would be knit together with upgraded levees, walls, and floodgates at a cost of $50 to $55 billion spread over several decades, according to Louisiana officials.
On an array of high-resolution monitors in Joannes Westerink's Notre Dame University lab in South Bend, Indiana, a virtual storm is taking shape and crashing into a digital New Orleans. Anyone watching the news coverage of Katrina was treated to images like these—computer programs capable of digitally recreating landscapes and weather patterns, rerunning historical storms, even rearranging the configuration of levees and wetlands to test different designs and possible outcomes. It was these simulations that back in the 1980s and 1990s revealed shocking weaknesses in the levee system—yet Corps "muddy boots" traditionalists scorned modeling and never bothered to use it to reassess their decades-old designs.
A native of the Netherlands, with a mathematician's clinical detachment, Westerink has worked for years to bring the virtual world into ever-more precise alignment with the real world of wind, water, and barriers made of mud. Katrina provided both a wealth of new data and, in the end, funding from a reawakened Corps. Now that the Corps is finally interested, the models are revealing huge and dangerous defects in the entire delta layout.
Westerink, who has rerun his virtual Katrina hundreds of times, fires up his monitor once more for me. Speaking in a soft monotone, he explains that the river levees, which bisect the delta marshes for a hundred miles southeast of New Orleans, are the highest objects around. As Katrina approached from the south that August 29, it began pushing water against the river levees. Water built up against the walls and then moved northward with the storm, swallowing small towns. Some of that buildup flowed into metro New Orleans. Then, as Katrina passed east of the city, it propelled the rest of the huge wave straight into the Mississippi coast, where it reached a height of 30 feet, the highest storm surge ever to hit the U.S. coast. If the river levee hadn't been there—or had been designed differently—the devastation would have been far less.
"Can you control that flow?" Westerink asks. "This becomes a huge federal problem of who gets whose water." The hurricane risk to the Mississippi and Alabama coasts would be much lower if the river levees disappeared tomorrow. But nobody, least of all the Corps, wants to tell that to the shipping companies. Westerink and some Corps scientists say one solution is to cut big gaps in the levees, so storm surge waves would flow through and dissipate. That might preserve navigation, but it also would upend life in the delta as it's existed for more than a century. Louisiana towns such as Venice, at the extreme southeast end of the river, would literally become islands, tethered to each other by bridges. Places left outside the hurricane protections, such as Isle de Jean Charles, a tiny community of Indians from the Biloxi-Choctaw-Chitimacha tribe southwest of New Orleans, would probably disappear.
Clearly, such big fixes will make government agencies and political jurisdictions think about things they never imagined before. But thinking big is necessary; the alternative is to face more Katrina-sized storm surges—which will be increasingly likely given warming seas and melting polar ice—with weak flood defenses.
The most ambitious piece of any coastal protection plan will be rebuilding Louisiana's raggedy, sinking marshes. Anyone who grew up on the bayou knows that marshes help reduce storm surges. But official flood control policy has always focused on levees, so very few scientists—and no one in the Corps—had ever looked at just how that happens. That changed in 2002, when Tropical Storm Isidore nearly flooded Corps geologist John Lopez's house on Lake Pontchartrain. Isidore was a weak storm, yet its surge was large; Lopez wondered if the area's vanishing marshes had had anything to do with it.
Louisiana's vast wetlands have been sinking and eroding for decades. Since the 1930s, approximately 1,900 square miles of land has vanished—a swath roughly the size of the state of Delaware. In a single year, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita washed away an additional 217 square miles, according to a recent study by the U.S. Geological Service. Since then, scientists have grown even more alarmed at the rate at which erosion has been outpacing the modest efforts at coastal restoration. Rebuilding wetlands isn't easy, and it's that much harder if they're disappearing. In many places it will be possible only to slow the pace of erosion, not reverse it. Unless major progress is made in the next decade, the Times-Picayune reported in March, some coastal scientists say the delta may enter a kind of death spiral.
Page 1 of 2 
The proper and wise long term action/response is to not allow development/housing in high risk low lying areas, do not go back to where it can happen again.
This whole ordeal in New Orleans after Katrina has gentrification written all over it...but very few realize that. So Bush continues to throw money at contractors just to pay them, not making sure that they do what they were hired to do. The same thing happens with Halliburton in Iraq.
I work for the National Wildlife Federation, which just released a report card for Congress and the Bush administration as it relates to confronting global warming, reforming the Army Corps of Engineers, fixing FEMA and restoring wetlands since Katrina. A hint? They didn't do so well. http://www.nwf.org/hurricanes
The taxpayer subsidized flood insurance program needs to be eliminated.Make any entity that wants to put structures in highly vulnerable areas pay the full actual market cost to insure it themselves, that would immediately halt any more developement like this.
Thx John McQuaid, but i see no
mention of sea level rise due to
Global Warming....
National Geographic August 07
Perils of New Orleans mentions
a 3 foot rise by 2100 that would
make New Orleans an island in the
Gulf.
then there is:
Egypt teeters on brink of climate cataclysm SFChronicle 8/26 A22
If seal levels rise, Nile Delta region could be ruined
by Anna Johnson Associated Press
Alexandria Egypt--Millions of Egyptians could be forced permanently
from their homes, the country's ability to feed itself devastated.
That's what probably awaits this already impoverished and
overpopulated nation by the end of the century, if predictions
about climate change hold true. The World Bank describes Egpyt
as particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming, saying
it faces potentially catastrophic consequences. ...even minimal
sea rise in the next century would have serious consequences for
Egypt, experts warn. A rise of 3.3 feet would flood a quarter of
the delta, forcing about 10.5% (16 million in 2050 ) of Egypt's
population from their homes, according to the World Bank.
...those losses would pale to the impact of the worst-case
scenario that some scientists are predicting--global warming
unexpectedly and rapidly breaking up the Greenland and West
Anarctic ice sheets...causing mass devastation'
However, on A16 of the same 8/26 SF Chronicle this:
Obama's Plan to Restore New Orleans By Jeff Zeleny NYT 8/26/07
The presidential candidate wants to streamline the bureaucracy,
strengthen law enforcement and restore wetlands to protect
against storms.[BUT NO mention of Global Warming in this article
by the reporter or by Obama, Clinton, Edwards...and no mention
of US, China, India...reversing increasing carbon dioxide
emissions (solution)...and Obama/Clinton/Edwards adaptation
doesnt address rising sea levels and more intense hurricanes.
We deserve better than willful ignorance from political leaders
and leading newspapers. RJ]
www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/us/politics/26obama.html?th&emc=th
RJ]
Who Will Pay for the Next Hurricane? By HOWARD KUNREUTHER
Because of increasing development in hazard-prone areas and the
effects of climate change, we are in a new era of catastrophic losses
from natural disasters.
www.nytimes.com/2007/08/25/opinion/25hkunreuther.html?th&emc=th
UN Climate Talks Nations to discuss curbing green house gases
by William J. Kole Associated Press 8/27/07
...Experts say developing countries will need billions more each
year to help them adapt to changes in their climates. An example
is the southern African nation of Lesotho. The impoverished country
relies heavily on agriculture, yet it being hit with twice as many
droughts as it endured in the 1980s, Lesotho Environment Minister
Monyane Moleleki said. Complicating matters: Since 2000, January
and February have become progressively warmer. 'When the rain
does come, it comes in deluges--torrents--useless for our
agriculture, Moleleki said.
Down in New Orleans/Reflections from a Drowned City by Billy Sothern
Univ of Ca Press, reviewed by Peter Lewis in 8/26/07 SF Chronicle
'...Sothern taps into Peirce Lewis, author of a classic vignette on
New Orleans that explains the evolution of the city, how it became
an accident waiting to happen. A host of urban planners and
historians, as well as bickering relief groups, address the elephant
in the room: Rebuilding eastern New Orleans is an invitation to
disaster. What then, of the inhabitants? Most still twist in the wind,
while the power brokers dither...."We already know who is going
to pay for all this. The poor. They always do. The whole
country's garbage flows down the Mississippi to them." Andrei
Codrescu, who live in New Orleans by way of Romania.
Thx John McQuaid, but i see no
mention of sea level rise due to
Global Warming....
National Geographic August 07
Perils of New Orleans mentions
a 3 foot rise by 2100 that would
make New Orleans an island in the
Gulf.
Then there is:
Egypt teeters on brink of climate cataclysm SFChronicle 8/26 A22
If seal levels rise, Nile Delta region could be ruined
by Anna Johnson Associated Press
Alexandria Egypt--Millions of Egyptians could be forced permanently
from their homes, the country's ability to feed itself devastated.
That's what probably awaits this already impoverished and
overpopulated nation by the end of the century, if predictions
about climate change hold true. The World Bank describes Egpyt
as particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming, saying
it faces potentially catastrophic consequences. ...even minimal
sea rise in the next century would have serious consequences for
Egypt, experts warn. A rise of 3.3 feet would flood a quarter of
the delta, forcing about 10.5% (16 million in 2050 ) of Egypt's
population from their homes, according to the World Bank.
...those losses would pale to the impact of the worst-case
scenario that some scientists are predicting--global warming
unexpectedly and rapidly breaking up the Greenland and West
Anarctic ice sheets...causing mass devastation'
However, on A16 of the same 8/26 SF Chronicle this:
Obama's Plan to Restore New Orleans By Jeff Zeleny NYT 8/26/07
The presidential candidate wants to streamline the bureaucracy,
strengthen law enforcement and restore wetlands to protect
against storms.[BUT NO mention of Global Warming in this article
by the reporter or by Obama, Clinton, Edwards...and no mention
of US, China, India...reversing increasing carbon dioxide
emissions (solution)...and Obama/Clinton/Edwards adaptation
doesnt address rising sea levels and more intense hurricanes.
We deserve better than willful ignorance from political leaders
and leading newspapers. RJ]
www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/us/politics/26obama.html?th&emc=th
RJ]
Who Will Pay for the Next Hurricane? By HOWARD KUNREUTHER
Because of increasing development in hazard-prone areas and the
effects of climate change, we are in a new era of catastrophic losses
from natural disasters.
www.nytimes.com/2007/08/25/opinion/25hkunreuther.html?th&emc=th
UN Climate Talks Nations to discuss curbing green house gases
by William J. Kole Associated Press 8/27/07
...Experts say developing countries will need billions more each
year to help them adapt to changes in their climates. An example
is the southern African nation of Lesotho. The impoverished country
relies heavily on agriculture, yet it being hit with twice as many
droughts as it endured in the 1980s, Lesotho Environment Minister
Monyane Moleleki said. Complicating matters: Since 2000, January
and February have become progressively warmer. 'When the rain
does come, it comes in deluges--torrents--useless for our
agriculture, Moleleki said.
Down in New Orleans/Reflections from a Drowned City by Billy Sothern
Univ of Ca Press, reviewed by Peter Lewis in 8/26/07 SF Chronicle
'...Sothern taps into Peirce Lewis, author of a classic vignette on
New Orleans that explains the evolution of the city, how it became
an accident waiting to happen. A host of urban planners and
historians, as well as bickering relief groups, address the elephant
in the room: Rebuilding eastern New Orleans is an invitation to
disaster. What then, of the inhabitants? Most still twist in the wind,
while the power brokers dither...."We already know who is going
to pay for all this. The poor. They always do. The whole
country's garbage flows down the Mississippi to them." Andrei
Codrescu, who live in New Orleans by way of Romania.
FEMA sued Jefferson and St. Bernard Parishes over related issues in 1981. It tried to sue Orleans Parish but DOJ rejected that effort for a variety of non-legal reasons. In the suit, which also included many special districts and Levee Boards it was made crystal clear that only an almost militarized effort such as the Dutch employ could protect the area. Hurricane Betsy had given warning and a number of internal drainage issues from storms, not floods, had given NOLA and the entire area fair warning. Already in 1981, that area was at the top of the list of the 100 most heavily flood prone communities based on NFIP paid claims. The suit was, however, only a warm-up for many other cities and counties with similar problems. At the time it was the largest civil case monetarily ever filed by the DOJ against State and/or local government.
Nonetheless, given the tax system in LA and the lack of comptency to develop a "Dutch" type report it is very very important that under our Federal system, National interests and local interests be identified. I love NOLA for its people, history, and charm. But the national interest in southern LA is not just legal niceties, such as "Navigable Waters of the US" but the oil, gas, and energy industry and Mississippi Outflow shipping. The river has been as far west as the Texas border, and as far east as the Mississipp Border in the last 5000 years. Its wandering is controlled by man, but only until the "Old River Control Structure" fails and the river follows its course through Morgan City and the Atchafayla (sic)floodplain. Stop spending money on keeping NOLA a port, let it dry out and let the river do its thing. Keep NOLA as tourist center but don't fight Mother Nature. Remember, Mother Nature does NOT grant variances, no matter how we humans wish otherwise. Comprehensively look at south LA and see what makes sense for the next 500 years not just until the next Category 3 Hurricane. And besides, meterology has been as ignored as hydrology in Louisiana. Subsidence in south LA cannot be stopped and man's actions keep making it worse. Where does all the fresh water come from and what is that impact on soil subsidence. The peat will continue to decay.
I wish all of southern LA the best but you need to wake up and realize the feds as currently set up are incapable of looking at a national level project and only that scope will again breathe life into NOLA.
I know its hard to believe but events could occur and probably will in the next 50 years that will make Katrina fade and the people of NOLA glad they lived through Katrina, terrible as it was, and not the next event. Time to wake up.
To: John McQuaid
.. after reading your article in the Huffington Post today and the above Mother Jones piece (Aug 29), I'm continually amazed that intelligent people, like yourself, still think this was a federal government problem!? .. to help answer your question - why no one cares, certainly on the scale of the 9/11 disaster, consider the following .. New Orleans/Katrina was a local/state (officials) failure of huge proportions .. how is it that you don't get it after all the post-destruction stories have come to the same conclusion!? .. Blanco and Nagin should have been fired on the spot for their joint complicity in being 'missing in action' in the face of what really was a huge disaster, in it's own right .. furthermore, monies earmarked for the levees in the 90's, during the Clinton Administration, to help re-build/shore-up some of these problem areas, were diverted to infrastructure projects for river boat casinos, etc .. in some instances, the Army Corps of Engineers were called off rebuilding efforts because the local citizry complained the construction noise was too loud .. ultimately, when you look up 'oversight' in the dictionary - a portrait of New Orleans and Louisiana officials are are prominitely displayed .. sadly, New Orleans got what everyone knew it could/would get -someday but didn't have the leadership to prevent it .. gh
I don't know why people are so concerned about New Orleans being rebuilt and protected. I don't know why people are so worried about global warming as well. Our great leader President Bush knows that the world will end soon with the second coming and we will all be raptured up to heaven. The bush administration and its supporters know this and they don't worry about it. The problems go much deeper than broken agancies including FEMA. Ignorance, greed and superstition have doomed the City of New Orleans and promises to doom the rest of the Nation as well. But hey, who cares? I know my little piece of heaven is waiting for me when the Holy [deleted] hits the fan. As for reality? That's for chumps! Take it from the President and his IQ of 92. Key word in this post is DOOMED!
When will African-Americans stop appropriating Jewish words/phrases/concepts? First "ghetto", then "diaspora" and now Rabbi Meir Kahane's "Never Again" (or " L'vlim la suv"). I bet they've used "Holocaust" too, now that I think about it...
@Kurt Benbenek
Cultural appropriation.
Why don't you ask all those hip little Jewish clubbers in Tel Aviv where they get their inspiration, their music, et cetera. And while you're at it, why don't you find out what influences, say, Matisyahu?
Unreal - good name!
Let's see: ghetto/diaspora/holocaust/never again on the one hand and some club beats and faux-reggae on the other. You must have one enormous hand on the one side and one very small one on the other if you think these 2 sets of items are equivalent. As you say, unreal!
And just how do you propose to prevent hurricanes - Please tell us Inquiring Minds want to know. What in the hell would you do about MSY? The damn place is below sea level you morans.
downsize the federal workforce by getting rid of USDA and 1/2 of all other agencies...uncreate the levels of buracracy created in mid 90's, slah salaries get rid of middle management and all the other gatekeepers...OSC, MSPB
A great three-piece of more proof that the United States of Arrogance is in very deep DOO, on many levels. I'm looking for a way to get out of the greatest country on planet Earth.
Free enterprise will solve everything. Right?
I grew up in Holland. The efforts required to hold back the sea and the rivers is mind boggling, even for a socialized and rich country like the Netherlands. And even in Holland reclamation projects have been abandoned and the realization that you cannot fight nature forever has set in a long time ago. For the United States to emulate the effort produced by the Dutch would be near impossible. It requires a strong central government committed to the well-being of it's citizens. America does not possess this and never will. If there is no profit motive, it will not be done. You only have to look at the health care disaster in the United States to understand this principle. If the state cannot provide for the basic, immediate health needs of it's citizens than how can it be expected to plan for more far off threats to public safety and security.
If Louisiana was NYC preferably the wall st area the federal goverment would have stepped in decades ago! sad to say
tiffany jewelry
of tiffany jewelry on ebay are cheaper than tiffany jewellery outlet store, why is that?
You will find the newest tiffany jewelry on sale fashion release on their official website.
I am planning to give my wife a big surprise with tiffany and co as a birthday gift, but I don’t know which one to choose, any ideas?
Welcome to our company, our
Welcome to our company, our company Huayi Trade Co.,LTD are good at selling the top quality designer bags (Balenciaga ,Chanel , Chloe' ,Christian Dior ,Dolce&Gabbana , Fendi , Gucci , Hermes , Galliera GM ,Miu Miu , Prada ), they are mirror image bags which are identical to the real onesLouis Vuitton Galliera GM . Our company locates inthe leather town in China, Speedy 25since 2003 we did this business we have won great trust and popularity from our customers from all over the world. We areexpanding our business, any inquiry for wholesale business is warmly welcome, Louis Vuitton Speedy 25just contact us, you can get our prompt reply.We have enlish speaking representative to answer phone call, or we can call you if convenient for you.
