After four years of hearing, from commenters on the New Orleans disaster, that "they never should have built it there... they should just move it inland/upstream/away", comes this report on a conference suggesting the dire future that may await New York City if (or, as one expert puts it, "when") a hurricane generates serious storm surge.
The proposed solution: a set of barriers ringing the city to protect it from inundation. The proposed cost: billions of (supposedly federal) dollars. The alternative: there is none, because, says one of the designers of the proposed barriers:
"We're going to have to do something," Bowman said. "Or else you retreat, and that's inconceivable. How are you going to retreat from New York City?"
Well, the same way people do each summer: everybody to the Hamptons.
Here's a suggestion: for the sake of every city surrounded by water (much of Chicago, which I recently visited, actually sits nestled very tightly between a lake and a river), let's fix what the shoddily designed and constructed federal levees did to New Orleans first, and see if that works as a successful model. The Dutch have been doing this for hundreds of years, they may even have something to teach us. Even though they're -- ugh -- Europeans.
A lot of the Bay was filled in and homes and businesses built on ground likely to liquify after a Great earthquake. A lot of that has been stopped, though there is another proposal floating around to replace the salt ponds with housing. That's the story -- some hit-and-run developer builds on fill, or puts schools and hospitals on a major fault (the Hayward -- overdue for a big quake). Then a quake happens, and they stick a microphone in your face and say "How come you still live here?"
I'll take the once-a-century quake odds for the privilege of living in this beautiful place. But not on fill and not right on the fault. Even in dangerous places, there are places of more or less danger. But rational land use is impossible when everyone wants to maximize their income and wash their hands of the consequences.
Robert Reich. "How Pharma and Insurance Intend to Kill the Public Option, And What Obama and the Rest of Us Must Do."
"Big Pharma and Big Insurance are gaining ground in their campaign to kill the public option in the emerging health care bill....cont....
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/robert_reich/2009/06/the-public-option-smokescreens.php#comments
The billions of Federal dollars spent to construct dams and levees have doubtless prevented billions of dollars of damage to the areas they serve. But a dam or a levee in one place creates problems somewhere else. Also, by offering protection, they encourage people to live and work and develop farming in flood plains that are inherently risky.
or, in 2001:
But the Corps has never abandoned its blind faith in dams and levees that, when overused, constrict the river's natural flow, invite overbuilding and end up doing more harm than good.
All of this applies to NOLA, of course - Now NY city is a bit different. It needs the big Dutch wall out in the ocean to protect it. Of course that was proposed for NOLA back in the 1970's - but once again the environmentalists put up such a stink, that the Corps finally gave up on the idea.
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A Barrier That Could Have Been
[LA Times]09/09/05
In the wake of HurricaneBetsy 40years ago, Congress approved a massive hurricane barrier to protect NOLA from storm surges...signed into law by Johnson, was derailed in 1977 by an environmental lawsuit. .."If we had built the barriers, NOLA would not be flooded," said Joseph Towers, the retired chief counsel for the Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans district.
[..]
The project was stopped in its tracks when an environmental lawsuit won a federal injunction on the grounds that the Army's environmental impact statement was flawed. By the mid-1980s, Corps of Engineers abandoned the project.
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Soooo - next time.. how about, "hey, gh, I don't recall that ?
Yes, the locks are way past due -- hope they work -- it's a complicated set of circumstances to use them! But news, is that the public does not have a clue that anything constructive down there has been done since Katrina - nor 117,000 people received average of $60,000 in tax free federal grants to help rebuild/relocate. Our media made damn sure of that. If people knew - they would be armed to argue for more(;-/e
Here - check out this story: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-levee25dec25,1,6536569.story
The explanation from my friend was simple, he said "My family has been here since 1770's, they were French Creole who married Native Americans".
When asked about how they have lived so long in the "floodplain" , my friend said "You either get behind a levee, or you get up higher than the water. Gotta live with the River, best not to ignore it."
Those comments never made the news.
For tornadoes its mostly the debris that is being hammered into anything left alive or standing.
For hurrianes it is pushing the lead edge, and the flooding from heavy rains that proceeded bakc into the path of the still rising storm surge.
For an island like New York not only would there be that kind of back wash, but there is evidence on at lease one Mediterrian and one Hawian island of tidal waves that pass around the islands and met and slammed into itself again on the back side of the islands creating a wave that was much higher than that leading edge of the tidal wave.
New York could conceivably be affected by both the back wash flooding and the head on collision of the divided storm surges, head-on collision, on the lee side of the island.
Yup better rebuild New York in the Rockies. And what about San Fran. and t he earthquakes. Better get it out of harm's way. Maybe onto the
New Orleans however being a port city can't effectively move away from the Gulf.
For the record, a good bit of the marsh lands were actually created by the daming up of the Mississippi River, as it created a new and more defined delta where the sediments have now been deposited for many a year. Harry can probalby add to this discussion. I only lived there for a short time.
the Ground Zero memorial
in the Catskills...
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http://co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8518750
Cape Cod which used to have mostly saltbox houses which withstood such storms now has many three story houses mostly of glass.
In Providence there are water mark memorials three and four feet high on walls in downtown.
a storm barrier was put in in the mid fifties which hasn't had a real test as yet.
New York was built above sea level.
I'll admit to ignorance of New Orleans construction history.
But, at what point was New Orleans above sea level?
When the ships go by on the River above your view, what do you think will happen should the man-made structures fail? And, don't man-made structures always eventually fail?
Finally, as a Californian, who lives with earthquakes and fires as a regular occurance - and has the New York Times telling us that we shouldn't build houses where we do - I really don't have much sympathy. Each of us in California must build our homes with earthquakes and fire in mind - and we have to pay for it.
If the people want to live below sea level that's entirely up to them. New Orleans is a great city. Just stop asking us to pay for your lifestyle. Build your own levees and stop asking us to pay for your choices. I would say the same to New York or any other place - like bridges to nowhere in Alaska.
No levees for N.Y. with Federal money either. I think it is safe to say, they recently received trillions in one form or another. Spend it how you like, just don't come asking for more.
There is plenty of money in NYC to tax and pay for a levee system.
No to NYC too Harry!
Keep trying.
Sacramento is a California city that is still very prone to flooding, has levees. And, the rivers there are certainly no match for the mighy Mississippi. And, only 25 ft. above sea level.
Yet, when they built out old parts of the city, they used landfill to fill in those portions close to sea level - in Old Sacramento the old first floors became the new basements.
That was, of course, in the mid-1800's.
New Orleans purposely built below sea level after WWII.
What is it, do you think, that Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, Collis Huntington and the rest of the Sacramento city fathers knew that New Orleans city planners don't?
That water and gravity mixed together are not good for people who build next to big rivers and below sea level?
No man made structure can be expected to overcome the long term effect of water and gravity.
The feds are the ones who have to rebuild them, and you and I will be paying for them. Do you want your tax dollars spent wisely on safe and secure levees, or do you want them wasted on levees built to inferior specs?
Don't say you don't want them built at all, or that they should abandon New Orleans. New Orleans is a major port, and it's not going anywhere. The feds have a responsibility to rebuild those levees to safe standards. As tax payers, we must demand that those flood protection structures be built to the correct specs.