Nearly seven years after flood waters from Hurricane Katrina gushed over New Orleans, $14.5 billion worth of civil works designed to block such surges is now in place — a 133-mile chain of levees, flood walls, gates and pumps too vast to take in at once, except perhaps from space.Now, hurricane season has returned, as it does each June. Whatever storms might approach New Orleans this year or in the future, they will encounter a vastly upgraded ring of protection. The question is whether it will be enoughMarc Walraven, a district head in the Dutch ministry of transport, public works and water management, recently toured the defenses. While 100 percent safety is impossible, he said, and challenges in operations and maintenance can be expected as the corps passes the facilities over to local management in the coming year, “the constructions that have been built are in my opinion adequate to defend New Orleans.”
adequate? was that the assumption of the last defense system? and now a rebuttal to that claim
Tim Doody, the president of the levee board that oversees Orleans and St. Bernard Parishes, disagrees. While the construction appears to be strong, he said, the level of protection authorized by Congress for the corps to build is “woefully inadequate.”
congress set the limits of construction, putting dollar bills ahead of human life? do we need any more reasons to expunge this congress from our history books and more directly out of our budget?
“It’s what the country will pay for; it’s what FEMA insures for,” Mr. Doody said. “But our thought and belief is that we all need to be behind protection that’s greater than that.”
Katrina proved to be a exception to the rule of storm intensity, so do we keep the same standards and just go for "adequacy" or do we realize that ignoring history is not a good plan and when it comes back those who have been the ignorer's aren't affected, they don't live where they doom to adequacy.
