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from the always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life dept.
After a $14-Billion Upgrade, New Orleans' Levees Are Sinking:
Sea-level rise and ground subsidence will render the flood barriers inadequate in just four years
The $14 billion network of levees and floodwalls that was built to protect greater New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was a seemingly invincible bulwark against flooding.
But now, 11 months after the Army Corps of Engineers completed one of the largest public works projects in world history, the agency says the system will stop providing adequate protection in as little as four years because of rising sea levels and shrinking levees.
The growing vulnerability of the New Orleans area is forcing the Army Corps to begin assessing repair work, including raising hundreds of miles of levees and floodwalls that form a meandering earth and concrete fortress around the city and its adjacent suburbs.
"These systems that maybe were protecting us before are no longer going to be able to protect us without adjustments," said Emily Vuxton, policy director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, an environmental group. She said repair costs could be "hundreds of millions" of dollars, with 75% paid by federal taxpayers.
"I think this work is necessary. We have to protect the population of New Orleans," Vuxton said.
The protection system was built over a decade and finished last May when the Army Corps completed a final component that involves pumps.
The agency's projection that the system will "no longer provide [required] risk reduction as early as 2023" illustrates the rapidly changing conditions being experienced both globally as sea levels rise faster than expected and locally as erosion wipes out protective barrier islands and marshlands in southeastern Louisiana.
Could never have seen that coming.
(Score: 3, Touché) by jimtheowl on Friday April 19 2019, @06:03AM (4 children)
The politics is simply a reflection of a populace in denial and enabled by people with vested interest in keeping things the way they are.
FTFA:
" illustrates the rapidly changing conditions being experienced both globally as sea levels rise faster than expected and locally as erosion wipes out protective barrier islands and marshlands in southeastern Louisiana."
Is the soil shrinking globally? Is there another reason why sea levels are rising?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @06:25AM (1 child)
This has nothing to do with the sea level. It isn't even the sea that is pouring into the area. There is a huge river and a rather large lake.
There is no erosion. Think about it. If the dirt started to wash away, where would it go? It would go to the low point, helping to solve the problems!
Basically, the article is making shit up. Soil shrinks when we pump out water. It isn't exactly global, but we cause it in lots of places. We drop the water table, either with wells or just pumping a low spot dry, and the loss of water causes the land to shrink. This is fundamentally a local problem, although repeated in many other places.
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Friday April 19 2019, @05:57PM
The sea level rise is not stated as the source of the problem, but the main reason we are not coping with it as planned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday April 19 2019, @04:22PM (1 child)
IIUC, the sinking land is a result of pumping out a bunch of oil that used to hold it up. So it's not happening globally. The people who built there back in the 1930's had no reason to expect this result, in the 1970's it was clearly happening. Then the sea levels started to rise.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jimtheowl on Friday April 19 2019, @05:33PM
Here is another: In 1755 the British deported the Acadians from Eastern Canada (Today's newly named Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince-Edward Island) deporting them across the world.
A large number died, some of them ended up in Louisiana (I am not stating that this is the origin of the French in Louisiana). Not being wanted anywhere, they would end up in swamps where no one would do farming.
The Acadians (known a 'cajuns' in the US south) practiced a style of faming which involved a system of valves known as 'aboitaux', which allowed the sea tide to go out, but not back in. After that claimed land was dried up, it was extremely fertile.
What you state rings true, but the origins go much further.