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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: 5, Informative) by fritsd on Friday April 19 2019, @11:24AM (4 children)
In order to Make New Orleans Great Again(™), you need to do the following:
1. stop voting for governments that hire politicians like this: David Bernhardt [wikipedia.org]
and then
2. start voting for governments that can do plans that take half a century and raise taxes to pay for it, and hire politicians like this: Cornelis Lely [wikipedia.org]
otherwise, just forget it; you don't have what it takes.
Zuiderzee works [wikipedia.org]:
1891 -- 1919 research and planning
1920 -- 1924 Afsluitdijk built (first version, that needed a decade or so to "settle" [wikipedia.org] its structure before building on top of it)
1924 -- 1932 complete primary structure of the Afsluitdijk (excl. raising it to full height and building a motorway on top of it)
1926 -- 1927 experimental Andijk polder to test methods and techniques on a smaller scale
1927 -- 1930 Wieringermeer polder (smallish)
1936 -- 1942 Noordoostpolder (big)
1950 -- 1968 Flevoland (huge)
Delta works [wikipedia.org] (much more complicated because we needed nature, shipping and protection from the sea):
It was started after the disastrous flood of 1953 [wikipedia.org]. I remember my granny telling that lots of refugees from Zeeland had to be given temporary lodging in our village.
The design parameters are interesting:
1. estimate cost of a human life
2. estimate how often the NL floods
3. calculate price ticket for acceptability of : once per century floods, once per thousand year floods, once per 10000 year floods, up to once per 125000 year floods.
4. clinically decide price in human lives / cost of project balance: Delta works are going to protect against a once in a thousand year flood (1/10000 year is too expensive).
It's very important to note that the basis for this Dutch law, the Delta law [wikipedia.org], is what engineers and scientists modeled to be the reality of the geography of the Netherlands. Start with reality, then decide what we can *pay in taxes* to improve flood survival. No idealistic bullshit like "no Dutchman should be at risk of drowning". It doesn't work like that.
I'll spare you the details (the Wiki page has 'em) but this project took continuous budget and work from 1954 to 1997. Of course the crowning glory was the unique Oosterscheldekering [wikipedia.org], note details on that wiki page like: "four ships were custom designed and built for this project".
Maybe the Louisianianians can hire them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @06:31PM (3 children)
Here's the difference: the Dutch government is made up of Dutch people protecting fellow Dutch people from the sea. In New Orleans, it's a white government (with the token Moslem thrown in) deciding how much to spend to keep African Americans from drowning. In the Netherlands you use a complex calculation based on the value of human lives divided by project cost, the Americans have the same equation but the solution is much simpler since they set the numerator to zero.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @07:51PM (2 children)
You are right, everything is the white man's fault, including water and gravity.
I was wondering how we could blame this on whitey!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @10:05PM (1 child)
#BlackLivesMatter, cracker, and the sooner you realize it the happier you will be. The greatest president America ever had was black, the best music comes from black hip hop artists like Drake and Wynton Marsalis, and breakfast would be boring without Aunt Jemimah.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @11:39PM
But that Prez was half white and was completely raised by white people.