Report: Post-Katrina levees not strong enough

[cal04]

Source: Associated Press

Experts also recommend elevating more homes, abandoning neighborhoods

New Orleans should increase the strength of new levees being built to protect against catastrophic hurricanes, elevate more houses and abandon neighborhoods that rest below sea level, an independent research panel said Friday.

Levees under construction by the Army Corps of Engineers aren't being built to a high-enough flood protection standard, said the report by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council.

The independent panel of experts was asked by the federal government to review the corps' investigation of levee failures during Hurricane Katrina and its work to avoid such a catastrophe again. The corps is spending about $14 billion to raise levees and build floodgates able to withstand a "100-year" storm, or a moderately dangerous hurricane with a 1-in-100 chance of hitting any given year. The corps plans to finish by 2011.

"For heavily populated urban areas, where the failure of protective structures would be catastrophic — such as New Orleans — this standard is inadequate," the report said.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30391989/

[FarCenter]

1. Move the people inland to Baton Rouge

Due to subsidence and the erosion of the delta, New Orleans is doomed.

It would be wiser to reestablish the community on higher ground inland.

[KamaAina]

3. (sigh) You are hardly the first to make that argument

it's been going on since before the city was founded in 1718. The French wanted Bienville and Iberville to establish a Mississippi River port on the site now occupied by Baton Rouge. Fortunately for North American culture, they did not.

Besides, Greater New Orleans is about 50% larger than metro Baton Rouge. You seriously intend to more than double the size of Baton Rouge overnight?!

Now try to imagine a similar post on the Dutch "Social Democratic Underground": "Move the people inland to Utrecht. Due to subsidence and the erosion of the Zuider Zee, Amsterdam is doomed." The flames would be so hot they could melt steel.

[Baby Snooks]

4. Please...

"Now try to imagine a similar post on the Dutch "Social Democratic Underground": "Move the people inland to Utrecht. Due to subsidence and the erosion of the Zuider Zee, Amsterdam is doomed." The flames would be so hot they could melt steel."

Unless I am mistaken or have missed something, they tend to tend to their levees. We do not. And they also planned theirs a little better.

[KamaAina]

6. My point precisely

Rather than abandoning New Orleans, we should tend to our levees, like the Dutch (and the Italians in Venice, etc.) do.

[JayMusgrove]

9. The Dutch in Amsterdam do NOT face hurricanes.

Sorry, your analogy does NOT make sense in terms of climate, nor in terms of how 400 years in Amsterdam equals the last 100 years of building willy nilly and with various levels of local/federal support in New Orleans, not to mention racial and other (read, Civil War), tensions that Amsterdam never faced in the last two centuries.

[JayMusgrove]

7. This is the best advice I have ever heard for how to deal with

New Orleans.

Sure, a few blocks here and there should be preserved, more like a Provincetown, Mass, where 10,000 people live year round, and 30,000 visit in summer.

A second New Louisiana city......sort of like Brasilia in Brazil.
50 miles inland, on the river, a more multi-cultural, egalitarian city, with vibrant contacts with the oil industry, with shipping, rails, roads and airport. There's plenty of land there to build on.....no need to put 100's of thousands of people in a city on the delta in constant threat each year from nature's hurricanes.

[bitchkitty]

13. Better idea to fix the levees.

We have the knowledge and technology to make it 100 times safer to live there than it is now. If we fixed the levees, and gave New Orleans much needed aid for basic social services, it would go a long way toward fixing it.

50 miles inland would not be New Orleans. It would be New New Orleans, a pallid imitation with none of the heart and spirit of the original.

[JayMusgrove]

15. Cost benefit analysis, you can't fight mother nature!

sorry, I don't like paying over and over again for using teacups to shovel the sand against a tide.

So New Orleans won't be the OLD New Orleans, in fifty years no one will care, but thousands of people will live out their lives without dying in a hurricane or flood.

[tomhayes]

17. You are a disgusting human being (on a policy level)

>sorry, I don't like paying over and over again for using teacups to shovel the sand against a tide.

I really don't care what you feel like of not - abandoning one of our greatest cities and ,probably the city most responsible for the expansion of this country, because you don't feel like paying for something "people would probably forget" is disgusting.

How about we do this simple: Let's restore the tidelands, build levees that are strong enough, and maintain them to keep THIS CITY SAFE! Americans live here and deserve more from the social contract with our government than for people to tell them to abandon their homes. And not because something has changed like an massive earthquake, but because of poor civil engineering, the erosion of wetlands for oil profits, and because many Americans have no foresight, or empathy.

If a disaster strikes again, how 'bout we get the national guard and rescues ships down there quicker than 3 days?

If what happened to New Orleans happened to your city you wouldn't be so callous, and disgusting.

I'm sure the Freepers are more on board with abandoning a part of this country.

[Rage for Order]

2. They're just now figuring this out?

The levees will never be strong enough. Most of the city is at or below sea level, the Greater New Orleans area is surrounded by swamps and a good portion of the city is slowly sinking, and the wetlands that used to provide hurricane protection are eroding a little more every year. New Orleans will have to come back as a smaller, more densely populated city. Either that, or a buttload of houses will need to be built on stilts.

[Baby Snooks]

5. The next Katrina may solve the problem..

The next hurricane may completely destroy the levees and the lake and the river will simply return New Orleans to the New Orleans the French founded. If you notice, the parts of New Orleans built by the French did not flood. Some wisdom there that seems to have escaped everyone along the way. Particularly the Army Corps of Engineers. Which has not only doomed New Orleans but everything south of New Orleans. Let nature restore the natural habitat. It will eventually anyway.

They should just evacuate New Orleans and flood it themselves. At least that way there won't be a tremendous loss of life as there was with Katrina. And will be with the next Katrina.

[Chuckleberry]

8. Hurricane season is about to begin

In May, if I'm not mistaken. If action is to be taken, it should be taken either now or very, very soon to avoid a repetition of Bush's screw-up.

[JayMusgrove]

10. NO idiot will ever be as dumb as Bush ......even if we have another

Katrina this year, next year, in the next 400 years, no one will be as dumb as Bush.

[Baby Snooks]

11. Well not to defend the devil but he didn't tell them to stay...

Part of the disaster was caused by New Orleanians believing it was just another storm. Despite knowing full well how the levees were a disaster just waiting for the right moment. And the moment was coming in as a Category 4 and then 5 storm - and they stayed despite everyone knowing that most assumed the levees might not hold in a Category 4 or 5 storm.

Perhaps next time they will evacuate before instead of after.

When Ike began to move towards Galveston people remembered another big hurricane that hit in 1900 with a tremendous storm surge. And realized that while the seawall might keep it from coming in from the Gulf there was no seawall on the bay and so they left. When people remember the past they sometimes manage not to repeat it. The problem is too many forget the past. And what happened.

Hopefully next time New Orleanians will remember the past. Regardless of whether they do or not the future is inevitable - the biggest threat to New Orleans is really from the sea itself. Which is the biggest threat to quite a few of our coastal cities and towns. We have overbuilt and built in areas where we shouldn't have. We messed with Nature. And Nature has messed back.

My godparents were from New Orleans. They always lived in either the Quarter or the Garden District. They knew that eventually a storm would come in and a levee would break and New Orleans would be under water. Except for the Quarter and the Garden District.

And when a storm eventually did come in, a levee broke and New Orleans was under water. Except for the Quarter and the Garden District.

[bitchkitty]

14. Many who stayed had no choice but to stay.

They were either too poor, too sick, or too stubborn. I'm sure there were many reasons, but no matter how stupid the reason, that is no excuse for the pathetic response to the disaster.

[glinda]

12. I wish they would do like north of Winnipeg which is buy them out and let it go to wetland

as well as in this case, move historical and pertinent pieces of historic areas with it.

[Doctor Cynic]

16. 1 in 100 years will soon be 1 in 20 years, what with global warming and all that.