A system of floodgates and pumps built since Hurricane Katrina to help alleviate flooding in several New Orleans neighborhoods may not be as much help as authorities first said.
Flood risk maps showed that the improvements made to the city canals’ drainage systems would reduce flooding during a major storm by about 5.5 feet in Lakeview and nearby neighborhoods. The maps were based on a storm that has the likelihood of occurring at least once in 100 years.
But in a report released November 7, Corps scientists estimated that the actual benefit the system would provide would be just 6 inches.
Does that qualify as an “Oops!” – or was the Corps of Engineers just hoping no one would notice?
The discrepancy was tucked into the voluminous report’s appendices, and neither the Corps nor the scientists hired to conduct the study brought the changes to the public’s attention when the report was released. It wasn’t until New Orleans television station WWL-TV asked an engineer involved in the assessment about the discrepancy that it became known.
Who cares. Common sense dictates that you don’t build on a flood plane. Further common sense says you don’t expect the government to bail you out of your stupidity. After Katrina the area should have been declared uninhabitable.
Not everyone wants to live in Des Moines, son.
Reminds me of the Mars Climate Orbiter and $125M lost because of a non-existent metric conversion.
From CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/
1. Damn! You’re right….now I’m going to have to email all my friends in the Netherlands and tell them to move…that it’s not possible under any known system to live on a flood plain, and if you do the government can’t afford to keep you reasonably dry. Boy, will they be surprised…..all those hundreds of years wasted….
#1 I heartily agree! Have you ever been there? I remember climbing up a 13foot ”levie’ and peering over the top… and looking at the Mississippi River inches from the crest and then watching a huge freighter going bye… WTF? Are they crazy? are we all crazy for putting any tax money at all into such nonsense!!!! I guess in Bangladesh that might be acceptable…
Yet another example of the pursuit of the type of argument so beloved of by politicians. About as rational as Dan Quayle
This use of psuedo maths, by those who do not understand maths i.e. ‘This only happens once in 100 years’ or ‘ This is only expected to happen once in 100 years. I say Balls.
If it happens 3 years on the trot do you confidently predict that the odds on another flooding are unlikely. I It ain’t like that matey.
Don’t believe me? Take a count of just how many variables there are in a weather forcast – and – the longer the period, the weaker the conclusion. Just what inside information does the person making this claim have on how many Hurricanes there will be in the next (any number you like) years? Where does he get his information from? Karl Marx believed that knowledge of the past enabled prediction of the future.
If you believe in that kind of wallopy thinking you shouldn’t live in the USA. Afghanistan maybe, Zimbabwe might be another choice.
Come to think of it, they don’t seem to get much flooding.
Maybe this thinking might have something in it after all
Wonder what he’s smoking?
This man is just thick enough to be President.
Watch his space (the one between his ears).
uhm my guess is you dont build on a swamp that is sinking..
All of New Orleans should have been moved upstream to higher ground.
Katrina? Hell a few weeks later Rita make a pit stop in louisianna… didn’t anyone take notice of the lesson then??
Hmmm… How many large US cities were build in or on swamps?
Off the top of my head, I can think of Seattle, Chicago, LA, apart from the really obvious ones…
Something tells me that those early settlers weren’t the clevererestest bunch(est) around… ;D
Last time I looked citizenship was not dependent on elevation. Many Americans seem to think it is A OK to have incompetent, unaccountable government. As long as suffering does not effect them, screw the rest of America. Katrina has been an eye opener to this conservative Republican. Katrina destroyed my world and America looked the other way.
Most of Boston was underground a few hundred years ago. That’s why Quincy Market is so far away from the Harbor now.
I thought they fixed the corruption and kickbacks leading to weak protection problem.
Live wherever you want just don’t expect me to pay for your stupidity.
This might explain it all….
http://www.suspect-device.com/USACE-levees.swf
#8, I wonder if our predecessors, so many of whom were dependent on being near water ways had much of a choice about dealing with swamps. But are you sure about LA? I thought it was in a desert, based on how much water they have to leach from the rest of the west.
I really don’t care where anybody lives. Just don’t ask the Government to buy you a new house when it floats away!
While I can understand those who think building upon low ground is wrong, that applies to so many of our population centers. Washington DC is built on a swamp. Much of Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Mobile, Sacramento, and so many other cities are built on former marsh and reclaimed land.
Then there are those urban areas built on or near earthquake faults, including Memphis, St. Louis, New York, Denver, and most of the West Coast.
Don’t forget those with a propensity for tornadoes, including all the Mid-West States.
Hurricanes, including all of Florida, the Gulf Coast, the Georgia, Carolinas, and Virginia coasts, as well the Mid Atlantic and New England States. Yup, nearly every year damage totals in the billions and Governors scream for disaster relief.
Then there are the desert areas such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, El Paso, and Salt Lake City that need water and massive amount of energy for air conditioning. Contrast that to those living in perennial blizzard zones with the resultant heavy energy for heat use, traffic disruptions and heart attacks from clearing snow.
Of course, I would be remiss to forget the annual Mississippi and tributaries spring floods. Or those who live downstream from dams. Or near power plants. Or chemical storage facilities. Or military bases and targets. Or Airports, Rail Roads, Interstates, or Navy Bean fields.
The Los Angeles area includes a few places that were wet before the build up, but they were shallow, not hundreds of feet of mud and silt.
Washington DC is still called “Foggy Bottom”, supposedly because it was built on a swamp (and had a helluva Malaria problem, too). Not sea level, though.
I understand that both Hong Kong and Shanghai were built on sea level swamps.
The whole Central Valley of California is a flood plain, that’s why it’s flat, the mud filled in the low spots. A return to the precip seen back in the ’50s might pose a problem for them, depending on how much corruption the city people allow in the state government. (Quite a bit, if Pelosi and Boxer are any indication.)
People in New Orleans look up at the Mississippi River because of the Corps of Engineers. The river has levees preventing it’s overflowing it banks along quite a bit of 2000-plus miles. Back in Samuel L. Clements day “Mark Twain” meant 12 feet of water under the steamboat and was a good thing. If the river was twelve feet deep today the US would be a much poorer country.
Currently the Corps is preventing the river from changing course. They have been doing so for about 50 years. They will eventually lose because water runs downhill. If the give up gracefully towns and property will be destroyed over a period of years. If they fight it till they lose. Towns, property and lives will be lost in days.
The only sure thing is that if dvorak.org/blog is still around someone will say “Those dumbass Cajuns! They shouldn’t have lived on the banks of the Atchafalaya River! Didn’t they know the Mississippi was coming?”
Perry
You could say the same thing about North Carolina coastal housing getting hit by hurricanes, Oklahoma housing getting hit by tornados, California housing getting hit by earthquakes and fires….and the theme goes on. Are you going to stop people from building there as well?
The cost of home insurance has tripled/quadrupuled in New Orleans. If you want to pay let them build.
Seems to me, the only real long-term solution is to let the Mississippi run free again. It will be super expensive and long-term to fix, but it’s the only real way.
Humans have built in stupid, disaster prone locations for thousands of years, but that is no excuse for inhumane heartlessness.
I like those folks who buy a house right next to the airport and then complain about airplane noise.
POINT: If you wanna live in a swamp. Great.. But please expect to have water in your house or be flooded at some point. So be ready.
20,000 Leases Under the Sea.
great article. I will bookmark this
For those of you who are so quick to say suggest we just abandon New Orleans because of its elevation, your comments are not only heartless and rude, but illogical as well. Many of you probably live in metropolitan areas you moved to at some point in your own life or maybe you have been there for a generation or two. For most people in New Orleans, myself included, our families have lived there for many generations. My family arrived in the 1700s. Where exactly is it you propose the 400,000 people that call the city home just pack up and move to? Do you have housing, jobs, and infrastructure ready for an entire metropolitan community waiting somewhere? And are you saying this from earthquake-prone Los Angeles or San Francisco, or tornado-alley, or the desert? Natural disasters are a part of most cities at some point or another. As far as our elevation, I think the Netherlands can back us up on that one.
What is really obnoxious is when you speak about “your money” being spent on New Orleans and Louisiana. If you actually learned something about the overall situation rather than talking out of your ass you might feel differently. And if you were a resident of the ONLY state for which the federal government applies a three mile limit to state natural resource claims when all the others have a ten mile limit, you might feel it was about time the government gave back a little since it takes so much. At the same time, it is YOUR cars and trucks need for fuel that has resulted in oil companies digging artificial canals and waterways along our coastline that have been destroying our coast wetlands which are not only an ecosystem unlike any other on the planet that are being destroyed, it is our natural defense against hurricanes and the reason why historically, the city of New Orleans has survived being 70 miles inland. AND it was the federal government, through its Corps of Engineers, that prevented the re-deposit of alluvial land when the Mississippi floods that has led to the land not being replenished as it always was. President Bush, our FEDERAL leader, cut the funding for our levee system to fund the war in Iraq; had that money not been taken from us, the damage could have been a lot less. But hey, what do I know. I’m just some idiot living in one of the most culturally diverse and historically significant cities in the world. We should just abandon our heritage, our homes and everything we know and love because of damage largely caused by us being exploited then left out to dry once again. Carpetbaggers…