Word: canals
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...Koningsplein (King's Square), the area today is a place of easy leisure, of bucolic clumps of crape myrtle and mahogany trees, whose center is the Monumen Nasional - founding father Sukarno's heroic white obelisk. From its observatory deck, you'll see the Kali Besar, Jakarta' big canal dug during the city's prosperous days as a tropical spice-trading port, running north. South is Menteng, the early 20th century planned garden neighborhood where local élite, like the late Suharto's clan, reside. For them Jakarta again is a town of joy, booming with steel, glass and shining retail...
...billion for local communities in the coming two decades. The government forecasts that the highway could add a full percentage point to GDP. Brazil will be the big beneficiary at the start, sending minerals, meat and soybeans through Peru for export to China, instead of using the Panama Canal. But local authorities expect the Peruvian entreprenerus to slowly catch up with exports headed across the Atlantic...
...last of the detainees had made their mark, and the elders had departed, McCullough and I stood in the hallway outside Governor Manaf's office. McCullough had a lot to do that day - his Marines were trying to maintain security, rebuild bridges, solve the riddles of the local canal networks, and so on. But before he went on to his next meeting, I asked him what he would have done if one of the detainees had refused to sign the document. He responded unequivocally: "We would've convinced them to sign...
...that's not why the Corps lost this case. The plaintiffs could not sue the Corps for botching flood protection, because Congress gave it "sovereign immunity" to protect its flood-protection projects from that sort of lawsuit. So the suit focused on a canal called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a classic Army Corps navigation boondoggle that was designed as a shortcut for ships to the Port of New Orleans - although ships rarely use it - and ended up instead as a shortcut for hurricanes. The plaintiffs argued that the so-called Mr. Go - which wasn't a flood-protection project...
...reality, though, Mr. Go was not the primary cause of the disaster, and this could yet get the Corps off the hook. Engineers have calculated that it raised the height of the surge by about two feet, still not enough to overtop the most important levees. The canal has carried enough saltwater from the Gulf to destroy an estimated 100 square miles of valuable freshwater wetlands, but that's just a tiny slice of the land-loss crisis. The Corps can still make the case that adequate flood walls would have withstood the extra surge created...