Word: houma
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...ports that are even more exposed than New Orleans. For decades, Louisiana's southern parishes have clamored for a series of gigantic levees across the coast--a kind of Great Wall of Louisiana--starting with a 72-mile (116 km) Morganza-to-the-Gulf dike for the city of Houma and some exposed bayou towns. Keith Luke rode out Gustav in his shrimp boat; his hometown of Dulac, once nestled behind cypress swamps and marshes, is now surrounded by open water. "We need levees," Luke said after the storm. "This is one bayou that's not protected ... I'm sure...
...preliminary Corps analysis suggests that building the levee to real 100-year standards could cost $10.7 billion, a 1,200% increase. Before Gustav, Jindal had convened a science panel to review Morganza-to-the-Gulf, and momentum has been building for an alternative alignment that would protect Houma without cutting off wetlands. "We're still vulnerable, no question about it," says John Lopez, who designed the alternative plan for the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. "We just have to stop making ourselves more vulnerable...
...after Hurricane Gustav battered this coastal region, along Highway 57 from Houma, cars dodged downed power lines, felled oak trees, and an occasional dead turtle. "You LOOT, we SHOOT," read one wooden sign that'd been attached to one home's front door. Du Lac, not far from Cocodrie where Gustav made landfall, is so sparse it doesn't feel like much of a town. It's a set of trailers and single-level homes, often built on stilts, some rising some 10, 20, even 30 feet into the air above marshes...
...Industrial Canal's levee, flooding the Lower Ninth Ward. Since then, the Corps has built 15-foot-high walls - which it calls "T-Walls" - made of concrete. Other points in the region vulnerable to flooding are St. Bernard Parish, just south and east of the Lower Ninth Ward, and Houma, near where Gustav landed...
...cost-benefit study, and a preliminary analysis suggested that building the levee according to real 100-year standards could cost $10.7 billion - a 1,200% increase. Meanwhile, Governor Jindal has convened a science panel to review whether Morganza is consistent with restoration plans. Even Keith Magill, the editor of Houma Today, wrote a brave column suggesting that the new cost figures represented "the end of Morganza as we know it," and praising a levee alignment proposed by environmentalists that would still protect Houma without cutting off wetlands...