Word: landings
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...around the time of the Scotland trip. Two days before Abramoff sent Safavian the schedule for the junket, he asked him for some help in finding a location for a Jewish orthodox school he was looking to build in Maryland for his children to attend. Abramoff wanted to get land from the government, and Safavian, as chief of staff for the General Services Administration, the agency that controls government property, advised him that he should get Congress to order GSA to sell or lease the land to the school, according to e-mails released last month by the Justice department...
...perilous Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas? Soggy soil, eroding shorelines and sudden storms make the whole region an unstable mess even without human intervention. And the more we build there, the worse we seem to make things, clawing away the natural river routes and marshlands that replenish the land and sucking out the oil and other subterranean resources that hold up the surface. Now, many experts warn, with greenhouse gases raising global temperatures, we are spawning more and deadlier hurricanes, ones that could kill a city in a single blow--if Katrina hasn't already done that...
Geology has only made things worse. Gulf land is squishy stuff, made mostly of silt deposited by eons of free-flowing rivers and periodic floods. When the high water recedes, the sedimentary layer remains, growing heavier and heavier and ultimately subsiding under its own weight. The only way to keep the land from sinking altogether is to let the soil replenish itself with each flood. Human beings have done just the opposite, walling off New Orleans and re-engineering the Mississippi River to flow around the growing metropolis, effectively choking off the silt supply...
...Louisiana, the shrinkage is most dramatic. The state has lost 1 million acres of coast--11/2 times the area of Rhode Island--since 1930, nearly half of that vanished land lying between New Orleans and the Gulf. The city proper is estimated to be sinking 3 ft. per century. And while the whole world is struggling with rising sea levels, New Orleans and its environs hurt more than most. The State of Louisiana is estimated to be losing land at the alarming rate of about two acres every hour...
...Bassett accepted from Wilkes was for helping him with a business trip to a part of Europe where Bassett knew "the lay of the land from before" - presumably a reference to Bassett's earlier work for the CIA, said the person speaking for Bassett. Bassett "was not an employee of [ADCS]. It was a one-off consulting deal" this person said on Bassett's behalf. Wilkes' Washington attorney, Nancy Luque, said Wilkes has done nothing wrong and that Bassett was hired as a consultant "for his knowledge of the area they were working in and facility with the languages spoken...