Word: louisiana
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...island, Grand Isle, which sapped its power; Gustav also seems to have passed over another speed bump in the form of a rare swath of healthy marshes. "It's really incredible; a slight variation of the track either way could have meant six more feet of storm surge," says Louisiana State University coastal scientist Robert Twilley, who studied Gustav's track. "I hope nobody gets a false sense of security." The barrier islands that once protected New Orleans have eroded, and most of the city's nearby marshes are gone. Every hour, Louisiana loses more than a football field...
Then there's the rest of the coast, a Cajun country of farm towns, fishing villages and oil 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...
...Gustav that "one home lost in Plaquemines is one home too many"--which is not a realistic standard. Politicians can make promises, but they can't make Dulac safe. And those politicians need to focus on protection instead of pork; before Katrina, the Corps was spending more money in Louisiana than in any other state, but it was wasting most of the funds on navigation boondoggles that had nothing to do with hurricane defense. Louisiana's political establishment is pushing hard for coastal restoration, but it is also pushing for the coast-killing Morganza project as well as port deepenings...
...focus right now should be simple: better levees for New Orleans and real restoration of the coast. Southern Louisiana began to disappear after the Corps imprisoned the Mississippi River and converted it into a barge channel that stopped depositing sediment into its Delta; satellite images of this spring's floods showed the river wasting huge plumes of sediment out to sea, sediment that could be diverted to restore coastal marshes and rebuild barrier islands. There is already $1 billion worth of small projects on the books to start that process, but restoration work is moving much, much more slowly than...
...media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this great country." And the Louisiana and Georgia delegations waved their fingers at the men in the network skyboxes...