Word: soils
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Orleans. Eighteenth century settlers established the famed French Quarter on some of the highest ground they could find, one of the reasons it remained relatively dry last week. As the Gulf, the lake and the river periodically overflowed, the growing city retreated behind an ever expanding web of soil, concrete and metal levees. Today there are 350 miles of those barricades snaking through the city and 22 massive pumping stations that are supposed to kick into action whenever the water sloshes over the walls. Having constructed that elaborate system, New Orleans was not inclined to abandon it. "The city built...
Which raises the inevitable question: If New Orleans is such a dangerous place, what in the world are we doing there--or, for that matter, anywhere else on the 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...
...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...
...inspections," and that it would also "address the question of preventing 'break-out'" - or abandonement of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Independent nuclear experts consulted by TIME said these proposals were "hopeful" signs. p> However, on the key U.S. demand that Iran forgo uranium enrichment on its own soil, because of international fears the process would permit Tehran to develop weapons-grade fissile material, Rohani said Iran would agree only "to negotiate with the IAEA and states concerned about the scope and timing of its industrial-scale uranium enrichment." And while Rohani promised that "Iran would accept an IAEA...
...Dems is the NSA's warrantless surveillance of al-Qaeda-linked phone numbers and addresses inside the U.S. Gen. Hayden began that super-secret program soon after the September 11 attacks. He explained the program in such no-nonsense terms-calling it "hot pursuit" of possible terrorists on U.S. soil-and was so clear in insisting that American civil liberties were respected that some credit Hayden with helping the White House turn the disclosure of the controversial program into a political plus. The question is whether it will play well enough the second time around for President Bush that...