Word: storms
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Three years to the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall, another storm is barreling toward the Louisiana coast. Are the manmade defenses around New Orleans prepared for Gustav? Afraid not. Are the marshes and cypress swamps that once provided natural protection for the Louisiana coast still vanishing? Afraid so. How should local residents feel after a manmade catastrophe followed by three years of promises? Afraid, period...
...allies in the political world were planning to repeat and extend some of those mistakes along the entire Louisiana coast. I'm thrilled to report that over the last year, the Corps has gently applied the brakes to those plans. That won't save the coast from Gustav; the storm is coming so soon after Katrina that there isn't much else to do except hope it weakens or misses. But over the next year, decisions about the coast could determine whether southern Louisiana can be sustainable, or whether the Katrinas and Gustavs of the future will obliterate...
...Corps has pledged that by 2011 New Orleans will be protected against a 100-year storm, the protection that was required in theory before Katrina but was never provided in practice. Since Katrina, the Corps has repaired or improved 220 miles of floodwalls and levees, and has installed floodgates that should keep storm surges from Lake Pontchartrain out of the city's drainage canals. "The New Orleans area now has the best flood protection in its history," the Corps said in a statement...
...small inland community) would protect the city of Houma as well as a series of tiny bayou towns, but it would also cut off 135,000 acres of wetlands from their natural tidal exchanges. Scientists have said the project would make the area even less safe by ravaging natural storm buffers, amplifying storm surges and encouraging a false sense of security. First proposed in 1992, the project was finally authorized by Congress last year. "It's just insane," says Tulane law professor Oliver Houck, who has been warning about the vanishing coast for decades. "The politicians get tears in their...
...Tropical Storm Gustav is coming. Already, Bobby Jindal, Louisiana's new, young governor, has declared a state of emergency. C. Ray Nagin, New Orleans' mayor, dashed back from Denver to help coordinate his city's evacuation plans. Yesterday, my mom booked my 70-something grandparents on flights to Dallas, where they'll stay with relatives. I reserved hotel rooms for my folks in Alabama in case they need them. My mom is a hard-core Barack Obama supporter who wants to hear him say at Denver's Invesco Field "We're going to rebuild New Orleans, at whatever cost, whatever...