Word: waterous
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...most insidious effect of building condos and industry along water is that we are systematically stripping coasts of the protection that used to cushion the blow of extreme weather. Three years after Katrina, southern Louisiana is still losing a football field's worth of wetlands every 38 minutes...
Washington bureaucrats often act as if they alone know how best to protect low-lying areas like Du Lac from flooding. Truth is, the folks who've spent their entire lives on the water have their own insights. Take Chris DeJean, 24. On Tuesday afternoon, DeJean was clearing debris from his shrimping boat, which floated in the bayou directly behind the home he shares with his mother. Like many people here, DeJean's roots in Du Lac run deep. His mother was born 40 years ago in the house right across the street. His grandmother was born there...
Then, there's the question about his business as water overwhelms what remains of the land. "As far as shrimping goes," DeJean continues, "there's going to be more shrimp. But you'll have a lot of garbage to deal with. You'll have trees, like in the nets." His 12-hour shifts will be reduced to six or eight mainly "because you spend so much time getting trees out the nets." Given the shortage of fuel, when does he expect to return to work? "You're talking a couple weeks without power, before we can do anything...
...with a kind of self-made v-neck. A bit of hair poked out. Despite the warnings about Gustav, Luke holed himself up in Miss Brandy, along with his deckhand, Charlie. "Things was bad," Luke says of Gustav. "We had a lot of wind, but not a lot of water." The water, he estimates, rose about three feet above normal. How would he go about protecting his community? "We need levees - with floodgates that work. This is one bayou that's not protected. There are other bayous they [the federal government] were able to get to, and I'm sure...
Many folks in the rest of the country wonder why anyone would want to live in such a flood-prone place. Luke becomes visibly tense at the subject and responds, "It's a way of life," referring to living on the water. "The new buildings are being built on pilings. So you can take the flood. Wind, you just don't know. But everyone's going up," he says, referring to the homes along the bayous perched on stilts. "You just set yourself up for the lick, you know?" The "lick" is a euphemism for heavy flooding...