Sounds like 20 years is an extremely conservative estimate. :eek:
What? the world doesn’t revolve around me, no way. 
Squinks link was a good read and you’re right that it may never get done. It took 10 years to get past the environmental aspect of it. Maybe we should get a law past making cajuns an endangered species who need protection.
At first glance doesn’t it look like the environmental impact of controlling the river is bad? It interferes with the function of the delta which provides a place for the river to shift channels as needed and as a settling ground for sediment from the river which creates wetlands for wildlife and inland protection.
David, right. As the National Geographic article that I linked to explains, this is not the case of having environmental concerns just for the sake of the environment and the ecosystem, etc. The environmental issues are intimately connected to the human ones because the environment that is being destroyed provides a natural protection against the storm surge.
Yes. That’s why the levees are good and bad-- they hold back the water, but they are the reason the city is sinking (no new silt deposits). This is just a really, really bad place to build a large city. If we were starting from scratch, no one would do it.
That was a chilling article – thanks for pointing us towards it (though technically you didn’t link to it, as you copied the text twice and not the URL, so here it is: http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/.) It almost reads as if the creation of the levees in the first place is what caused this storm and the aftermath to be so overwhelming. Why do we think we can keep fucking around with nature and win?
Its the same point made by several of the ‘experts’ in the History Channel show I was watching when I originally did this OP…that the levees themselves, as well as the general abuse we’ve wrought in the area for the past century plus were major factors in what happened. No amount of money, according to a few of the guys, could or would have made any difference…not in the long run. And…now Bush is saying we will rebuild everything at great cost to the country. I just don’t know how wise that is, not without looking at some of the deeper issues involved here.
-XT
I’m beginning to agree, to a certain extent. I think rebuilding bigger levees and not paying attention to their role in this mess in the first place is extremely short-sighted and dangerous. But I would like to see the city rebuilt to some degree, perhaps on a bit smaller in scale, in a way that allows for the flow of the river, silt deposits, marshlands, etc., to follow their natural course. We made a huge mess of this, and obviously not an unpredictable one. We give lip service to hindsight, but when we get an opportunity to really take advantage of lessons learned, we ignore it at enormous expense. Feh.
Yes. Remember the floods in the midwest several years ago when the levees there overflowed? Similar type of problems. I don’t recall all the details, but the levees essentially allowed for the destruction of the natural floodplain, and when they failed, it was catastrophic.
Building bigger, stonger walls isn’t necessarily the answer. It might buy time, but you’ve got to take Mother Nature fully into account or she will be very, very angry.
I disagree. Most of the damage in NO was the result of canal levee failure. If they had adequate flood gates at the lake entrance this would not have happened. Not only would this have stopped the flooding it would be cheaper than replacing all the canal levees. Yes, the lake levees along the city are still a problem but at least the canal levees could be rendered safe with a relatively small investment.
That’s always been the case around the end of the river (the Delta area) but what does that have to do with the city levees? That’s quite a distance from New Orleans. Or is this related to the pontchetrain area to the North?
We have boxed ouselves in. The lower Mississippi is a meandering stream. I believe that much of southern Louisiana and possibly into Mississippi is actually Mississippi delta. We have built a large and valuable infrastructure including such cities as New Orleans and Baton Rouge on the banks of a river that naturally changes course in their vicinity every so often. To keep the river in its channel high walls are needed. This forces the river to drop its sediment further and further out into the Gulf of Mexico. This extends that tongue of land jutting into the Gulf that you see on the map. This increases the upstream pressure and forces the building of still higher walls. I don’t think we can continue this process indefinitely.
We’ll soon have something else to worry about-- inadequate floodgates on the US treasury as the torrent of spending to rebuild NOLA threatens to drown any chance we have of getting back to a balanced budget.
Gee whiz, it might even have an adverse impact on GW’s little pet project in Iraq.
Nope, once freedom goes on the march, it’s unstoppable. 
That might be a good thing-- put some pressure on the Iraqis to get their military up to snuff so we can get the hell out of there.
One thing to keep in mind though with all this Bush-bashing. The rebuilding is going to take place over many years, and the next President is probably going to have a bigger impact on how the money is spent than Bush will.
Right, and it might even lower the threshold on what is considered “up to snuff.”
Well, maybe, but GW has shown a phenomenal ability to get rid of money.
He sure does! He spends money like a drunken liberal with the keys to the national treasury!
-XT