News reporters:
Spring Floods on the Mississippi are the next problem for New Orleans, not next year’s hurricanes.
Stop reporting that the Mississippi levees won’t be ready by hurricane season 2006, like that’s the drop dead date. The levees have to be in place in late March, when the spring rains and melt waters from the central US drain into the Mississippi. Please try to think about what you report, and focus on what is really the next problem. The place will go under in the spring, so you don’t need to worry about next fall yet.
I’ll admit that we have just LOTS of problems here in New Orleans right now and will continue to have them for quite some time. Spring flooding on the Mississippi is rather low on our list right now. The reason? The river levees are in good shape. It’s the lake levees that flooded us.
Spring rains on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain are our next worry. The Corps of Engineers reports that they are raising lake-fed canal levee breaches and looking at closing off the canals from the lake if need be should spring rains raise the lake level too much.
Glad to know you’re thinking of us, but I doubt we “go under” in the spring.