Rebuilding New Orleans With Science 564
EccentricAnomaly writes "The New York Times has a discussion of flood control methods in use in Holland, England, and Bangladesh that could be used in the rebuilding of New Orleans. Of particular interest is the $8 billion Delta Works built by the Netherlands in response to the North Sea flood of 1953, which almost destroyed the city of Rotterdam, but for a heroic captain who plugged a breach in a dike with his ship." From the article: "While scientists hail the power of technology to thwart destructive forces, they note that flood control is a job for nature at least as much as for engineers. Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development."
I've found this somewhere on the net, is it true? (Score:1, Informative)
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Condolences from Indonesia
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 10:07:30 -0400
From: Gene Gaines
To: Irwan Effendi
On Sunday, September 4, 2005, 9:49:03 AM, Irwan wrote:
> To the people of the United States
> We share your loss and grieve over the disaster in New Orleans.
> As it is still fresh in our memory what happened earlier in Aceh, we
> understand what kind of sadness and sorrow you are going through, therefore
> if there is anything we can do to help, please do not hesitate to let us
> know.
> We suggest that all of us must work to find preventive solutions so that in
> the future, tragedies such as these can be avoided.
> On behalf of Indonesian members
> Irwan Effendi - secretary
Irwan,
Thank you so much for your thoughts.
Much appreciated.
I have thought long and hard about my statement below, but these
things need to be said. Just as many people in the U.S. were
interested in what really happened in Aceh, Malaysia, Sri Lanka,
etc. with the tsunami, I believe many people in other countries
are interested in what is happening with our disaster along the
U.S. Gulf Coast. What is happening in New Orleans screams out to
exposed for all to see.
A personal note. I am now living near Washington DC, but was
born and spent much of my early life in New Orleans. My father
is buried in New Orleans. So many of my boyhood friends have old
family homes along the Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama coast
lines. All gone now.
Many people here will be working to assist the disaster victims.
But it must be stated that this hurricane caused two disasters.
Two disasters, very different, and must be dealt with in very
different ways. This is painful and embarrassing, but some facts
about the two disasters need to be said.
1) The hurricane missed New Orleans, passing just to the east,
with strength to inflict significant but not catastrophic
damage in the city. It was the breaks in the levees around
New Orleans that caused the great tragedy there. Could the
levee breaks and subsequent flooding have been prevented?
Yes. But soon after the present Bush administration took
power, ongoing work on the levees, already in progress, was
stopped by cutting the funding. Several new projects,
critical to maintaining the integrity of the levees, were
halted. Local officials, Louisiana elected officials to our
national Congress, all raised their voices in protest of
these cuts. In speech after speech and newspaper article
after article, strong voices were raised, warning that the
levee maintenance work was critical, and would open the city
to flooding by a hurricane if not done. The levee work was
not restarted. Why? Statements were made as to why the funds
were needed elsewhere: (a) the coming war in Iraq (big U.S.
firms can collect US$30,000 per month per employee, charge
US$1,000 a day to feed soldiers) and (b) tax cuts for the
most wealthy Americans.
I was born in Charity Hospital in New Orleans, an excellent
hospital staffed by two univer
Hypocracy of the NYT (Score:3, Informative)
It is interesting that the NYT is now dispensing advice on how to fix flood control problems in New Orleans when they have a long record [foxnews.com] of recommending against improvements. They will argue all sides of an issue if it suits their political agenda, but they have no credibility.
Re:Learn from nature (Score:4, Informative)
Firstly how is building artificial islands not "hanging the face of the earth", secondly, learning from us here in Europe isn't a bad thing, building flood gates and better costal defence like those in london and the Netherlands is worth it in the long run. From TFA:
"[the Netherlands] erected a futuristic system of coastal defenses that is admired around the world today as one of the best barriers against the sea's fury - one that could withstand the kind of storm that happens only once in 10,000 years."
it cost them $8bn, but it's lased over 50 years and counting, and they havn't suffered any New Orleans type situation. Pay the money now to invest in the future of your country. Generations will thank you for it
Re:after I submitted this... (Score:5, Informative)
And fox news has credibility? (Score:4, Informative)
Fox News has such a hard-on for the NYT it's unbelievable. When they put together any kind of reporting operation instead of 4 hours of loudmouthed opinion on prime time I'll think about taking them seriously.
Re:Got To Go There (Score:5, Informative)
Details can be found here [laagste.nl]. It's in Dutch, but there are lots of pictures.
Re:Got To Go There (Score:1, Informative)
That story about that little boy on the other hand is a load of BS. but hey, its good for tourism.
Re:Learn from nature (Score:2, Informative)
It would also be wise to learn from NASA in it's systems designs and applications of triple redundancy in every system involved. Failures occurred here in several areas and there was not sufficient redundancy built into the plan to handle anything.
There will now be toxic matter in the soil and drainage systems / structures, etcetera of the city, with potential of poisonous releases with every rain, unless massive areas of the landform are sealed with heavy barriers such as concrete to prevent water intrusion below. This may cause the need thereafter to raise many areas of the city above sea level with multiple partitioning of the city.The costs would be enormous.
Right now we are pumping tremendous amounts of poison out of the city and while much of the Gulf Coast depends on fishing , this may end soon, if we create a far worse disaster, by our unthoughtfull nonconsideration of nature now. Let us hope the Gulf of Mexico does not become a poisonous Dead Zone of Toxic fumes that will spread over Florida, Mississippi, Louisianna, Texas, and Alabama, whereas we used to get healthfull oxygen from the Gulf.
Re:Absolutely Stupid to Rebuild (Score:1, Informative)
1) Many cities are below sealevel. Large parts of Holland are, for example.
2) people often live in areas that have floods, quakes, tornadoes, volcanoes, huricanes, tsunamies. Many of these places are time bombs. But people live there for a reason. You'd be surprised at how boring real save places are.
3) if terrorist want to get you, they get you anyway.
4)i seriously doubt that.
Re:Learn from nature (Score:3, Informative)
Because the current is now less, the channels and gullies between the sandplates are too big. As a result the plases are losing sand to fill these big channels. on some places the maintainers have started to supply extra sand to valuable sandplates.
Once you start to do that, you are no longer maintaining a nature reserve but you have just become a garderener with a big & unusually wet garden.
But on the other hand, if you want to keep the current environment, you will have to accept the occasional flood. But with those levees around the rivers that was not happening much either.
but for a heroic captain who plugged a breach in a (Score:2, Informative)
Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped. (Score:1, Informative)
Silver lining? (Score:5, Informative)
Dredging of shipping channels, construction of canals for the diversion of water, and continued construction of port facilities brought new economic development to New Orleans. But officials at all levels of government have known for a decade that the levee system needed to be upgraded in order to withstand the worst that nature could wreak on the city. Enough money was never made available for reconstruction of the wetlands or barrier islands, or for improving the levee system.
Three times during the Bush administration funding has been slashed to 1/6th to 1/10th of needed levels to properly address the above issues. The loss of live may climb to ten thousand or more, with property damage in New Orleans proper that could reach $15 Billion USD. It would not be the first time that the neo-conservatives have been exposed to accusations of being "penny wise and pound foolish". The fiscal liability exposure by commercial insurance companies will likely result in several of these companies filing bankruptcy.
Whatever funds that the US Congress and the Bush administration spend on reconstruction in New Orleans will likely be dwarfed by commercial enterprises. The US Supreme Court has opened the way for local/state government to seize private property and turn it over to "more commercially viable" private enterprise. While the taxpayer burdeon may be mitigated by such actions, the notion of private ownership rights, due process, and equal treatment under the law are all due to be sorely tested as the cleanup and rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast proceed. The current regime in power has never made any bones about favoring big commercial interests over those of the individual. Times that try the boundaries of the US Constitution and the Bill or Rights versus the power of big corporate-owned government are coming...
Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans (Score:2, Informative)
Except they didn't [nativenewsonline.org].
Anyway, have you traded anything for little green pieces of paper lately? Or even wackier, for a piece of paper that promises green pieces of paper? Or an electronic promise of green pieces of paper?
Re:I've found this somewhere on the net, is it tru (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Learn from nature (Score:3, Informative)
A lot of pork
West Virginia's annual "pork" is about 6 billion dollars per year (assuming that 60% of federal expenditures on WV are "pork", since they pay $1 in taxes for every $1.6 they get in federal spending). The short time we've been in Iraq so far has accrued 192B$ in direct costs (and this doesn't count things like the economic recession from the uncertainty leading up to it, the effects of the oil shortage afterwards, the economic loss of the removal of so many reserves, etc). This also doesn't count the rapid DOD growth, which is not included; we now spend half of the world's total military spending.
welfare reform
All programs together, state and federal, are about 20B$ a year, a little over half of that (11B$) on children (between TANF, CCDF, and SSBG). Sorry, not even close.
I always am amused by people who blame "pork" and especially "welfare" for our government woes.
nowhere close to the cost of the war in Iraq
Oh, so is your plan to take the entire cost of the war in Iraq out of a single budget item? That'd require eliminating a large branch of the government. Meanwhile, back in the real world, you have to take some out of everything. War costs hard choices, especially when you *cut* taxes during a war (an almost unheard of act).
Re:Learn from nature OR GOOGLE at least (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, for Christ's sake. Take 0.34 seconds to check what it's like BEFORE adding the toxic waste.
Results 1 - 100 of about 24,900 for "Gulf of Mexico" +"dead zone". (0.34 seconds)
NOAA's National Ocean Service: The Gulf of Mexico's dead zone swells each summer to about 18000 square kilometers--roughly the size of New Jersey....
oceanservice.noaa.gov/products/pubs_hypox.html -
The Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico is a large region of water that has very low oxygen concentrations, and therefore can't support aquatic life.
www.smm.org/deadzone/
Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone," which last summer reached the size of the
www.fishingnj.org/artdedzn.htm
Gulf of Mexico "Dead Zone" Is Size of New Jersey
Each year a swath of the Gulf of Mexico becomes so devoid of shrimp, fish, and
other marine life that it is known as the dead zone.
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0525_050
beneath the waves of the Gulf of Mexico lurks the "dead zone," a vast area off the Louisiana-Texas coast where oxygen-depleted water collects every
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2000/12/1204_fis
Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia
The Gulf of Mexico "Dead Zone", or hypoxic zone, is an expanse of oxygen-depleted
waters that cannot sustain most marine life. This hypoxic zone is caused
www.ncat.org/nutrients/hypoxia/hypoxia.html - 7k
7000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico. Called the Gulf Dead Zone....
Re:Why spend all that $$? (Score:3, Informative)
As the article mentions, half of Holland is below sea level - obviously they don't have the option of relocating, but they prove that adequate flood defences can be built. The cost really isn't that big, a tiny fraction of what Bush is spending in Iraq would provide adequate flood defences for the area. Seems to me like a perfectly reasonable way to spend money, compared to some things I could mention.
Right on! After the 1953 flooding [wikipedia.org] of over 2000km2 of polders, planning of the Delta Works [deltawerken.com] was started. Dikes (or levees) along hundreds of kilometers of shore were raised by as much as 5 meters. Several flood barriers were built, some of which can move in order to permit sea traffic to pass during normal conditions. The American Society of Civil engineers [asce.org] considers them one of the seven modern wonders of the world [asce.org].
The delta works took over 40 years to complete and the costs were huge, but not more than the $100 billion one year of Iraqi war costs.
Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped. (Score:3, Informative)
The storm struck on the 29th. The very next papers said they survived with heavy damage, but the levees held. That evening, the levees overtopped, and by morning on the 30th the city was starting to transform into a hellscape. The news was full of scenes of devastation, people stranded in New Orleans, the first reports of violence. Everyone was wondering the whole day why Bush had been spending his time posing for pictures and giving speeches on unrelated topics while we had our own little hellhole brewing on every network.
On midday of the 31st Bush finally decided to cut his vacation short, but simply flew over the area. Cheney was still on vacation. Card was on vacation. Condi was shoe shopping and watching Spamalot. The list actually goes on, but I don't have it on me.
The 1st? Bush held a press conference, but nothing else. It wasn't until the 2nd that he actually went on-scene. Meanwhile, Cheney and the other vacationers were still on vacation.
It's a horrible response - it makes them look insensive self-focused, especially combined with the fact that the whole time FEMA, the military, and the national guard were botching the relief effort and pretending that everything was going peachy. Every time I heard them speak about how wonderful things were, and then saw people crying and literally dying, the immediate question comes up: why on *earth* do these people still have their jobs? How can there be such a ridiculous disconnect? And why on earth do we have people with no emergency management qualifications heading FEMA at all?
Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped. (Score:3, Informative)
"
And if Bush had cut have ended his vacation 24 hours sooner would it had made a difference? If he had visited it would have take resources away efforts to save people. You said it. "it makes them look insensive self-focused". It makes them look. Again are you trying to fix the problem or find what you can blame on Bush? Are you letting these people suffering serve your goals?
It was not even in Bush power to evacuate New Orleans. It was not in his power to call up the National Guard. It was not in his power to put Police in the shelters.
If he had done any of these things it would have been abusing his office and breaking the law.
The majority of the blame for the deaths are clearly on the heads of the Governor and Mayor. The Federal Government made mistakes and could do better. The Governor and Mayor are guilty of manslaughter. What I am seeing is people wanting to ignore the criminal negligence of the Governor and Mayor because they think it will take the heat off of the President and the feel that laying blame on the Republican party and winning the next election are more important than showing where the real problem was and fixing it. The feel that their greater goal is more important then the truth.
Re:Rebuild? There's a Bright Idea. (Score:2, Informative)
The port of New Orleans and environs is one of the top three ports of the united states. Massive tonnage of imports/exports flow through this port, including 15-20% of all petroleum products used by this country, the majority of exported agricultural goods; not to mention all the oil infrastructure currently existing in the Gulf of Mexico.
NO and the surrounding communities are where all the oil and dockyard works live.
Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped. (Score:3, Informative)
This website disagrees with you. [army.mil]
And I quote:
In addition, the President of the United States can activate the National Guard to participate in Federal missions.