National Geographic article about New Orleans
We are not just bumping the levees up a little bit higher and calling it a day. There is a whole lot more going on than that both in terms of flood protection and coastal restoration. A lot of it is still on the ground floor, but it is happening, which is vastly different than the past 40 years. Abolishing the levee board fiefdoms and replacing them with real engineers is just a small example. Elsewhere, the article implies that the entire city is below sea level, a myth that will not die - even in National Geographic!
Perhaps I'm just overly sensitive to the subject, but the entire article seems to suggest that's its a fool's errand and that the work going on is just window dressing.
Personally, I think south LA is better off than South Florida or other "low lying areas" - like NYC and Washington, DC. We at least have the capacity, the will and (maybe) the money to actually create new land around us. When Miami goes under, that's it.
If you go on to read the rest of the article (rather than taking the two grabber paragraphs out of context) it is clearly stated that there is high ground along the Mississippi River, and the Esplanade, Metairie, and Gentilly ridges.
Then this on page 4 of the online link
A 1995 flood following a rainstorm that dumped 14 inches (35 centimeters) on the neighborhood led to a multimillion-dollar drainage improvement project, completed in 2002, that drastically decreased flooding. Even during Katrina, with its 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rainfall, Broadmoor only flooded to the lawns and was pumped dry before the levees breached and the real flooding began. It was proof of what good engineering can do, says McBride, himself an engineer. "You can't design a perfectly flood-proof home," he says. "But if you get adequate levee protection and adequate drainage, I think people will return."
which indicates that if infrastructure is in good working order (as was implicitly promised by the people who taxed to build it), even 12 feet below sea level is doable.
This point was further proven not long ago here, in Washington, when the lower levels of the Justice Department and IRS buildings flooded due to an unexpected rain. "How you like us now?" i said to more than one complainer around here.
In fact, i see paragraphs like this
Old ways die hard in the bayou. Even after the dramatic failure of the shell sand in the levees, independent investigators found corps contractors using the same material to rebuild them. Only after the discovery was made public did the corps barge in yellowish clay from Mississippi to cap the levees. And parts of the new structures still have no buffer against erosion.
Kemp points to a new section of bare levee right next to the channel and shakes his head. "This is a recipe for disaster," he mutters. "The waves are going to break right on that thing. If a big storm comes in here this year, it's gone." Even sections of the levees newly capped with clay are already eroding from rainfall, Kemp says. In fact, during a recent inspection, engineering professor Bob Bea, who helped lead the UC Berkeley team that investigated the levee failures, found multiple chinks in the city's hurricane armor, from newly eroded levees along MRGO to Katrina-battered floodwalls that had not been repaired.
as shining a light on how the Corps is trying to shortchange New Orleans YET AGAIN. even after Katrina. which is so obscene i don't think there is a WORD for what it is.
The Corps built the levees and was tasked with maintaining them. Then this happened. Now they are using the same maintenance processes (at federal expense, which should make Joe and Jane National-Geographic-Reader care somewhat) which didn't exactly hold up the first time? isn't that called insanity or something?
Who is holding the Corps accountable?
This information needs to be out there, and articles like this need to be taken as a whole and not read selectively to pick out the parts which might offend us if they stood by themselves.