National Geographic article about New Orleans
I'm not reading selectively. I said: "Elsewhere, the article implies that the entire city is below sea level." From the article:
THE REALITY REMAINS DAUNTING for those trying to rebuild, or trying to decide whether to come back at all. The risk of catastrophic flooding is rising year by year, with no end in sight—in no small part because the city is sinking.
Even before it was covered by millions of tons of floodwater, New Orleans had sunk well below sea level, because of the draining and compacting of the backswamp and the pumping of groundwater.
I decided not to cut and paste every paragraph that had something demonstrably false or (IMO) horribly slanted in it, but, as I said, my overall read on the article was that it made us look like short-sighted idiots tilting at windmills and costing everyone else a lot of money. ("YET MANY ARE DOING JUST THAT
, regardless of what the experts say, with
a typical New Orleans cocktail of denial, faith in the levees, and 100-proof love of home." What all these Yankees makin' such a ruckus about?)
As for the Corps, they were in front of the City Council yesterday getting asked pointed questions by Stacy Head and Shelley Midura over why they can't provide better protection at the intersection of IHNC/MRGO. Is that going to solve our problems? I don't know. Is it drastically different than the old way of doing things? Yes it is.
Who is holding the Corps accountable? We all are. The T-P has a front page article 5-7 days a week. Sometimes the Corps has a good answer, sometimes they dont (I seem to recall the T-P covering the clay in the levees thing last year. I do know that the Corps is struggling to find enough quality "fill" for all the projects they have going on).
Anyway, I hope more people take what you took from the article and not what I did.