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Billions of dollars and more than 6 months after Hurricane Katrina re-arranged the lives and Gulf coastline in and around New Orleans, questions of how much levee infrastructure should be maintained or rehabiliatated, and harsh decisions regarding the new footprint of the Crescent City have been met with dimay and anger by local residents and business owners.
Facing strongly worded warning from national weather forecasting services of another above average hurricane season, Federal and State officials are grappling with an ever-shortening timetable for patching weak levees before the next storm surge hits the area.
Read the article below. Knowing that there is a well above average probability of storms causing additional flood damage to the city - what are your feelings in this delicated debate?
Unhappiness lies in the decisions which must be made soon ....selecting relevee systems that are to be salvaged, and those to be abandoned as a natural flood relief catchment (a natural role that the bayou and swamps once served, before being drained and land reclaimed and settled in the early to mid-Twentieth Century)?
Levee decision angers residents.
Reuters News Service, J. Jones. Saturday, April 15th, 2006
BURAS, Louisiana (Reuters) - Seven months after Hurricane Katrina, Richard and Brenda Simmons still agonize over whether to rebuild their smashed two-story home in lower Plaquemines Parish on the southeastern tip of Louisiana.
Their decision got harder this week after the U.S. government said it may not spend the hundreds of millions of dollars it would take to raise all the levees on the thin strip of land jutting into the Gulf of Mexico.
Like many here, the announcement hit Brenda, 48, hard. She said she is angry that lower Plaquemines, a seafood and energy hub with an eroding coastline, may get left out while much of southern Louisiana wins beefed-up flood barriers.
"There are people who have lived their lives down here, for heaven's sakes. They want to come home, they have no place else to go. They put their heart and soul in this area," she said.
Residents and business owners now wonder if they will be able to get insurance if they try to rebuild the ravaged area.
Virtually every structure in Buras, a town with a pre-Katrina population of 3,300 about 60 miles south of New Orleans, was damaged by Katrina on August 29. Less than a month later, Hurricane Rita's storm surge swamped it again. The Simmonses' street is strewn with wrecked homes and debris.
This week, Donald Powell, U.S.
President George W. Bush's Gulf Coast rebuilding chief, said the administration will ask Congress for $2.5 billion to strengthen the levee system in New Orleans and the vulnerable surrounding areas by 2010.
The plan is to protect 98 percent of the population from a 1-in-100-year flood by adding stronger walls and making the levees taller, in some cases 7 feet.
But the plans don't include the south Plaquemines peninsula through which the Mississippi River flows into the Gulf.
STUDYING ALTERNATIVES
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated it would cost another $1.6 billion to protect just 2 percent of the at-risk population, or about 14,000 people in small towns like Buras, Triumph and Venice.
The Corps' Lt. Gen. Carl Strock said engineers are trying to figure out how to protect the narrow strip of land.
"Right now we're looking at massive earthen levees throughout the system. There might be a more cost-effective way to provide point protection in critical areas," he said.
But Lonnie Greco, operations manager for Plaquemines Parish, said using population to decide levels of protection is unfair.
"It was very disappointing," Greco said. "What the rest of the country doesn't realize is it is the only parish we have in the state of Louisiana that puts out the oil and gas revenues and has the seafood industry. The state's going to lose and the rest of the country's going to lose."
The parish accounts for 40 percent of the state's energy revenue.
Outside the wreckage of his house, Richard Simmons, a 50-year-old sheriff's deputy, pointed out Americans suffered a big spike in gasoline prices when his region's ability to supply oil was hobbled by the storms and said that could happen more frequently without the necessary protection here.
Venice, the parish's southernmost town, has reopened a handful of restaurants and stores to serve the oil, gas, shipping, commercial-fishing and sport-fishing crowds. But the devastation is still staggering, with trailers reduced to crumpled metal and boats left capsized on land.
Here, Carey McCarta, 60, is working to get the Deuces Wild bar reopened for business. It is gutted and its walls bear a brown line showing it sat in more than 6 feet of water.
He said his parish should get better levees afforded the rest of Louisiana, although he predicted residents will return regardless, as they did after Hurricane Camille in 1969.
"I've been here 40 years, I've paid my federal taxes and I've paid my share of them," said the veteran boat captain. "We've made it our home and I think we ought to be protected."
Facing strongly worded warning from national weather forecasting services of another above average hurricane season, Federal and State officials are grappling with an ever-shortening timetable for patching weak levees before the next storm surge hits the area.
Read the article below. Knowing that there is a well above average probability of storms causing additional flood damage to the city - what are your feelings in this delicated debate?
Unhappiness lies in the decisions which must be made soon ....selecting relevee systems that are to be salvaged, and those to be abandoned as a natural flood relief catchment (a natural role that the bayou and swamps once served, before being drained and land reclaimed and settled in the early to mid-Twentieth Century)?
Levee decision angers residents.
Reuters News Service, J. Jones. Saturday, April 15th, 2006
BURAS, Louisiana (Reuters) - Seven months after Hurricane Katrina, Richard and Brenda Simmons still agonize over whether to rebuild their smashed two-story home in lower Plaquemines Parish on the southeastern tip of Louisiana.
Their decision got harder this week after the U.S. government said it may not spend the hundreds of millions of dollars it would take to raise all the levees on the thin strip of land jutting into the Gulf of Mexico.
Like many here, the announcement hit Brenda, 48, hard. She said she is angry that lower Plaquemines, a seafood and energy hub with an eroding coastline, may get left out while much of southern Louisiana wins beefed-up flood barriers.
"There are people who have lived their lives down here, for heaven's sakes. They want to come home, they have no place else to go. They put their heart and soul in this area," she said.
Residents and business owners now wonder if they will be able to get insurance if they try to rebuild the ravaged area.
Virtually every structure in Buras, a town with a pre-Katrina population of 3,300 about 60 miles south of New Orleans, was damaged by Katrina on August 29. Less than a month later, Hurricane Rita's storm surge swamped it again. The Simmonses' street is strewn with wrecked homes and debris.
This week, Donald Powell, U.S.
President George W. Bush's Gulf Coast rebuilding chief, said the administration will ask Congress for $2.5 billion to strengthen the levee system in New Orleans and the vulnerable surrounding areas by 2010.
The plan is to protect 98 percent of the population from a 1-in-100-year flood by adding stronger walls and making the levees taller, in some cases 7 feet.
But the plans don't include the south Plaquemines peninsula through which the Mississippi River flows into the Gulf.
STUDYING ALTERNATIVES
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated it would cost another $1.6 billion to protect just 2 percent of the at-risk population, or about 14,000 people in small towns like Buras, Triumph and Venice.
The Corps' Lt. Gen. Carl Strock said engineers are trying to figure out how to protect the narrow strip of land.
"Right now we're looking at massive earthen levees throughout the system. There might be a more cost-effective way to provide point protection in critical areas," he said.
But Lonnie Greco, operations manager for Plaquemines Parish, said using population to decide levels of protection is unfair.
"It was very disappointing," Greco said. "What the rest of the country doesn't realize is it is the only parish we have in the state of Louisiana that puts out the oil and gas revenues and has the seafood industry. The state's going to lose and the rest of the country's going to lose."
The parish accounts for 40 percent of the state's energy revenue.
Outside the wreckage of his house, Richard Simmons, a 50-year-old sheriff's deputy, pointed out Americans suffered a big spike in gasoline prices when his region's ability to supply oil was hobbled by the storms and said that could happen more frequently without the necessary protection here.
Venice, the parish's southernmost town, has reopened a handful of restaurants and stores to serve the oil, gas, shipping, commercial-fishing and sport-fishing crowds. But the devastation is still staggering, with trailers reduced to crumpled metal and boats left capsized on land.
Here, Carey McCarta, 60, is working to get the Deuces Wild bar reopened for business. It is gutted and its walls bear a brown line showing it sat in more than 6 feet of water.
He said his parish should get better levees afforded the rest of Louisiana, although he predicted residents will return regardless, as they did after Hurricane Camille in 1969.
"I've been here 40 years, I've paid my federal taxes and I've paid my share of them," said the veteran boat captain. "We've made it our home and I think we ought to be protected."
