U.S. Senator discusses possible 'outer levee ring' built aro

[sunny]

wwltv.com


U.S. Senator discusses possible 'outer levee ring' built around N.O.

12:15 PM CST on Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Associated Press

A U.S. senator who sits on a levee oversight committee says it may be worth building an expensive outer ring of flood protection around New Orleans.

"That may be the route to go," U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-Rhode Island, who toured the New Orleans area on Monday and said he was he was stunned by the amount of destruction in the area.

"You have to see it," he said.

Chafee said an outer levee ring could cost $14 million per mile, which seems expensive, but perhaps less so when one considers what it protects.

"There is an enormous amount of revenue generated from the success of New Orleans." Chafee said. "It's a city that generates billions and billions in revenue. That's a factor."

Chafee sits on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees levee construction. He flew to New Orleans with Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-New Orleans, and David Vitter, R-Metairie. They toured a home in Lakeview and drove around the Lower 9th Ward, stopping at the levee breach along the Industrial Canal.

The visit was the latest by a ranking member of Congress to areas of the city that were hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina.

In a private meeting with the senators, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials discussed the possibility of building outer flood protection that would slow down storm surges from the Gulf of Mexico. Vitter said the proposal was similar to the series of high-tech gates and barriers built in recent decades by the Dutch to protect the Netherlands from North Sea flooding. Traditional levees would remain in place as a second layer of protection.

Some people have suggested imitating the Dutch, who spent 40 years and $14.7 billion building a network of barriers, gates and dams after a disastrous flood in 1953.

"You can't build levees high enough around (New Orleans). You have to go out," from the city, Vitter said.

The Louisiana senators are pushing for Congress to approve by the end of the year financing for the corps to study and design such a system, Vitter said.

A scheduled visit to New Orleans in late November by the Netherlands' ambassador to the United States will provide another opportunity to explore using Dutch flood control technology in Louisiana, Landrieu said.

The corps already has authorization to rebuild by June the region's existing levee system to withstand a storm surge from a Category 3 hurricane, Landrieu said. She said that work is expected to correct flaws in the levees that are believed to have contributed to several major breaks during Katrina that flooded 80% of the city.

Corps officials say a Category 3 system by the start of the next hurricane season actually represents an improvement, because subsidence had lowered many New Orleans levees to less than that standard before Katrina hit.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[quandary]

Why pay so much money and damage the surrounding enviornment to protect something that's only partially there now? Just asking here... would it be better to move most of the city and keep what still there or historic within the levies now instead of spending billions to build more levies that may never be used again or may be built too late?

[TSmith274]

Why pay so much money and damage the surrounding enviornment to protect something that's only partially there now? Just asking here... would it be better to move most of the city and keep what still there or historic within the levies now instead of spending billions to build more levies that may never be used again or may be built too late?

Because the levees that were in place for Katrina are completely inferior. They are an embarrasment to the U. S. Army Corp of Engineers, and America as a whole. Build them right, build them to Cat 5 strength, and we'll never talk about this ever again!

[MGC]

The current ring of levees around New Orleans simply must be raised another 25 feet so the city will be protected to a Cat-5 (Katrina) surge....MGC

[Forecaster Colby]

The city of New Orleans should not be rebuilt on that site. The city is way too vulnerable. It needs to be a port and nothing more, or we will have disasters like this every 50-100 years.

[vbhoutex]

I wish it was all so easy as we seem to think it is. This is not meant in a negative way. The problem here is very deep on many levels and I'm sure the LA members can address it much better than I can.

The levees that exist were apparently the product of greed and corruption on many levels and that may be the reason they were "inferior"(ongoiing criminal investigation). That brings up the question, "why send good money after bad?". IOW, why tempt fate again at least until we are sure that this same thing won't happen again.

I wish it was as simple as moving the vulnerable population areas to another site and keeping only the industrial and port areas and protecting them. We're talking billions, probably trillions to do that and at the same time basically abandoning the same amount of infrastructure. Where is all of this money going to come from?

Next, and not to hijack this thread, but do we wait till Houston or Tampa or Miami or Wilmington-the list goes on-are destroyed the same way and then fix it or do we fix the entire US coastline now to the tune of who knows how much money? NO SIMPLE SOLUTIONS AT ALL!!!!

And lastly, but not least, we are even dealing with peoples psyches here when you displace them from what they have known as home all of their lives.