1 May 2006The Seattle TimesNeal Peirce
The fast-approaching 2006 hurricane season raises a troubling question: Is there any way to save not just New Orleans but the wider Gulf Coast from the ravages of more killer storms?
The short-term prospects are not encouraging. We're into a cycle of frequent and severe hurricanes. Seven of history's most damaging storms came onshore in the past 10 years. Sea levels and temperatures are rising with global warming, intensifying hurricanes' destructive power. Peak hurricane wind speeds have risen sharply.
So beyond a series of clearly suspect levees in Louisiana, has anything been done to protect the fragile Gulf Coast region? A short answer: Precious little. Instead, notes law professor Oliver Houck in a searing analysis in the Tulane Environmental Law Journal, the region has reverted to business as usual after each storm, rebuilding on exposed sites, throwing up subdivisions, casinos, condominiums, posh private homes and strip malls, counting on federal flood insurance to cover the cost of each wave of rebuilding.
The financial costs are rising astronomically, Houck notes: Payouts under the federal insurance program topped $1 billion in 2001. For 2005, the year of Katrina and Rita, about 200,000 claims will reach $22 billion, maybe $30 billion. Yet the "cozy game of build-flood-and-get-paid," as Houck calls it, rolls on.
For most of the Gulf Coast from Alabama to Texas, there's a simple, intensely unpopular cure — leave the beaches, the dunes and the first vegetation line to nature's inevitable furies. Right now, post-Katrina development is rolling forward within feet of the ocean; the Mississippi Gulf Coast casinos, once anchored in water, have been pulled back all of 500 feet. Repeat devastation is inevitable.
The Louisiana coast, on the mouth of the Mississippi, is more complex. The Mississippi River delta, stretching 80 miles from New Orleans to the sea, historically acted as a great hurricane "speed bump," cutting back sharply on massive storm surges.
But the coastal marshes have been eroding seriously for decades — in recent years by a football field's worth every 35 minutes. Why? First, the decision to build up protective levees to keep the Mississippi "in its box" rather than letting its silt-packed floodwaters escape and replenish the delta. Second, commercial waterways — now 300 miles of them south of New Orleans — were dug to accommodate ports and shipping, including the now infamous Mississippi River Gulf Outlet that ushered Katrina and Rita into the city.
There's a third reason "no one will talk about," says Houck. It's the vast network of canals and pipelines that the oil and gas industry pushed across the delta, triggering severe marsh erosion and collapse.
Small wonder then that Katrina alone may have erased 100 square miles of the delta. With the weakened delta, writes the New Orleans Times-Picayune's Bob Marshall, "Katrina took only a few hours to humble the system of levees and floodwalls built by the Army Corps of Engineers over 40 years."
So what's to be done now? Houck and Marshall have a simple, highly controversial proposal: Let the river go. That means opening large sections of the levees so that river-borne sediment can start reconstructing 1,900 square miles of wetlands that historically provided some protection from the Gulf and its storms.
They argue that higher ground in New Orleans and major towns could be protected with ring levees, connected by land bridges and causeways that allow fresh water and silt to flow onto the marshlands.
People and structures in the most vulnerable areas could be offered relocation to protected areas, at fair compensation. Critical infrastructure for oil and gas, fisheries and essential navigation would be maintained.
With active marsh healing on one side, with "zero-based tolerance for new harms" on the other, Houck argues that Louisiana could build a renewable resource-based coastal community "for generations to come, long after the oil and gas industry has run its string."
It's a sustainability scenario in a state where politicians have rarely talked conservation. The local political mantra is "right to return" — wherever one lived. Congress' game is to favor land developers through the construction-minded Army Corps of Engineers. There's big money in big levees.
So chances of long-term success, Houck admits, "run from slim to none" — though before Katrina, "they ran from none to none."
Of course, if another monster hurricane strikes soon, there may be no choice.
Neal Peirce's column appears alternate Mondays on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is [email protected]
