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First, a few depressing facts: 40% of all coastal wetlands in the United States are located in this state. Since 1940, the Mississippi River Delta lost more than 1,000 square miles of land. Coastal Louisiana is poised to lose more than 10,000 acres per year for the foreseeable future. Because this ecosystem still supports one of the most productive fisheries in the US, the loss of this delta will be catastrophic. Louisiana faces accellerating wetland loss resulting in irreversible deterioration of the Mississippi River Delta. This will lead to the collapse of the entire ecosystem.
It gets worse. New Orleans is sinking eight times faster than the worldwide rate of less than 1/2 a foot, ie 4 feet per century. That sinking has been accellerating over the last two decades. The natural replenishment of the soils, deposits and waters from the Mississippi was and is being destroyed by the Army Corps of Engineers.. Currently, New Orleans is eight feet below sea level, and in some places, 11 feet.
Hundreds of miles away, dikes, levees and boat locks further damage the delta, destroying the natural cycles of flooding, replenishment, drying and, yet again, healthy flooding. In essence, we, in our infinite capacity to underestimate mother Nature, are killing it off.
As Katrina showed, our efforts to defy our earth's natural cycles are quite similar to pissing directly into a windstorm, in the hopes that a major rainstorm might happen by to wash off the stain. Even our feeble efforts to "fix" the dikes and canals actually made things worse. By dredging the canals, an effort to prevent leaks and periodic water seepage, we undermined the clay base and the support structure for the dikes. Interestingly Katrina lost a great deal of energy when it hit NO. It was nowhere near a Cat 5 hurricane, more like a Cat 3. Even those winds and tidal waters were enough to destroy the entire city. And next year will be worse. the severity and numbers of next season's hurricanes are predicted to be as bad or worse.
Clearly, rebuilding on a sinking flood plain, with the resulting accelleration of destruction of wetlands, fisheries, etc, is foolhardy at best, and just plain stupid and self-destructive.
So, what to do? How about a survey of other areas, for a start?
The Amazon, and more importantly, the Mekong Delta. The wetlands of the Mekong are constantly renewed with rich alluvial deposits from the hudreds of thousands of cubic kilometers of water each year. This resulting silt supports one of the world's great fisheries. More than 90,000,000 are fed solely by this river, its periodic floods and its constant renewal. Had the inhabitants of the 7th longes river attacked with with dikes, levees and asphalt, that area would be as dead as the NO Mississippi delta is becoming.
The key, then, is not to try to control, alter, dam, block or fight the wetlands or the river. The key is to allow it to act how it intends to act in the first place, and to take it into account when we rebuild residences, adapt and adopt practices that rely on the river and nature, rather than to ignore it or worse.
A successful NO will be a much different place. it will be smaller, and populated by more stilt buildings than shotgun residences. Perhaps, the French quarter can be saved in its present place, but only if vast stretches of the rest of the city are set loose. Remove most of the dykes, and allow the area to drink in the flood waters. Allow the damaging canals to fill in and clog up. Build residences knowing that serious flooding will take place and that serious storms will level entire areas.
This is not defeatism; this is planning to allow the area come back to productive, beautiful and bountiful life. Merely building higher walls only causes a greater collapse the next time Mother Nature flexes her muscles. Stilts, allowing the floods to take back what we foolishly tried to avoid, and creating an economy based on the natural resources will be best for all.
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