Monday, August 23, 2010 8:00 PM
Looking Back at Katrina
It’s one of the events for which most people can tell you where they were and what they were doing at the time, like 9/11, the loss of a space shuttle, or, for an earlier generation, the assassination of a president. The difference with Hurricane Katrina—which hit the Gulf Coast five years ago this week—is that it happened more slowly, and we all had time to imagine what might happen without being able, at that point, to do anything about it.
Something has been done now, however. A new flood protection system is nearing completion in New Orleans and should be done before the next hurricane season begins. It’s not without its critics, but the $15 billion network of floodwalls, levees, pumps, and flood gates—about 350 miles of linked structures in all—is designed to offer much greater protection and to correct deficiencies in materials and construction that have been blamed for the breaches and flooding in 2005.
Since long before Katrina, though, the coastal wetlands that could greatly dissipate a storm surge have been disappearing at a tremendous rate, by some estimates losing about 40 square miles each year. As the Mississippi River has been increasingly constrained by levees and navigation channels over the last 300 years, it has deposited less of the sediment that’s necessary to maintain the wetlands. The US Geological Survey has estimated that more than a million acres of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands have been lost over the last century.
Have you seen—or been involved with the planning or construction of—the new flood protection system in New Orleans? Or have you been in Gulf region to see firsthand the effects of the oil spill on the wetland vegetation? Leave a comment and let us know what you’ve seen.