Taking the Long View of Katrina
n the weeks since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita came ashore, people from every facet of our industry have been riveted by what’s taking place on the Gulf Coast. People around the world have been watching, of course, but ESC people have been following events with a different kind of understanding of what happened, and how it happened. Although we understand the long-term effects of wetlands loss, and though many engineers have spent careers working on the design and maintenance of levee systems, rarely do we get to witness so dramatically what can happen when everything goes wrong at once. Usually the consequences of erosion are slower to appear—gradual and, we hope, reversible with the right tools, practices, funding, and support to put it all together. In the last two months we’ve seen what occurs when forces that have been building up for generations—continued disappearance of wetland areas, for example—converge.
Although unprecedented damage occurred in Alabama and Mississippi and on many parts of the Louisiana coast, New Orleans has with good reason received the most attention. The city is a special case, given its location, history, economic and strategic importance, and complete dependence on its levee system, but many other communities rely to some extent on similar structures and are watching the still-ongoing efforts in New Orleans. Not only the failure itself but also the emergency measures attempted to repair the breaches with 3,000-pound sandbags, rock, and sheet piling, as well as the long-term rebuilding or reengineering, will provide valuable data for other cities that depend on these ever-more-fragile-seeming barriers between themselves and the floodwaters.
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Around the world, people who are aware of the effects of erosion and sedimentation often have particular reasons for controlling them, and particular things—ecosystems, neighborhoods—that they want to preserve. We want clean water, and we want to protect wildlife habitat—perhaps a reach of stream that accommodates the coho salmon—and we want a drainage system that accommodates the urban runoff so water doesn’t back up at the curbs when it rains. We think we understand the consequences if we fail, or if myriad forces over the years continually undermine our efforts. For the residents of New Orleans, the consequence of failure wasn’t the loss of one or a few things, however important; it was the loss of just about everything they held dear. It was the loss of medical research in the universities, of livelihoods, of oil refineries whose disruption will affect the rest of the country as well. It was the loss of homes and histories and more than a thousand lives.
The next issue of Erosion Control will take a look at the ongoing work on the levees, as well as the wetlands situation and how the loss of so much of that natural buffer affected the area. We’ve covered related topics in the past, and recent losses make some of these past articles newly relevant (see sidebar for example articles on coastal erosion, emergency erosion control measures, and the Gulf Coast region). The long-term consequences, though, will be discovered in the coming months and years as we see what effects the floodwaters and the substances they carried with them—chemicals from the refineries, for example—will have on the ground they covered, as well as on the Gulf and on Lake Ponchartrain.
Author's Bio: Janice Kaspersen is the editor of Erosion Control magazine.
November-December 2005
Taking the Long View of Katrina
n the weeks since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita came ashore, people from every facet of our industry have been riveted by what’s taking place on the Gulf Coast. People around the world have been watching, of course, but ESC people have been following events with a different kind of understanding of what happened, and how it happened. Although we understand the long-term effects of wetlands loss, and though many engineers have spent careers working on the design and maintenance of levee systems, rarely do we get to witness so dramatically what can happen when everything goes wrong at once. Usually the consequences of erosion are slower to appear—gradual and, we hope, reversible with the right tools, practices, funding, and support to put it all together. In the last two months we’ve seen what occurs when forces that have been building up for generations—continued disappearance of wetland areas, for example—converge. Although unprecedented damage occurred in Alabama and Mississippi and on many parts of the Louisiana coast, New Orleans has with good reason received the most attention. The city is a special case, given its location, history, economic and strategic importance, and complete dependence on its levee system, but many other communities rely to some extent on similar structures and are watching the still-ongoing efforts in New Orleans. Not only the failure itself but also the emergency measures attempted to repair the breaches with 3,000-pound sandbags, rock, and sheet piling, as well as the long-term rebuilding or reengineering, will provide valuable data for other cities that depend on these ever-more-fragile-seeming barriers between themselves and the floodwaters.
Around the world, people who are aware of the effects of erosion and sedimentation often have particular reasons for controlling them, and particular things—ecosystems, neighborhoods—that they want to preserve. We want clean water, and we want to protect wildlife habitat—perhaps a reach of stream that accommodates the coho salmon—and we want a drainage system that accommodates the urban runoff so water doesn’t back up at the curbs when it rains. We think we understand the consequences if we fail, or if myriad forces over the years continually undermine our efforts. For the residents of New Orleans, the consequence of failure wasn’t the loss of one or a few things, however important; it was the loss of just about everything they held dear. It was the loss of medical research in the universities, of livelihoods, of oil refineries whose disruption will affect the rest of the country as well. It was the loss of homes and histories and more than a thousand lives.
The next issue of Erosion Control will take a look at the ongoing work on the levees, as well as the wetlands situation and how the loss of so much of that natural buffer affected the area. We’ve covered related topics in the past, and recent losses make some of these past articles newly relevant (see sidebar for example articles on coastal erosion, emergency erosion control measures, and the Gulf Coast region). The long-term consequences, though, will be discovered in the coming months and years as we see what effects the floodwaters and the substances they carried with them—chemicals from the refineries, for example—will have on the ground they covered, as well as on the Gulf and on Lake Ponchartrain.