The $14 billion system of levees and floodwalls built around New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is already sinking less than a year after it was completed
• Army Corps of Engineers said this month that New Orleans levees are sinking
• Warned that 100-year flood protection could be compromised by 2023
• Proposed a study to see if the cost of improvements would be worth it
• Cost could run into the ‘hundreds of millions’ with most from federal taxpayers
• Levees were completed just 11 months ago at a cost of $14 billion
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Serious stuff, right?
And then, there’s this little excerpt from the breathlessly reported ‘news story’:
“The agency said it it was concerned by ‘weak soils, general subsidence, and the global incidence of sea level rise that will cause levees to require future lifts to sustain performance.”
We thought Obama took care of that ‘sea level rise’…levels are supposed to be receding, aren’t they? Anybody happen to know if there are any Obama holdovers at the Army Corps of Engineers? Any transferees from the IRS or FBI maybe?
‘Weak soils” – so they built anyway, or built and called it a 100 year type protection when they surely knew it was sinking ???
“General subsidence” — the gradual caving in or sinking of an area of land (also the state of top brass in the military bureaucracy).
Those sound like Corps of Engineers problems in engineering /design given the type and lay of the land but especially the fault of politicians who insisted “something be done” in an area that should be incentivized to “float their own boats”, so to speak, if they want to live there. Of course we understand the immutable “natural” law of politics — the law of concentrated gain and diffuse pain (to taxpayers)
But as regards this made up if not gratuitous inclusion (how many millimeters are we talking?!) the global incidence of sea level rise that will cause levees to require future lifts to sustain performance.” —
This recent article at Climate Depot puts the nuts in a nut shell:
World Leading Ocean Expert Calls Sea Level Rise Claims ‘Anti-Scientific Nonsense’
DLH with R Mall
