[Vision2020] Down by the Levy

[Phil Nisbet]

Wow, the G-d like quality of GW Bush was never so clear to me than after 
reading some of the response here on V2020.

http://www.pubs.asce.org/ceonline/ceonline04/0704feat.html

So ole GW managed to set the stage for the wetlands removal of the 
Mississippi Delta that began well over a hundred years ago, well prior to 
the birth of his own father.  I have to say that is some power.

The Delta has been shrinking due to stupid moves that built the structures 
that allowed people to build on subsiding ground with ever increasing 
budgets spent on the US Army Corps of Engineers program in the area that 
ended up in a frenzy of construction in FDR’s day and GW was behind it all.

So why exactly are we going to mess with a guy who is able to have changed 
the course of human development 100 years before he was born.  It’s too 
scary to contemplate.  If we mess with him he could rethink the events of 
100 years ago and our parents will never have met.

Reality is that we have needed to rethink the policies of the US Army Corps 
of Engineers for a long time.  I am amazed that certain people posting here 
who have been part of the environmental movement for a day or two, would sit 
here trying to lay blame on GW when they themselves have called for a halt 
to the kinds of things that resulted in failure at this time.

Subsidence was happening as a normal course of natural events in the area of 
New Orleans and without fresh sediments, it was only a matter of time before 
the cobbled together system would fail.  There are some things that man’s 
best engineering can not accomplish and the true test of Planning at a local 
level is to recognize what the limits of engineering are.  It has been long 
established even clear back when I was going to school in Geology at the 
University of Washington, that one day New Orleans would be flooded.  The 
response has always been to build a bigger levy and then add more houses and 
have more people move in.

Bush is being blamed for not funding a study that would have continued the 
pattern of idiocy of building bigger and bigger levies.  The study would not 
have built a single levy, it was just a study to suggest that they could 
keep doing the same old stupid things and making the problem bigger with 
each stupid thing they did.

The report that I posted above suggested that it was time to rethink our 
actions and engineer real solutions that allowed the Delta natural 
opportunities to rebuild.  But how politically can you tell people in New 
Orleans that they need to look at changing the pattern of building they have 
thought of as sacred?  How do you tell them that its time to get out and let 
the river back in?  Who was going to pay for moving those folks out of long 
term dangerously placed neighborhoods or tell the shippers it was time to 
consider changing which port they used?

And what was really required was going to take 14 billion dollars and 30 
years to accomplish, something it’s very hard to convince people is a 
worthwhile endeavor and which would have done nothing to save doomed New 
Orleans.  Because no matter what scenario you try to concocte, New Orleans 
was indeed doomed.

Let’s say that Bush had passed Kyoto, given the Corps of Engineers money for 
the ‘study’ of how to do something for a Cat 5 hurricane on levies and never 
sent a single Guardsman to Iraq.  Well as Gomer Pyle used to say, “Surprise, 
Surprise” that town would still be under water and the help and support they 
need would still not be able to get in and the gangs that are sniping would 
still be sniping.  The doom of that town was granted by the policies of the 
last hundred years from both parties and all local politicians and 
developers.

But instead of trying to point a finger at your favorite boogeyman, GW or 
for myself and other GOP folks pointing to FDR or others over the years who 
all contributed to the mistake, why not look at fixing it?

And Yes, Joan, that fix needs to include the Port of Lewiston and a whole 
lot of other ports.  The reason for the mistake of channeling so much of our 
commerce through New Orleans needs to be examined.  Tearing out every rail 
connection into Lewiston to keep that Port from any growth needs to be 
challenged.

And Yes, Tom, it was piss poor prior planning that’s accumulated for over a 
century.  If it had happened, as it very well could have, under Bill 
Clinton, would you be yammering with the same voice?

So stop trying to make political hay and read up on what we are going to 
need to do.  Those people who escaped from New Orleans need to become 
members of other communities.  We need to look at never allowing that city 
to be rebuilt in the same manner it was.  We need to see that we disperse 
our shipping and other vital economic interests so that one disaster can not 
put us into this sort of tail spin.  Because as surely as the sun rises, if 
we just go back in, build bigger levies and move the folks back there, this 
will just happen again.

Phil Nisbet

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