Who Should Pay?
The corps of engineers is hiring more scientists for projects such as Davis Pond, a signal that the fragmented parties are beginning to work better together. Bahr would like to integrate science and engineering further by requiring independent scientific review of proposed Corps projects before the state signed on--which Louisiana would need to do because Congress would require the state to share the cost of such work.�
If Congress and President George W. Bush hear a unified call for action, authorizing it would seem prudent. Restoring coastal Louisiana would protect the country's seafood and shipping industries and its oil and natural-gas supply. It would also save America's largest wetlands, a bold environmental stroke. And without action, the million people outside New Orleans would have to relocate. The other million inside the bowl would live at the bottom of a sinking crater, surrounded by ever higher walls, trapped in a terminally ill city dependent on nonstop pumping to keep it alive.
Funding the needed science and engineering would also unearth better ways to save the country's vanishing wetlands and the world's collapsing deltas. It would improve humankind's understanding of nature's long-term processes--and the stakes of interfering, even with good intentions. And it could help governments learn how to minimize damage from rising seas, as well as from violent weather, at a time when the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts more storms of greater intensity as a result of climate change.
Walter Maestri doesn't welcome that prospect. When Allison, the first tropical storm of the 2001 hurricane season, dumped five inches of rain a day on New Orleans for a week in June, it nearly maxed out the pumping system. Maestri spent his nights in a flood-proof command bunker built underground to evade storm winds; from there he dispatched police, EMTs, firefighters and National Guardsmen. It was only rain, yet it stressed the response teams. "Any significant water that comes into this city is a dangerous threat," he says. "Even though I have to plan for it, I don't even want to think about the loss of life a huge hurricane would cause."�
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Add CommentMy nme is Karna Sakya from Nepal. Presently I am in Boston, Ma. for a Vacation. I have written a story with my daughter Trisha who is studying at Smith. I am a naturalist by academic qualifification. I am also a writer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRecently I have drafted a screenplay story for a futuristic movie to be based on global waring, glacial lakes bursting, snow melting from Himalaya and Alaska and showing the case study of drowning New York. The story begin with climber in Everst base camp and Alaska simultaneously, highlighting surging water in NYC up to 50 feet, and developing NYWC as mega Venetian water town. The story ends with happy ending turning New Youk Water City NYWC as a world tourist center again. The message of the story is to project that the vision and creavity of mankind is so powerful that they can manage to survive in any adveresed situation.
If anybody is interested in my story, please contact me . My email is www.mail@nepalnature.com THANKS.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thislevees prevent small storms from producing many deaths..
large levees insure large number of deaths..
predictions are unnecessary