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<DIV class=kicker><EM>NY Times</EM></DIV>
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<DIV class=kicker>Op-Ed Contributor</DIV><NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">
<H1>They Saw It Coming</H1></DIV>
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<DIV class=byline><FONT size=3>By MARK FISCHETTI</FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=byline><FONT size=3>[Mark Fischetti is a contributing editor to
Scientific American magazine.]<!--story end --></FONT></DIV></NYT_BYLINE>
<DIV class=timestamp><FONT size=3>Published: September 2, 2005</FONT></DIV>
<DIV id=articleBody><!--NYT_INLINE_IMAGE_POSITION1 --><NYT_TEXT>
<P><FONT size=3>Lenox, Mass.</FONT></P></DIV></FONT></DIV>
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<P>Watching the TV images of the storm approaching the Mississippi Delta on
Sunday, I was sick to my stomach. Not only because I knew the hell it could
unleash (I wrote an article for Scientific American in 2001 that described the
very situation that was unfolding) but because I knew that a large-scale
engineering plan called Coast 2050 - developed in 1998 by scientists, Army
engineers, metropolitan planners and Louisiana officials - might have helped
save the city, but had gone unrealized. </P>
<P>The debate over New Orleans's vulnerability to hurricanes has raged for a
century. By the late 1990's, scientists at Louisiana State University and the
University of New Orleans had perfected computer models showing exactly how a
sea surge would overwhelm the levee system, and had recommended a set of
solutions. The Army Corps of Engineers, which built the levees, had proposed
different projects. </P>
<P>Yet some scientists reflexively disregarded practical considerations pointed
out by the Army engineers; more often, the engineers scoffed at scientific
studies indicating that the basic facts of geology and hydrology meant that
significant design changes were needed. Meanwhile, local politicians lobbied
Congress for financing for myriad special interest groups, from oil companies to
oyster farmers. Congress did not hear a unified voice, making it easier to turn
a deaf ear.</P>
<P>Fed up with the splintered efforts, Len Bahr, then the head of the Louisiana
Governor's Office of Coastal Activities, somehow dragged all the parties to one
table in 1998 and got them to agree on a coordinated solution: Coast 2050.
Completing every recommended project over a decade or more would have cost an
estimated $14 billion, so Louisiana turned to the federal government. While this
may seem an astronomical sum, it isn't in terms of large public works; in 2000
Congress began a $7 billion engineering program to refresh the dying Florida
Everglades. But Congress had other priorities, Louisiana politicians had other
priorities, and the magic moment of consensus was lost. </P>
<P>Thus, in true American fashion, we ignored an inevitable problem until
disaster focused our attention. Fortunately, as we rebuild New Orleans, we can
protect it - by engineering solutions that work with nature, not against it.
</P>
<P>The conceit that we can control the natural world is what made New Orleans
vulnerable. For more than a century the Army Corps, with Congress's blessing,
leveed the Mississippi River to prevent its annual floods, so that farms and
industries could expand along its banks. Those same floods, however, had dumped
huge amounts of sediment and freshwater across the Mississippi Delta, rebuilding
each year what gulf tides and storms had worn away and holding back infusions of
saltwater that kill marsh vegetation. These vast delta wetlands created a lush,
hardy buffer that could absorb sea surges and weaken high winds. </P>
<P>The flooding at the river's mouth also sent great volumes of sediment west
and east into the Gulf of Mexico, to a string of barrier islands that cut down
surges and waves, compensating for regular ocean erosion. Stopping the
Mississippi's floods starved the wetlands and the islands; both are rapidly
disintegrating, leaving the city naked against the sea.</P>
<P>What can we do to restore these natural protections? Although the parties
that devised Coast 2050, and other independent scientists and engineers who have
floated rival plans, may disagree on details, they do concur on several major
initiatives that would shield New Orleans, reconstitute the delta and, as a side
benefit, improve ports and shipping lanes for the oil and natural gas industries
in the Gulf of Mexico.</P>
<P>Cut several channels in the levees on the Mississippi River's southern bank
(the side that doesn't abut the city) and secure them with powerful floodgates
that could be opened at certain times of the year to allow sediment and
freshwater to flow down into the delta, re-establishing it. </P>
<P>Build a new navigation channel from the Gulf into the Mississippi, about 40
miles south of New Orleans, so ships don't have to enter the river at its three
southernmost tips 30 miles further away. For decades the corps has dredged
shipping channels along those final miles to keep them navigable, creating
underwater chutes that propel river sediment out into the deep ocean. The
dredging could then be stopped, the river mouth would fill in naturally, and
sediment would again spill to the barrier islands, lengthening and widening
them. Some planners also propose a modern port at the new access point that
would replace those along the river that are too shallow to handle the huge new
ships now being built worldwide. </P>
<P>Erect huge seagates across the pair of narrow straits that connect the
eastern edge of Lake Pontchartrain, which lies north of the city, to the gulf.
Now, any hurricane that blows in from the south will push a wall of water
through these straits into the huge lake, which in turn will threaten to
overflow into the city. That is what has filled the bowl that is New Orleans
this week. But seagates at the straits can stop the wall of water from flowing
in. The Netherlands has built similar gates to hold back the turbulent North Sea
and they work splendidly. </P>
<P>Finally, and most obviously, raise, extend and strengthen the city's existing
but aging levees, canal walls and pumping systems that worked so poorly in
recent days. </P>
<P>It's hard to say how much of this work could have been completed by today had
Coast 2050 become a reality. Certainly, the delta wetlands and barrier islands
would not have rebounded substantially yet. But undoubtedly progress would have
been made that would have spared someone's life, someone's home, some jazz club
or gumbo joint, some city district, some part of the region's unique culture
that the entire country revels in. And we would have been well on our way to a
long-term solution. For there is one thing we know for sure: hurricanes will
howl through the Mississippi Delta again. </P></DIV></BODY></HTML>