perfidy

Found this fantastic graphic, courtesy of the NO Times-Picayune. It challenges a lot of "common wisdom" about the flooding, with a very clear depiction of how and why flooding occurred. I was curious about the effects of Mr. GO (the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet) on New Orleans during Katrina. Mr. GO is a 70-mile canal dug from the gulf straight through the wetlands to New Orleans' inner harbor, creating a kind of "express highway" for storm surge. It and the other artificial constructs (canals and levees) are the real reason that Katrina had the devastating effect on New Orleans that it did. Each mile of wetlands reduces storm surge by approximately 1 foot, according to what I've read. Wetlands could have reduced away five, ten, or fifteen feet of storm surge if they had been present. By eliminating hundreds of square miles of wetlands over the past 70 years (and even farther back on a more limited scale) the "protection" of New Orleans has resulted in its inevitable destruction. If you watch the graphic, pay close attention to the locations of the levee breaks. The river didn't flood its banks, and neither did the lakes. The breaches occurred at points along the artificial canals.

Each year that the river's sediment has been prevented from being spread out over the flood plain (a natural result of flooding) the land has declined. The sediment has actually ended up out in the gulf, wasted, because the "bird's foot" extension of the Mississippi into the Gulf extends out to the edge of the continental shelf. The bottom line is that the continued survival of the landmass depends on consistent flooding by the river so that that replacement land is created at (or above) the rate at which the soil is removed (into the Gulf).

Enough with the science already. Since I'm writing this post, everyone must be curious as how to how this means Republicans suck. To be fair, it's not just the GOP -- it's been a number of governments not paying attention to the problem. First, the fix.

The fix is an engineering program that uses the Mississippi river like a muddy garden hose, moving it around and "spraying" the delta with the sediment, replenishing over many years what has been taken away. There's universal agreement on both sides of the political aisle that this is the best and only long term solution. The problem is the cost, which prior to Katrina was considered to be absolutely prohibitive.

The price tag was $14 billion, in 2000. The current price tag from Katrina's damage is at $100 billion and climbing. Way back in 2000-2001 politicians of all stripes and bents came together in recognition of the long term problem and solution, and went with their proposals to the federal government. Bush struck nearly the entire program from the budget, replacing it with a single $250 million allocation for further "study". Decades of study had already been done, and the enormously difficult work of pulling together many parts of the political spectrum too. All of this was tossed away like garbage by a President that treats science like an unwanted stepchild.

Around the same time, Bush's "Iraq Recovery Fund" proposed over $100 million in spending to replenish wetlands in Iraq. Congress struck that provision from the package, but it gives you an understanding of the priorities at the time.

$14 billion is what this nation spends every six weeks in Iraq. Iraq is costing this country a sum of money (say a minimum of $500 billion) that could have cured cancer, or introduced a hydrogen infrastructure to the entire continent, or compensated the victims of Katrina many times over. That's what you've given away.

Sure, hindsight is 20-20. And yes, previous governments could have done something about this, and didn't. But Bush was the one who rejected the "real solution" when it was finally put in front of a national politician. And he is the one who presided over emergency mangement so incompetent that people were dying while standing on the interstate after waiting for five days in the sun for a bus to arrive.

Bush wants to talk about anything but New Orleans and Katrina in this election cycle. The same goes for the GOP as a whole. During Katrina, we found out exactly how the Bush administration would react if disaster struck a major American city: They would fuck it up beyond belief, and the well-connected would make money from it.

New Orleans and the disaster's management is the Bush Presidency in a microcosm. Incompetent from top to bottom, winking at corruption, ignorant of science, lacking the common sense necessary to compensate for lack of knowledge, and above all, utterly lacking in compassion for hardship, heartache, death and destruction their policies cause.

Could Bush have prevented Katrina? Of course not. But he could have begun the process, and if the post-hurricane disaster had had anything resembling leadership much suffering would have been prevented.

We have heard hundreds, if not thousands of evocations of Saddam Hussein's evil gassing of his own people, which killed perhaps 5,000 of them in an afternoon. Where does this adminstration note that its policies and activities have resulted in or contributed to the deaths of at least 30,000 Iraqi citizens?

No remorse. No explanations. No admissions of error. In general, no information is provided by this administration other than jingoistic rhetoric directed at staying the course.

You are not safer with these people in charge, or with anyone they've trained or groomed.