UPDATE: Here is a fascinating and timely article published in National Geographic a year ago that outlines the problems caused by Louisiana's sinking coastline, explores the environmental impact of dredging and levee-building activities, and gives a stunning fictionalized account of what type of damage a direct hurricane strike on the New Orleans area coastline would cause.
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Here's a damning article from the Los Angeles Times, which investigates numerous lawsuits filed by and environmental wacko outfit called Save Our Wetlands. The Times asks:
In the wake of Hurricane Betsy 40 years ago, Congress approved a massive hurricane barrier to protect New Orleans from storm surges that could inundate the city.
But the project, signed into law by President Johnson, was derailed in 1977 by an environmental lawsuit. Now the question is: Could that barrier have protected New Orleans from the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina?
According to blogger Stephen Bainbridge, SOWL's website proudly proclaims:
While politicians talk, SOWL sues! SOWL has been involved in countless lawsuits involving Lake Ponchartrain on every subject....from the New Orleans Levee Board Airport Expansion Plan, Bucktown Marina Expansion Plan, New Orleans Mosquito Control Drainage schemes in wetlands of New Orleans East, Eden Isle Subdivision on the north shores of Lake Ponchartrain, Orlanda Subdivision, Corps of Engineers Hurricane Barrier Project, shell dredging in Lake Ponchartrain, Waterford Nuclear Plant...to the Marathon Oil Company canals in the wetlands of St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes. ... SOWL has always fought bitterly against the United States Army Corps of Engineers. (emphasis added)
Save our wetlands -- kill our citizens.
Engineers routinely employ a tool known as risk analysis. All actions have consequences, and before any major engineering project begins, someone spends a considerable amount of time studying consequences and deciding if a project's benefits will outweigh its undesirable qualities. Every project will have undesirable qualities. Sometimes these qualities outweigh the good and the project is scrapped. More often, engineers are forced to redesign their project in order to minimize negative impacts. And no risk analysis will be perfect, because it is conducted by humans, who make mistakes and who have biases and agendas.
But purely agenda-driven wackos (and I call them "wackos" because they are ideologues who don't give a rip about reality or science) can't see beyond the tips of their own noses. They are blinded by their faith in Gaia (or whatever other Deity they worship - Marxism, Creationism, jihadism) and just like the people who partied while Noah built his ark, they willfully ignore any evidence that their beliefs might -- just might -- be very wrong, and therefore create enormously dangerous circumstances.
In the overall scheme of things, mankind surely has dominion over the Earth. When man builds a city or a dam or a bridge, he alters the natural environment. But if wackos decide that "preserving the environment" takes precedence over basic safety measures, and governments agree with them, or just get tired of fighting them, then they should understand that people will die as a result. And they have no one to blame but themselves. (h/t Michelle Malkin)
Related: If you want to see the prime example of environmental rule-making costing human lives, visit JunkScience.com's infamous Malaria Clock page.
Remember folks, it's not about heartless, evil capitalists killing warm, fuzzy, cute little indigenous creatures in order to line their pockets with money. It's about environmentalists deciding -- for us -- that preserving the natural habitat of a warm, fuzzy, cute little indigenous creature is far more important than using technology at our disposal to save human lives. We should at least be given the chance to decide those things for ourselves.
In 1977 Save Our Wetlands Inc.(SOWL) enjoined a planned Corps Hurricane Barrier project(floodgates), where the Gulf of Mexico enters Lake Pontchartrain at the Chef Menteur-Rigolets.
Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, Joe Towers, a retired Corps counsel stated that if these barriers had been constructed "New Orleans would have been saved." This statement was picked up by the right wing hate anti environmentalist spin docs into a fabricated "Green Genocide" yawn and spun around the internet.
However, it so happens that Joe Towers was the Corps counsel that SOWL complained to the FBI about when the Corps was caught criminally diking-damning 5,200 acres of navigable wetlands for the Eden Isle Subdivision, located smack dab in the middle of a hurricane tidal surge, on the North Shores of Lake Pontchartrain, Slidell,La. And it also happens that this same Eden Isle Subdivision has now been obliterated by Hurricane Katrina. So you can't help but wonder how reliable a source Joe Towers can be??
Unfortunately for the Rush Limbaugh-Fox-National Review-Karl Rowe-Clear Channel-pro Bush hate anti environmentalists-Green Genocide misinformation disinformation www.frontpagemagazine.com right wing radical groupies, Joe Towers is not the best of a reliable source. Why?
On Sept.28,2005 the GAO issued a report that stated "if the barriers had been constructed. the flooding in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina would have been worse" http://www.saveourwetlands.org/
http://www.saveourwetlands.org/
Posted by: louisiana | November 11, 2005 at 12:43 AM
In 1977 Save Our Wetlands Inc.(SOWL) enjoined a planned Corps Hurricane Barrier project(floodgates), where the Gulf of Mexico enters Lake Pontchartrain at the Chef Menteur-Rigolets.
Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, Joe Towers, a retired Corps counsel stated that if these barriers had been constructed "New Orleans would have been saved." This statement was picked up by the right wing hate anti environmentalist spin docs into a fabricated "Green Genocide" yawn and spun around the internet.
However, it so happens that Joe Towers was the Corps counsel that SOWL complained to the FBI about when the Corps was caught criminally diking-damning 5,200 acres of navigable wetlands for the Eden Isle Subdivision, located smack dab in the middle of a hurricane tidal surge, on the North Shores of Lake Pontchartrain, Slidell,La. And it also happens that this same Eden Isle Subdivision has now been obliterated by Hurricane Katrina. So you can't help but wonder how reliable a source Joe Towers can be??
Unfortunately for the Rush Limbaugh-Fox-National Review-Karl Rowe-Clear Channel-pro Bush hate anti environmentalists-Green Genocide misinformation disinformation www.frontpagemagazine.com right wing radical groupies, Joe Towers is not the best of a reliable source. Why?
On Sept.28,2005 the GAO issued a report that stated "if the barriers had been constructed. the flooding in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina would have been worse" http://www.saveourwetlands.org/
http://www.saveourwetlands.org/
Posted by: louisiana | November 11, 2005 at 12:48 AM