Environment
Debating Flood Control Raises Urban Rebuilding Questions
(archrecord.construction.com - 09/09/2005)
By James
Russell
The scope of reconstruction may still
be unclear in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent
flooding, so the early rebuilding focus has turned to flood
control. The debate about what should have been done—and
what should now be done—has already begun. It’s
likely to parallel questions that will be raised once the
costs and implications of building and rebuilding on beaches
and flood plains becomes clearer.
“People forget,” said Fred
Caver, former director of civil works at the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers. “The urgent takes precedence. That’s
a fact that those of us in the infrastructure business have
been living with for a long time.” Tabor and his colleagues’
demands that Gulf states upgrade their storm protection schemes
went largely unheeded and coastal Mississippi and Louisiana
are now paying the price. “We’re pretty much consuming
infrastructure and capital assets, leaving the problems for
our children and grandchildren,” he added. Tabor and
several other experts were convened by conference call in
the first days after the disaster by Engineering News Record,
Record’s sister publication.
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Though Katrina
was a natural disaster, much of what made it disastrous were
acts of man. “I visited the affected shorelines after
Hurricane Camille, 35 years ago, and saw the same two or three
rows of houses destroyed.” said Oren Pilkey, of Duke
University, a frequent critic of development on flood- and
storm-prone coasts. He feels that much of the Mississippi
beachfront, including heavily damaged Bay St. Louis and Biloxi
might be better off returned to nature.
The lack of investment in the levee system
that was supposed to have protected New Orleans has now widely
been aired. Robert Flowers, once the head of the U.S. Army
Corps of engineers who now heads up federal services for engineering/architect
HNTB, advocated quick action on Coastal 2050, a plan for restoring
Louisiana’s coastal wetlands. They have severely eroded
because the levee system deprives them of silt from the natural
flooding of the Mississippi River. It’s an expensive
fix, costing billions, that won’t be quick. Flowers also
suggested looking at flood-control projects in Holland, and
the Thames River Barrier below London, both very elaborate
and so-far effective means for keeping sea water out of low-lying
areas.
Beefing up the levees in New Orleans
has also been stymied by politics and by cost, Flowers noted.
Massive super-levees invade neighborhoods, for example. And,
predictably, the question of the degree to which poverty-stricken
New Orleans should be rebuilt has already been raised. At
the time of the conference call, House Speaker Dennis Hastert,
had not yet commented that “it looks like a lot of that
place could be bulldozed.” It may have been a stunningly
insensitive remark, but Hastert is among the key people in
Congress who must be persuaded to spend federal dollars on
rebuilding and new river and shore protections.
A much-shrunken New Orleans is a real
future possibility. The debate about such issues, Flowers
noted presciently, “needs to occur and needs to occur
quickly.” Added Dominic Izzo, vice president with engineering
firm DMJM Harris, “I don’t think any solution for
New Orleans can be separated from a solution for the coast
and the river. It’s all integrated. A lot so stakeholders,
politicians and others need to be involved.” He’ll
get little argument on that point, but more debate, perhaps,
on his contention that the Army Corps of Engineers should
lead the planning effort. Both architects and planners will
argue that their expertise in communities is superior to that
of the Corps. Will such turf battles stall reconstruction?
Even if rebuilding money pours rapidly
in, there’s still no consensus on how it should be spent.
Says Pilkey, “I shudder about the Dutch idea because
that was an extreme engineering solution. We’ve seen
that more beach replenishment leads to more development and
that leads to the potential for much more intensive damage
in future storms. I want to make sure we’re not strictly
looking at an engineering approach.”
Protecting the coast from the sea can’t
await broader rebuilding, according to Greg Stone, a professor
of coastal geology at Louisiana State University (calling
in from Baton Rouge). “We’re told by meteorologists
that we’ve entered a multi-decade period where we’ll
see an increase in the number of Katrina-type storms. We’ve
seen it here in Opal in 1995, then Ivan less than 10 years
later; this year with Dennis and Katrina. This is a paradigm
shift.”
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