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August 25, 2007
Liveblogging 1%
Tim Ruppert of Tim's Nameless Blog (and also, incidentally, a civil engineer with the Corps, but speaking only as a private citizen) made a presentation that by itself was worth the $20 registration fee (which means now we get Dunbar's for free).
The focus was on risk management in relation to the "1% flood" (the so-called "100 year flood"). To sum up briefly (and I hope his slides make it onto the web), you have a flood risk, and then you have multiple means of reducing that risk down to a low (but non-zero) level called "residual risk". Build big-ass levees? You reduce risk. Coastal restoration? Reduce risk some more. Zoning and channeling development into less flood-prone areas? Reduce risk some more. Flood insurance? Reduces risk. Any time you want to go without one of those reduction strategies, the risk reduction needs to be picked up by some other component. Choose to not have flood insurance? Fine, but then that slice of risk becomes part of your residual risk.
He also described the flood control approaches taken to protect London from surge flooding up the Thames, and the Netherlands from storm surge from the North Sea.
We all know the Netherlands story, although the money quote he's heard from visiting Dutch engineers about our "proposed" 100 year flood protection for New Orleans is a laugh and a "we offer 1,250 year protection even for our farmland." The Dutch have decided that this is a national issue, and it's an issue with a solution, and they make sure the solution gets done.
London was even more illuminating. It's a city near the coast, not on the coast. It's on a river. It's sinking, due to tectonic shifts of the British Isles. Seven million people live there, including 1.2 million in the flood zone. But they have protection against a 1,000 storm surge coming up the Thames, and they have a plan for increasing their protection by 2030 to account for sea level change, tectonic shifts, and climate change.
In the United States, we constantly hear that it's impossible to protect New Orleans from another flood. It's not technologically feasible, it's too expensive, it's not worth it, we're stupid for living here, and even though the United States was founded as a seafaring nation, we should just give up and abandon one of the largest seaports in the world, because "that's just haaaaaard".
Meanwhile, while our pundits say it can't be done, and our dirt farmers in the heartland whine about paying for it (when they're not treading water due to their own flooding), the British and the Dutch just roll up their sleeves and get the job done.
We've only got George Bush. And right now we need Teddy Roosevelt:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
Posted by ray at August 25, 2007 11:38 AM | Permalink
Categories: [blogging | new orleans ]
Comments
Right on, Ray!
Teddy and some fire on the bayou.
Posted by: Marco at August 25, 2007 12:04 PM
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