Katrina Redux
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences maintains an exhibit called "Climate Change Hits Home", featuring a giant satellite map of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Push a button and this interactive device gives you a simulated view of the region succumbing to three feet of sea-level rise. That rise has the effect of enveloping most of the District of Columbia, including 28,000 acres of the entire Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Water pours into the suburbs of Baltimore and Washington; tidal rivers throughout the Bay system swell into much larger, wider versions of their former states.Moreover, a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology indicates that hurricane wind speeds have doubled in the last 30 years. While 100-year-frequency systems of Category 4 and 5 storms have doubled in the same period, becoming in the process more than four times likely to occur in that same time frame according to experts at the University of Maryland. In other words North America, as well as other continents will become very familiar with the "New Orleans" syndrome, a not very pretty picture for the future.
The one-year anniversary of Katrina gives us a picture of the city of New Orleans that is pretty hard to digest. Very little of that city has been restored to its former, storied presence. While billions of dollars worth of financial assistance from the federal level has been earmarked to help in reconstruction, a year after that monumental disaster no great overall plans for the total rehabilitation of the city have been developed, nor construction undertaken.
In the year that elapsed between the U.S. and the rest of the world with it, watching in disbelief as levies and floodwalls collapsed to allow an incredible inundation of surging seawaters, the reconstruction effort has been largely limited to the determined work of the U.S. Corps of Engineers to repair that same massive levee system - to pre-Katrina levels. Which means that in its current strength the levees might withstand a Category 3 Hurricane.
Think about that in the context of what environmental scientists have been modelling as the future for floodplains and low-lying areas which host great swaths of civic infrastructure. At any given time logic has it that if one builds on a floodplain, it isn't great planning to begin with, and level heads will advise against so doing. Responsible municipal authorities should never grant permission to build structures in these areas, but they do. While at one time in recent history this was taking an hopeful gamble that nothing untoward would result, recent studies show us otherwise for the future.
In any event, in the case of New Orleans, a colourful, elderly extravagance of a metropolis the damage was certainly done long before municipal authorities had any opportunity to judge otherwise. One wonders why, however, understanding the tenuous nature of the city's placement sufficient care and appropriate funds were not allocated to protect the vulnerable city from what would eventually become the inevitable. The construction of mechanical seawalls would certainly have been a prohibitively expensive proposition, but consider how expensive this disaster was in human lives, civic infrastructure, and national economic losses relating to temporary oil shortages and future reconstruction.
Post-Katrina the people of New Orleans still suffer unimaginably, particularly the hitherto-hidden poor Black elements of the city. The once-vibrant world-class city may never completely recover its colourful character that made it world famous. A sizeable percentage of the original inhabitants of the city will never return, for there is nothing for them to return to; their homes, what is left of them, sit mouldering and are beyond redemption.
While the city has made a tremendous effort to return to its former glory, what has returned in spades is the incidence of crimes of looting, and a return to an unrestricted trade in illegal drugs, resulting in a battle between gangsters and dealers in an effort to re-establish territories and networks. Violent crime is right up there as a civic concern, and people are hesitant to return to the city for that reason, as well.
The people of New Orleans felt abandoned, completely on their own, struggling to survive as best they could, seeing nothing at all of a federal government presence in their dire need of immediate support. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, their own state government, and the governing body of New Orleans itself, made decisions based on poor judgement, illustrating just how unprepared all these levels of government were, despite that such a vicious weather event hitting the city was always on the horizon.
People are still wearily awaiting the long-promised, temporary home sites. When reconstruction begins in earnest people may be permitted to build once again in more vulnerable areas on the floodplain with the proviso that any such homes or buildings be built on stilts in the hopes that this tactic will suffice should the levees give way minimally in the future. Unfortunately, there are too many if, ands, and buts, and too little in the way of surveys resulting in concrete recovery plans for the near future.
As for the more distant future, as long as we're given the information by scientists who should know that:
"Every resident within shouting distance of an ocean will become a de facto New Orleanian...imagine a giant floodgate spanning New York Harbour, there to hold back the tsunami-like surge tide of the next great storm. Imagine most of Miami and much of San Francisco well below sea level, completely at the mercy of "trust-us-they'll-hold" levees maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of engineers.
Imagine all of this because, thanks to global warming, it's our future. Mountain glaciers are vanishing worldwide, sending meltwater into oceans that are themselves warming and expanding in volume. the resulting sea-level rise - up to three feet by 2100 and much more if the Greenland ice sheet melts - will bring the big Easy "bowl" effect to Miami, New York, Seattle, and Canadian coastal cities large and small.
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, August 30, 2006
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