Louisiana Coastal Protection Study Falls Short
A new report from the National Research Council (NRC) finds numerous problems with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ followup recommendations for restoring wetlands and protecting southern Louisiana from another Katrina-like disaster.
Among the most worrisome findings in the paper: the Corps’ failure to “consider the potential for structural failure of levees and floodwalls.”
“As a consequence,” the NRC report states, “the true risk to homes and businesses and people behind structures has not been determined.”
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The NRC paper, titled “First Report from the NRC Committee on the Review of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Program,” analyzes a March 2008 draft technical report from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That report, “Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Technical Report,” (LACPR) was mandated by the feds, who asked the Corps to develop a complete Category 5 hurricane plan for southern Louisiana.
The NRC authors gave kudos to the Corps for “recognizing that new approaches are necessary to achieve the overarching goal of reducing hurricane risks to the population and infrastructure of coastal Louisiana.” They also credited the Corps for using some innovative methods to assess potential storm surge and make decisions.
However, the NRC paper faults the Corps for not providing “clear recommendations with regard to preferred choices of hurricane protection, risk reduction, or restoration alternatives.” It also identifies weaknesses in the Corps report’s three main sections on restoration, nonstructural and structural solutions.
For example, when it comes to wetlands restoration, the Corps said that “all plans rely on sustaining the existing landscape.” The problem, according to the NRC, is the Corps doesn’t offer any evidence that keeping the landscape as is is possible, considering the rates of land subsidence, sedimentation, environmental degradation and future rises in sea levels.
“If wetlands cannot be maintained, the LACPR draft technical report misleads the public into believing that the present coastline can be held in the face of relative sea level rise,” the NRC authors write. “All plans that would rely upon maintenance of the existing coastal configuration then are suspect. Also, if wetlands cannot be maintained, decision makers and citizens ultimately will have to make hard choices about where restoration can take place and where it cannot.”
The NRC found other problems with the Corps report as well. For example, the report gave no evidence that different agencies in the area were working together effectively to make sure vulnerable areas were protected rather than developed.
“This phenomenon took place in the decades prior to Hurricane Katrina,” the NRC report states. “It is important that a similar process is not repeated in the future.”
Considering that much of the blame for the post-Katrina destruction can be pinned directly on the Corps (read about the LSU Hurricane Center’s forensic investigation report into the levee failures here), it’s disturbing to hear that the Corps continues to miss the big picture. The NRC has spoken, but will anyone in charge actually listen?
P.S. Hurricane season starts June 1.
Image credit: Infrogmation at Wikimedia Commons under a GNU Free Documentation license
