A Cautionary Tale About Big Engineering Fixes
Sea-level rise and ground subsidence will render the flood barriers inadequate in just four years
By Thomas Frank, E&E News,
The $14 billion network of levees and floodwalls that was built to protect greater New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was a seemingly invincible bulwark against flooding.
But now, 11 months after the Army Corps of Engineers completed one of the largest public works projects in world history, the agency says the system will stop providing adequate protection in as little as four years because of rising sea levels and shrinking levees.
The growing vulnerability of the New Orleans area is forcing the Army Corps to begin assessing repair work, including raising hundreds of miles of levees and floodwalls that form a meandering earth and concrete fortress around the city and its adjacent suburbs.
Read the rest of this article in Scientific American.
New Orleans levees. Photo credit Mario Tama, Getty Images.
