The catastrophe in Mississippi and
Louisiana was predicted and feared for some time. FEMA officials, besides
environmental scientists and civil engineers, dreaded what they’ve compared to
a 9/11 or major California earthquake
happening.
Already some on the
RRR (radical religious
right) are claiming that Hurricane Katrina, the eye of which depicted on
weather channels they say resembled a first trimester fetus, was God’s
punishment for the “baby murder clinics” in New Orleans and its sinful
neighbors. No doubt some will also blame the casinos and the Mardi Gras
culture.
Below are key story extracts from an
October 2004 National Geographic article about the disaster-in-waiting in New
Orleans. It’s a prescient depiction of an engineer’s nightmare, and the price
we will pay, not for gambling and abortion clinics, but for ignoring
environmental precautionary measures while catering to the avarice of money
greed and energy foolishness. In
the human, economic and ecological disaster yet unfolding, let us hope that a
consensus forms to restore and rebuild a wiser, more sustainable
redevelopment. KwC
Gone with the
Water
The Louisiana bayou, hardest working marsh
in America, is in big trouble—with dire consequences for residents, the nearby
city of New Orleans, and seafood lovers
everywhere.
“The storm hit
Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge
into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that
holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans
lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured
in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over
the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the
Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon
Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight
meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.
Thousands drowned in the
murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste.
Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and
disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry,
and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a
million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural
disaster in the history of the United States.
When did this calamity
happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The
Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as
one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake
in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no
longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers
is too great.
…Just as the risks of a killer storm are
rising, the city's natural defenses are quietly melting
away. >From the
Mississippi border to the Texas state line, Louisiana is losing its protective
fringe of marshes and barrier islands faster than any place in the U.S. Since
the 1930s some 1,900 square miles (4,900 square kilometers) of coastal
wetlands—a swath nearly the size of Delaware or almost twice that of
Luxembourg—have vanished beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Despite nearly half a
billion dollars spent over the past decade to stem the tide, the state
continues to lose about 25 square miles (65 square kilometers) of land each
year, roughly one acre every 33 minutes.
A cocktail of natural and
human factors is putting the coast under. Delta soils naturally compact and
sink over time, eventually giving way to open water unless fresh layers of
sediment offset the subsidence. The Mississippi's spring floods once
maintained that balance, but the annual deluges were often disastrous. After a
devastating flood in 1927, levees were raised along the river and lined with
concrete, effectively funneling the marsh-building sediments to the deep
waters of the Gulf. Since the 1950s engineers have also cut more than 8,000
miles (13,000 kilometers) of canals through the marsh for petroleum
exploration and ship traffic. These new ditches sliced the wetlands into a
giant jigsaw puzzle, increasing erosion and allowing lethal doses of salt
water to infiltrate brackish and freshwater marshes.
While such loss hits every bayou-loving
Louisianan right in the heart, it also hits nearly every U.S. citizen right in
the wallet. Louisiana has the hardest working wetlands in America, a watery
world of bayous, marshes, and barrier islands that either produces or
transports more than a third of the nation's oil and a quarter of its natural
gas, and ranks
second only to Alaska in commercial fish landings. As wildlife habitat, it makes
Florida's Everglades look like a petting zoo by comparison.
Such high
stakes compelled a host of unlikely bedfellows—scientists, environmental
groups, business leaders, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—to forge a
radical plan to protect what's left. Drafted by the Corps a year ago, the Louisiana Coastal
Area (LCA) project was initially estimated to cost up to 14 billion dollars
over 30 years, almost twice as much as current efforts to save the Everglades.
But the Bush Administration balked at the price tag, supporting instead a plan
to spend up to two billion dollars over the next ten years to fund the most
promising projects. Either way, Congress must authorize the money before work
can begin.
…You can smell the petrodollars burning
at Port Fourchon, the offshore oil industry's sprawling home port on the
central Louisiana coast. Brawny helicopters shuttle 6,000 workers to the rigs
from here each week, while hundreds of supply boats deliver everything from
toilet paper to drinking water to drilling lube. A thousand trucks a day keep
the port humming around the clock, yet Louisiana 1, the two-lane highway that
connects it to the world, seems to flood every other high tide. During storms
the port becomes an island, which is why port officials like Davie Breaux are
clamoring for the state to build a 17-mile-long (27-kilometer-long) elevated
highway to the port. It's also why Breaux thinks spending 14 billion dollars
to save the coast would be a bargain.
"We'll go to war and spend billions of dollars to
protect oil and gas interests overseas," Breaux says as he drives
his truck past platform anchors the size of two-story houses. "But here at
home?" He shrugs. "Where else you gonna drill? Not California. Not Florida.
Not in ANWR. In Louisiana. I'm third generation in the oil field. We're not
afraid of the industry. We just want the infrastructure to handle it."
The oil
industry has been good to Louisiana, providing low taxes and high-paying jobs.
But such largesse hasn't come without a cost, largely exacted from coastal
wetlands. The most startling impact has only recently come to
light—the effect of oil and gas withdrawal on subsidence
rates. For decades
geologists believed that the petroleum deposits were too deep and the geology
of the coast too complex for drilling to have any impact on the surface. But
two years ago former
petroleum geologist Bob Morton, now with the U.S. Geological Survey, noticed
that the highest rates of wetland loss occurred during or just after the
period of peak oil and gas production in the 1970s and early 1980s. After much
study, Morton concluded that the removal of millions of barrels of oil,
trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, and tens of millions of barrels of
saline formation water lying with the petroleum deposits caused a drop in
subsurface pressure—a theory known as regional depressurization.
That led nearby
underground faults to slip and the land above them to
slump.
"When you stick a straw in a soda and suck
on it, everything goes down," Morton explains. "That's very simplified, but
you get the idea." The phenomenon isn't new: It was first documented in Texas
in 1926 and has been reported in other oil-producing areas such as the North
Sea and Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. Morton won't speculate on what percentage
of wetland loss can be pinned on the oil industry. "What I can tell you is
that much of the loss between Bayou Lafourche and Bayou Terrebonne was caused
by induced subsidence from oil and gas withdrawal. The wetlands are still
there, they're just underwater." The area Morton refers to, part of the
Barataria-Terrebonne estuary, has one of the highest rates of wetland loss in
the state.
The oil industry and its consultants dispute Morton's theory,
but they've been unable to disprove it. The implication for restoration is
profound. If production continues to taper off in coastal wetlands, Morton
expects subsidence to return to its natural geologic rate, making restoration
feasible in places. Currently, however, the high price of natural gas has oil
companies swarming over the marshes looking for deep gas reservoirs. If such
fields are tapped, Morton expects regional depressurization to continue. The
upshot for the coast, he explains, is that the state will have to focus
whatever restoration dollars it can muster on areas that can be saved, not
waste them on places that are going to sink no matter
what.
"When you look at the broadest perspective,
short-term advantages can be gained by exploiting the environment. But in the
long term you're going to pay for it. Just like you can spend three days
drinking in New Orleans and it'll be fun. But sooner or later you're going to
pay."
See
related links, resources and bibliography here http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/
