Clay, having recovered from taking the PE Exam, blogs about how all the major political offices in Louisiana are either held by a Republican or a Landrieu.
Huh!
And I see Mary is taking yet another trip to the Netherlands - for the third time. Why, you ask? Well, she needs to study how the Dutch build levees and protect their coast.
The answer is easy, Mary. They expropriate large strips of land and build levee systems in depth. That means that the levee is wide and made up of several areas that give redundancy to the protection it provides. You will never be able to build similar structures in Louisiana because people will resist having their land taken from them - and that water front access is oh so valuable.
Stay home, Mary. There is nothing new for you to learn in the Netherlands.
And I note that part of Clay's exam preparation involved a study of the practical application of mid 20th century marine steam propulsion systems.
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The Dutch take their levees VERY seriously. They had their own Katrina:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953
The Dutch treat it as a national priority, pure and simple.
You did bring up a good point: most of South Louisiana below I-10 is privately owned, while in the Netherlands, it's government owned (government gained ownership when the polder was drained).
When Davis Pond was built, there were YEARS of legal challenges from people who benefited and lost out.
http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/dpond/davispond.htm
Any large scale coastal restoration plan would have similar issues. In 5 years since the storm, no politician has even touched the subject. Even IF we had the money to build the whole system right, we couldn't do it because of the legal/political challenges.
In the end, there's nothing technically too challenging about protecting and rebuilding South Louisiana. Monetarily and (especially) politically on the other hand....
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