The hayride has not yet left the barn. Since Katrina, the Corps has focused on repairing and improving its New Orleans defenses: rebuilding or strengthening 220 miles of the city's 350 miles of levees (about 350 km of New Orleans' 560-km levee system), installing gigantic pumps and gates along the lake and releasing block-by-block maps to publicize lingering flood risks. Some engineers believe the new levees are still too short and weak—"They're a frigging disgrace," U.C. Berkeley's Bea says—and the new pumps repeatedly malfunctioned during testing. But the Corps is about to unveil its plan for 100-year protection, with a rumored price tag of $15 billion, and the agency says that by 2011 the city will be safe from "severe storms," though not from storms as severe as Katrina. The Corps has even proposed to close the Gulf Outlet, a stunning turnaround after 40 years. "We're being much, much more conservative," says Thomas Podany, a Corps manager in New Orleans.
The real controversies involve a separate study of Category 5 protection and restoration for the entire Louisiana coast. The initial plans floated by the Corps and its state partners proposed a Maginot Line of towering new levees that evoke the "levees only" policy that failed on the Mississippi River, this time seeking to confine the Gulf. Water needs to go somewhere, and the agency's own modeling suggested that Donaldsonville-to-the-Gulf would not only cut off vast swaths of wetlands but also double storm surges in some areas by piling up water and concentrating its fury. "They're talking about chopping an estuary in half," says John Lopez, a former Corps geologist who is now the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation's director of coastal sustainability. "Even for the Corps, that's extreme."
Morganza-to-the-Gulf is less extreme but imminent; it's part of a $20 billion national package of Corps projects nearing congressional approval. The Corps has proposed to use "leaky levees" to allow tidal exchange, but many scientists predict the structures will still wall off marshes, providing a false sense of security to vulnerable towns while increasing their vulnerability. lsu's Van Heerden calls it "absolutely screwy, the exact opposite of what we need." Many scientists argue that it's dangerous and unrealistic to commit billions of dollars to protect middle-of-nowhere fishing towns, when the Corps has a $58 billion backlog of unfinished projects, and cities like New York and Miami are largely exposed to the sea. They want the Corps to focus on fixing the coast and protecting denser communities while helping families in small coastal towns elevate homes or move to higher ground. "I'm afraid that once we say yes, we're giving clearance to levees all across the state," says lsu ecologist Robert Twilley, who's leading Louisiana's science-review team. "My great fear is that we're going to cut off the coast with barriers, just like we did to the river. I'd hate for that to be my legacy."
Even Morganza's most ardent defenders say coastal levees can have dire coastal consequences. But they don't want to do nothing for people in harm's way. "I sit up at night and ask myself, Why the hell do you want to spend $1 billion on another levee?" says Jerome Zeringue, a biologist who runs the local levee district. "But if we don't protect Dulac, there won't be a Dulac."
In Shrimpers Row in tiny Dulac, a sign says water on road ahead—not a flashing sign, a permanent sign. Ivy Pierre has fished these bayous since he was a kid. He says the biggest change over his 78 years is that he walks up a ladder instead of down a ladder to climb into his boat. "We're sinking!" he says. Katrina was the fifth time his house has flooded, but home is a powerful place. "They call it Dulac," he says with a grin, "because we Du what we Lac!"
Dulac is ground zero in an age-old coastal debate: Defend or retreat? It's worth noting that the people of Dulac didn't move into harm's way. Harm moved into their way when the coast collapsed around them. But levees can create perverse incentives; Pierre wanted to elevate his house until he heard the Feds might protect it for him. Pierre also understands that Dulac might be doomed, or at least a bit remote for American taxpayers to protect for more than $10 million a mile, and he might be willing to move to higher ground for the right offer. "Retreat is not an American thing," Houck says. "We need a better word for it, because the concept is inexorable."
Corps managers say they're open to non-structural approaches to reducing flood risk. They also say they might adjust their levee paths to avoid damaging the coast. But expectations are hardening. "Morganza is considered egregious in the scientific community, but there's not a lot of enthusiasm down there for changing the alignment," says Randy Hanchey, who left the Corps after 37 years to oversee coastal projects for Louisiana. "The politics are very tricky."
Levees are still seen as instant local relief, even though Morganza is supposed to be a 16-year project and would probably take much longer. Restoration is often cast as a more general solution, even though scientists expect the Gulf to advance to the New Orleans suburbs within a decade. So political pressure and engineering instincts tend to favor a futile effort to wall ourselves off from nature. But Katrina and Rita wiped out 217 sq. mi. (562 sq km) of wetlands in a single month. And even Bush has acknowledged that without the coast, Louisiana is toast.
The good news is that scientists believe they know how to save it. They want the Corps to let go of the river in strategic areas so it can get back to work building land, even if that requires rearranging navigation at the mouth of the Mississippi. They want to fill in oil and gas canals, constrict the Gulf Outlet and start pumping sediment back into ridges and barrier islands. The Corps developed $14 billion worth of Louisiana restoration plans before Katrina, but Bush scaled them back to $2 billion. Now the scientists want to think even bigger about the entire ecosystem, even the sediments trapped behind dams 1,000 miles upstream (about 1,600 km). And they don't want to have to think about new to-the-Gulfs schemes that could further degrade the coast.
Can the system adapt? The Corps has announced "12 actions for change," but it's hard to find outsiders who believe that it has moved beyond its "teach Mother Nature a lesson" roots. It's still not a Corps of ecologists. And its projects are still a popular form of political swag for its enablers on Capitol Hill. The $20 billion Corps package also includes some modest reforms that would require more review of the agency's projects and mitigation of their environmental damage. But the Senate overwhelmingly rejected an effort to require the prioritization of Corps projects according to national need. And on Wednesday, the Bush Administration threatened to veto the "unaffordable" bill. Lieut. General Robert Van Antwerp, the new Corps commander, would like to see an independent commission recommending water projects outside the political process, like the one that advises military-base closures. But if New Orleans has to wait for an independent commission, it's probably time to invest in scuba gear. "We've got to break the cycle," Twilley says. "We've got to stop the political hacking. If we really want to go to the moon, we ought to go." The scientists make the task sound simple: build New Orleans 500-year protection and restore its natural protection. Have the courage to cause inconvenience and economic harm to some in the name of protecting all. After all, Katrina was harmful too. Moving 30 million tons of debris was pretty inconvenient. And the next Katrina is a question of when, not if.
Since Katrina, New Orleans has lost more than one-third of its population, and only two of St. Bernard Parish's 26 child-care centers have reopened. In the Lower Ninth Ward, floodwalls have been rebuilt and reinforced, but behind them stand blocks full of overgrown lots, where the remains of a gas meter or front step here or there provide the only evidence of the houses and lives washed away. "I look at this, and I think of the shortsighted people who crippled a great city," Dashiell says. She knows that city needs better hospitals and more jobs. But first, better levees and more wetlands. Otherwise, it's going to need an obituary.
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