The Might of the Mississippi
...ot think much about evacuating the city nor did they worry about the height of the levee walls (The Weather Channel). But then Betsy came through with a 10 ft water surge and flooded New Orleans with up to 6 ft of water. The next year, New Orleans elevated the levee walls to 12 ft to prevent a reoccurrence of Betsy. The damage she bestowed cost 1.4 billion dollars and more important 51 Louisiana lives (Roth). As New Orleans had many problems during Betsy, they stand facing the same problems today. The hurricane season and the effect a hurricane would have on the city constantly threatens New Orleans. “ We actually live in a bowl. We live underwater” said Frank Hijuelos, director of New Orleans Office of Emergency Preparedness (qtd. The Weather Channel). Even though over the past 60 years New Orleans has changed many of its hurricane policies, much change sill needs to happen. Although levee walls are surrounding the city, keeping the Mississippi river out of New Orleans, the walls are not strong enough to prevent a strong hurricane from flooding the city. If a category 4 hurricane slowly eased its way up the river, and broke the levee walls, 12-18 feet of water would quickly engulf New Orleans. Even with mild rains New Orleans strains its pumps because it has trouble pumping the water out. If it happened that a hurricane struck New Orleans, most of the residents would be unable to escape due to the poor evacuation routes that the city has designed. As New Orleans pumps its floodwater out, they unintentionally dry up the ground, sinking New Orleans into the ground even further( Berger A29). With New Orleans sinking further into the ground and every day the river delta continuing to erode away, city officials contemplate on what to do to fix the problem. The best solution to fixing this problem is in rebuilding the protective river delta. The delta is important because every 2 miles of marsh between New Orleans and the gulf lowers a storms serge by a half a foot. In 1990, Senator John Breaux assembled a task force of federal agencies to take notice in the severe wetland loss off the coast of Louisiana. By doing this, he accumulated 40 million dollars a year for a restoration project. Although the money has helped, researchers have proven that 40 million dollars has only stopped 2 percent of the wetlands from eroding. The project set up by Senator Breaux is a 2-3 billion dollar project. Yet the government does not want to spend that kind of money on the river delta. Other ways of preventing flooding in New Orleans include putting a wall around Pontchartrain Lake to prevent it from overflowing and flooding the city or possibly restoring the barrier reefs at the coast of Louisiana (Berger A29). Whether by restoring the river delta or building more levee walls, the government needs to do something to prevent New Orleans from drowning. If action does not occur soon, then maybe it might be to late in the future. Southern Louisiana produces 1/3 of...