Katrina 2

Earlier this week, Rep Dennis Hastert (R-IL) made a comment something akin to it making more sense to abandoning the old New Orleans and rebuilding in a safer place. This brought outrage among Louisiana politicians and others.

But why? New Orleans, although historic and a tourist spot, is on ground which has been sinking for hundreds of years. This instability caused the "fish-bowl" effect which caused the city to continue to suffer such horrific disasters.

Some are calling for the reconstruction and shoring up of additional levees. The truth of this tragedy is that the levees were constructed for protection of nearly any devestation. The levees were thought to have a 99.5% liklihood of success, meaning that about once every 200 years, some storm might come and breach the levees. Statistics are that this is about as good as it gets. No matter what you build there, there is some probability of failure. How are we going to protect against that when it happens?

Every community has some liklihood of devestation, whether it be tornadoes in the Midwest, earthquakes in the West, or tsunamis in the Pacific and Indian oceans. What community planners must do is to design to reduce the liklihood of failure. They should at least seriously consider this option.

Finally, John Thierney of the New York Times, today proposed some changes to how this country insures against floods. As you may or may not know, 2/3 of the homes in the region that was just devestated had no flood insurance. This is often the case in the regions that need it most. The more expensive the insurance, the less likely people are to build in a specific region, thereby making it less likely that this kind of devestation will occur. Because the Federal Government essentially offers free insurance to people in the hurricaine zones, there is no incentive to not build here.

If you'd like to check out the article, it can be accessed at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/opinion/03tierney.html?oref=login

Have a great Labor Day weekend!