[geeks] Mr Bill?

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Sep 17, 2008, at 18:25 , Mike Meredith wrote:

> On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:59:08 -0400 (EDT), Sandwich Maker wrote:
>> most of new orleans deserved to be rebuilt, but the lower 9th ward -
>> which afaik got the worst flooding and heaviest damage - was a  
>> swamp 5
>> decades ago.  it should be a swamp again.  new orleans would also be
>> helped if they un-leveed the river below the city and let flood
>> sediment rebuild the delta again.
>
> "Managed retreat" is the buzzword in the UK. Hard coastal protection
> for cities; soft for agricultural land. Salt marshes turn out to be
> astonishingly effective flood defences.

I can't believe you would suggest that nature might know best how to  
solve problems like this... :)

We have the same issue in Tidewater.

The greed factor is high along with stupidity, so they keep getting  
rid of those "nasty swamps" and replacing them with multiple smaller  
"managed wetlands".

The old swamps used to absorb a lot of heavy wind and water.

A guy at NASA made a simulation years ago about the effect of swamps  
as storm barriers, and it really does help, a lot.  I was surprised  
how effective it was at reducing wind speed, slowing or halting storm  
surge, absorbing heavy rain, etc.

The concrete and refuse barriers they build are nowhere near as good.

A lot of our local swamps have been replaced with "managed wetlands",  
and they made most of them inland, frequently isolated from coastal  
water or streams.

Not only does it make them less habitable by wildlife, it pretty much  
eliminates any benefit as a barrier since they are no longer along the  
coast.

Unfortunately the environmental law is very cleverly written so that  
only the total acreage of swamp is accounted for.

In other words, they can legally replace 1000 acres of swamp with 1000  
1 acre managed wetlands which are basically just mosquito breeding  
grounds.

They even count he "bowls" formed by interstate highway cloverleaf  
structures as wetland  acreage now.






-- 
Shannon Hendrix
shannon at widomaker.com