-- Hurricane Katrina and the floodwaters that swept through New Orleans
in its wake may have damaged 160,000 homes beyond repair,
an official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday.

thats 160,000 homes
times 200,000.00 each (minumum @ today's prices)
--------------------------
equals 3,200,000,000.00 dollars. or 3 billion- 200 million

the govermernment is predicting 100 billion in damages(price tag)
and or what it'll take to rebuild the whole area
which seems really low.
the big dig cost just under 15 billion for example.

i think IMHO we should have a dedicated railroad delivering rock
from georgia and ALL of our mountains of old automobile tires
(read terrorist bio-warefare target's )
from across america to build one gigantic humongus
sea wall less than 100 miles long to protect that investment.

i have included a Map with a good location for such a project.
i'm just brain storming here....as the devastation
(our presidents favorite word) is ->unimaginable!

What say YOU?

Or they could at least provide levees made to withstand better than a smaller category 3 hurricane. Cost-benefit analysis backfires again...

I think we've pretty much destroyed the ecology there already with the levy systems put there in the 30's and 40's. Furthur "damming" I think would mean even more destruction of the area. The Discovery channel has a documentary out now that describes in detail the harm we have made there by building levy's that has contributed to a greater destruction of the city's infrastucture. Hundreds if not thousands of acres are lost yearly because of the levy's and not just in Louisiana but all along the entire Mississippi. We need controlled flooding of the plains surrounding the river, which oddly enough creates land by sediment deposits. Don't mess with mother nature, she'll bite you in the arse when given the opportunity.

President Bush says he takes responsibility for the federal government's failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina :hang:
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yeah earth dams are a joke...i almost was killed trying to repair our road
when this IDIOT who built an earth dam upstream had it fail and it's water and debris washed out our road...and i was inside the 6 foot high metal culvert under our roadway....
trying to de-clog it and almost drown doing it... so you could say i dont have any confidence in them to say the least.

They? don't you mean WE?

Or they(WE) could at least provide levees made to withstand better than a smaller category 3 hurricane. Cost-benefit analysis backfires again...

george bush has proposed building a large dam costing hundreds of billions of $ to protect New Orleans in Arkansas...... he would rather fight the water 'over there' :hihi:

They? don't you mean WE?

Aah, semantics. I just pretend that all my tax dollars go to NOAA/NMFS. It makes me feel better.

The ecology/geology around there is pretty complicated (whats left of it)
Land loss to flooding and wetland loss is huge. A combination of sea level rise, increased flooding (more canals = more water into the back marsh that used to not get flooded) equals trouble for the land behind said wetlands...

Imagine the back of ninigret, quonnie or winnapaug ponds during a hurricane. They are mostly FEMA A zones with some FEMA V zones (V zone = 3ft waves during a storm)
Now imagine the same place WITHOUT the barriers that seperate the pond from the ocean... much different scenario... same thing down there when you lose wetlands; you lose your natural buffer that dissipates the storm energy. it's a scary place to live, and will continue to be no matter how big the leavees are or how good the pumps are....