Shortly, I will begin my final day touring the Netherlands with Senator Mary Landrieu’s Congressional Delegation.
For the past two days, HJ Bosworth Jr and I, along with two members of the Army Corps of Engineers and others, have departed promptly at 7am and returned after 10p. The days have been long, but jam packed with learning, dialoging and training.
In Holland, the attitude toward water is “we shall live with, enjoy and also protect our selves from water.” The phrase “reduce our risk” does not exist here, because them, that is not an option. In Holland, they essentially obliterate risk.
How do the “technical aspects” of the Dutch and New Orleans situations compare??
Specifically, how high vertically is each location’s “design storm surge?”
What about “storm parameters” like design wind speeds, rainfall intensities and amounts, durations, etc???
What is “depths to bedrock?” Both locations.
Just found one answer here:
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/06/01/01climatewire-the-dutch-strive-to-make-their-country-clima-44710.html?pagewanted=1
Article mentions that New Orleans rainfall is “ten (10) times as intense” as that of Rotterdams……
There are definitely “physical differences” between the two locations that are NOT trivial…….
Any ideas of the WINDSPEED and DIRECTION of the wind when the canal walls breached???
Did the wind possibly have a role in their failure??? Especially if it was blowing directly against their sides at the time.
I would label them as being “flashboards” rather than being a “levee…..”
Thanks for sharing! I’m looking forward to learning more of the specifics. In the meantime, kudos to Levees.org for being involved in this process! It’s encouraging that the Army Corps of Engineers has embraced this opportunity to learn from the Dutch, who seem, in general, to view “coexistence” as a tenet of their culture. The U.S. has a bad habit of criminalizing the poor, which leads organizations like the ACE to act or fail to act without accountability when the poor are at risk. It will be healthy for the U.S. to move beyond arguments about socio-economics, so that we might get to the business of protecting our citizens–something the Dutch seem to inherently understand.