Paul Brown: US Army Corps can't stop floods in New Orleans

By Paul Brown, Huffington Post

Lt. General Robert Van Antwerp, Chief of the US Army Corps of Engineers would not answer my question "Should New Orleans be abandoned?"

But the General, whose job it is to protect New Orleans from future hurricanes, did admit he could not save the city from storm surges. "Protect the city no, reduce the risk yes. We can develop better early warning systems, better evacuation plans, better levees to hold back most of the water but we cannot stop levees being overtopped and the city flooded."

Evacuation and retreat from the sea in Louisiana is the central question concerning the Corps and the rest of the delegates attending the Religion, Science and Environment Symposium in New Orleans.

How to save not just the city but the southern half of Louisiana from the combined effects of man's past mismanagement, subsidence of the delta, and ever increasing sea level rise?

The Mississippi Delta sinks around an inch every 30 months and with sea level rise accelerating water levels across the delta will increase six feet this century. With much of the delta less than three feet above sea level most communities will be drowned by 2050, leaving New Orleans, if it survives at all, a vulnerable island behind its levees.

Man's...

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