Prophetic New Orleans article 2001 by Houston Chronicle

[Bernardo de La Paz]

Written in 2001:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3335758

Republicans hate wetlands.

New Orleans is sinking. And its main buffer from a hurricane, the protective Mississippi River delta, is quickly eroding away, leaving the historic city perilously close to disaster.

So vulnerable, in fact, that earlier <2001> the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country. The other two? A massive earthquake in San Francisco, and, almost prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York City.

<...> Thousands of refugees could land in Houston.

<...> Every two miles of marsh between New Orleans and the Gulf reduces a storm surge — which in some cases is 20 feet or higher — by half a foot. In 1990, the Breaux Act, named for its author, Sen. John Breaux, D-La., created a task force of several federal agencies to address the severe wetlands loss in coastal Louisiana. The act has brought about $40 million a year for wetland restoration projects, but it hasn't been enough.