OK, this is very long, but it shows what COULD be done for NOLA if we want it badly enough to spend the money needed. In the case of the Netherlands, it was an entire country at stake, not just a city and the surrounding area. I knew one of the engineers on the Delta Project, and he took me on a tour several years ago. It is absolutely amazing. Having said that, I have to ask.
Is it foolish to continue to battle Mother Nature?
trofIn the North Sea Flood of 1953 a break in the dikes and seawalls in the Netherlands killed 1,835 people and forced the evacuation of 70,000 more. 10,000 animals drowned, and 4,500 buildings were destroyed. To prevent such a tragedy from happening again, an ambitious flood defense system was conceived and deployed, called the Delta Works (Dutch: Deltawerken).
This project was intended to improve the safety of the lower areas of the Netherlands against severe storms and flooding; since more than one third of the nation's land lies below sea level, this is no simple task. Dunes along the entire seashore were raised by as much as 5 meters, while the islands in Zeeland province were joined together by dams and other large scale constructions to shorten the coastline. The most sophisticated and famous of these dams is the Oosterscheldekering (left of the leftmost "i" on the satellite image), which can be opened and closed to keep the sea at bay while preserving the saltwater river delta for wildlife and the fishing industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_WorksThe Delta Project was one of the greatest post-war feats of hydraulic engineering in the Netherlands. Immediately after the devastating storm surge of 1953, a Delta Commission was appointed to advise the government on the necessary works to protect the south-western part of the country. The first step was to construct a moveable storm surge barrier in the Hollandse IJssel, east of Rotterdam.
This went into operation in 1958. The next move was the closure of the Veerse Gat and the Zandkreek in 1961. This necessitated the building of great sluices to regulate the discharge of water from the major rivers. Huge dams with sluice gates were likewise completed in 1971 to close off the Haringvliet and in 1972 to protect the Brouwershavensche Gat. The Philips and Oester Dams followed in 1974 and 1987 respectively. Plans for the closure of the last open estuary, the Eastern Scheldt, were also on the table, but evoked a clamour of protest from mussel and oyster farmers and environmentalists. They were fiercely opposed to closure on the grounds that it would destroy a unique tidal area and that the Eastern Scheldt was the nursery for many species of North Sea fish.
Eventually a compromise was reached. A partially open storm surge barrier would be built, with huge gates that could be closed in the event of high water levels. This would preserve the ecological value of the Eastern Scheldt as a tidal area while at the same time guaranteeing the safety of Zeeland. The resulting storm surge barrier in the Eastern Scheldt is one of the biggest in the world. The components for the moveable gates, each the size of a twelve-storey block of flats, were built in special docks and floated into place before being sunk. The dam was officially opened by Queen Beatrix on 4 October 1986 and the final piece of the Delta Works jigsaw was slotted into place in 1997, when a moveable storm surge barrier was completed in the New Waterway. This consists of two vast gates which are normally kept open but can be closed when a storm is imminent.
In 1993 and 1995 there were two new flood emergencies in the Netherlands. There were no fatalities, but the economic damage was enormous. This time the flooding came not from the sea but from the rivers. In 1995, meltwater from the mountainous heartland of Europe and extremely heavy rainfall downstream combined to burst the banks of the Rhine and the Maas and more than 250,000 people had to be evacuated.
This latest flood emergency led immediately to the drafting of a Delta Plan for the Major Rivers. This provides for the major rivers transecting the Netherlands to be given greater freedom to spill out across some parts of their traditional floodplains, while the height of the dikes controlling them is increased elsewhere.
http://www.thehollandring.com/1953-ramp.shtml
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