MRGO has got to GO - ASAP
In 1965 we were placed in harms way to save 40 miles on an ocean voyage!.
MRGO gotta GO!
While some may doubt my credentials to question the “engineers” and those who conceived of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, I’m still a citizen of high intelligence with an extreme curiosity and an analytical mind. At St Aug, I finished number one in both the biology and physics rallies.
I also spent three years in the service of the country in the Third Weather Wing as a Weather Equipment Technician. I spent virtually all of my time with meteorologist. With a native curiosity and good conversation skills, you can learn a lot from guys who have to depend on you to keep their weather radar running.
More lately, however, after Katrina, I worked in an Army Corps of Engineering field office with “engineers” and experts. Its funny, but when some people read “A Rising Tide”, they get the political and racial setup it provides, but I was just as fascinated by the technical aspects and the lack of real science that goes into many of the “engineering” choices made by the Army Corps of Engineering.
Seems there’s “house” learning and “field” learning.
I had been curious about MRGO since I realized that its completion in 1965 was just before Hurricane Betsy was able to raise the Industrial Canal waters either high enough to wash out the levees or high enough to frighten the wealthy and powerful of the city enough to commission its blowing to lower the water level that also threatened downtown. Could it be that a wealthy and powerful clique understood in 1965 that the newly completed MRGO channel would threaten the city’s Industrial Canal levee and were prepared to use the Lower Nine and Chalmette as a catch basin to save downtown? If MRGO was a factor this time around, than it also had to be a factor in 1965 during Betsy. I was waiting for a boom with Gustav, but there were too many cameras focused on that levee.
First it helps to understand that MRGO was dug through the wetlands to make a shortcut to the Port of New Orleans. I’ve gone back and looked. There are all sort of studies about its economic impact, and even one or two very flawed studies that minimized the impact of blocking fresh water flow through the wetlands. I couldn’t find any studies that studied the hurricane flooding potential of bring a 2000 foot wide and 36 feet deep , a deep water navigation channel through the wetlands, directly to geographic center of our city, not one study.
There is a very good paper prepared by a law student at Berkley that has all the footnotes and academic references that make some more comfortable with information, and perspectives, here is the link: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/disasters/Cart.pdf
The levees held even while being “overtopped”, which makes me wonder, why or how did they “burst” before. Some people laughed at Jessie Jackson’s assertion that the barge caused the breech after Katrina. The way leaders were worried about the lose ship and barges in the canal this time really gives credibility to Jackson’s point of view.
I’ve prepared a GOOGLE map to point out MRGO and let you see how it is a funnel for a storm surge when a storm tracks just West of the city, and how it cut our wetlands off from fresh water flow and contributed mightily to their decline, and our reduced storm protection. Use this link to view the map or to refer others to this commentary as it will be repeated there. http://www.lloyddennis.com/MRGO
During the storm, all we could do is pray. We must pressure every elected official to demand the immediate and complete closure and fill of this dangerous storm surge shortcut and destroyer of the very wetlands we need to slow down those surges.
I believe New Orleans was a safer place before MRGO and won’t be as safe again until it is closed. Even business leaders must realize that giving two or three cargo ships a 40 mile shortcut isn’t worth shutting down the city once, twice or three time a year.
(ADDED since the original email)
Gustav in 2008 and Betsy in 1965 traveled almost the same path, slightly to the West of the city and both had the same high water in the Industrial Canal, even as the lake's south shore was not threatened by flooding in either, and eyewitnesses report that water was flowing out of the industrial canal into the lake when the levee was being overtopped during Gustav. The only source for that water was MRGO, because water never flows through the locks at the river. Its gates are never all open at the same time. That is the nature of a lock.
Even the Corps admits to a calculated one foot increase in storm surge during Katrina due to the physical characteristics of MRGO. Qouting this study is slight of hand because the Industrial Canal was filled from the lake side by winds that were basically from due north during Katrina, MRGO's impact on Katrina flooding was much less significant than it would have been for both Betsy and Gustav, where the winds blew inline with MRGO's length. Neither did they add or consider the increase in storm surge due to the ongoing loss of wetlands as a result of MRGO's existence, slight of hands.
GOOD NEWS! On the very evening that I presented this information on Between The Lines, the Army Corps of Engineering was on another show announcing the decision to proceed with closing the entrance to MRGO with a rock dam, and was advertising for proposals to complete the closing by the end of 2009.
I still wish to point out MRGO's probable role as the primary source for the flooding of the lower nine after hurricane Betsy in 1965, and the scenario for prior knowledge about MRGO and a very probable conspiracy to save the city by blowing up the levee on the lower ninth ward side of the industrial canal, and act of homicide, with no statute of limitation.