"Complaints are everywhere heard that the public good is disregarded in the conflict of rival parties." — James Madison, The Federalist, No. 10 Gilbert Cosio stands with his feet spread, one foot higher than the other, astride a sloping, 100-year-old levee surrounding Bouldin Island, 40 miles due south of Sacramento, Calif. We're here to take a look at improvements that Cosio, a civil engineer, has made to this levee, part of a serpentine network of flood control infrastructure that was imposed piecemeal over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries on the largest estuary on the West ... Read More
Before the Flood
October 26, 2009 • By • 4 Comments
Mike Kline ambles across the highway atop the Park Street Bridge, toward the guardrail overlooking the Roaring Branch River. It's early summer, long after Vermont's mountain snow has melted, so the sometimes-mighty waterway is now just a stream piddling between tree-lined banks and stony riprap. Though I can barely hear the river above the buzzing motorcycles, Kline tells me locals dubbed it the Roaring Branch for a reason: During storms, huge boulders barrel down the river, slamming against each other to produce a thunderous sound. The boulders and sediment move with so much force, they ... Read More
Protect a Levee, Protect the World
December 12, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
It's obvious that carbon is stored in wetlands. But could it be stored at a rate that would merit their inclusion in carbon cap-and-trade programs? That question has been asked since researchers looking at the safety of levees uncovered a promising way to capture atmospheric carbon. The preliminary answer is a definite ... maybe. Well before Katrina, scientists studying central California's Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta speculated that restoring wetlands on abandoned farmland would mitigate the hydraulic force on miles of delta levees, which in some places hold back 20 feet of ... Read More
The Grass Floodwall: Gustav Highlights Need for Wetlands
August 29, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
Although Hurricane Gustav did not strike coastal areas of Louisiana with a force reminiscent of the devastating Katrina three years ago, as had been feared, it still refocused attention on the Gulf Coast's protection from big storms. Officials insist New Orleans is safer now than it was then, but even with more man-made protections on track, nature's own floodwalls need to be erected, too. In the years since the hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers, along with its partner agencies, have committed $14.6 billion to repair and upgrade the region's ... Read More
No Easy Solution
March 4, 2008 • By • 2 Comments
Related video: Mississippi Forgotten There were those, of course, whose post-Katrina vision for New Orleans was no New Orleans at all. Or at least not a New Orleans that was going to involve much in the way of national investment. Proponents of this view ranged from former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who later recanted, to racists and religious fundamentalists eager to see a majority black city with a reputation for moral lassitude punished for its sins. And then there were environmentalists for whom New Orleans’ ruin was a rhetorical convenience in debates about global warming, only ... Read More
