Even as the many Louisiana officials return from their junket to The Netherlands to view flood control technology with reports on how it can be done in Louisiana, we must remember the limitations, both physical and political, inherent to this enterprise that itself was and is more political than technological.
While the apparatuses in The Netherlands are claimed to control for 10,000-year events at a cost today of $18 billion, in many ways what exists there doesn’t really compare to the situation in south Louisiana. First, it helps to consider the relative geographies of the places. The Netherlands would about fit into the “boot” of Louisiana – that is, where the state border suddenly veers east off the Mississippi River, instead draw an imaginary line straight south to the Gulf of Mexico. All area east of that within Louisiana’s borders takes up about the same land area as The Netherlands, and is roughly the size of the area that the flood protection debate addresses.
However, climatological and demographic differences exist between the two. Meteorologically, the storms that can hit The Netherlands just cannot compare to those that can strike south Louisiana – simply, there is no chance of a 150 MPH wind event striking The Netherlands, with its associated storm surge. Demographically, while the land area in questions may support about 1.6 million people, The Netherlands population is ten times that.
The latter has two fiscal implications. One, it is more efficient to protect the Dutch because they are so much more densely packed in. That is, the same levee system can protect 10 times as many people for the same cost (other things equal, which they aren’t). Two, with ten times the number of people to draw upon and who directly would be affected by potential catastrophe, there is much more in the way of “own resources” the government can draw upon to finance the operation.
Without these conditions applying in Louisiana, and compounded by the fact that the weather impact can be much more severe in south Louisiana, this makes the proposition much more expensive on a per capita basis and in absolute terms. (The figure thrown about is a minimum of $32 billion.) Thus, Louisiana cannot rely on “own resources” to finance the project and must, in essence, ask for a gift from the rest of the country to finance most of even rudimentary flood protection measures.
Which is why the staged rally by Catholic schoolgirls was such a bad idea, only giving the rest of the country another reason to shake its head at the welfare mentality so many people in Louisiana seem to possess. For one, does anybody really seriously believe on their own a few hundred teenaged girls decided to get together and paint signs demanding the country pay for the most expensive flood protection so they could continue to go to private schools? Do you honestly believe by themselves without any outside encouragement all these girls in their teens put down their books, calculators, purses, pompoms, basketballs, and cell phones to spend hours planning and executing all of this? (If you do, you don’t know teenagers.)
Of course not; they were put up to this by parochial school officials trying to make a political statement – a rank abuse of the trust they hold with the parents and diocesan members who pay for these people to do one thing: educate these children, not turn them into political activists. That’s bad enough, but nearly so is the fact that the rest of the country sees these people using kids to demand from America a gift to allow them to continue to live in a risky (meteorologically-speaking) area of the country.
When asking for a handout, you don’t make demands, you try to persuade the potential donors that the gift of their hard-earned resources provides benefits for everybody involved. Arguments such as the New Orleans area is too important to put at risk because of the country’s petrochemical, or agricultural, or trade needs, or even culture, can succeed. Petulant, staged events fail.
Louisiana needs to learn this lesson, and fast: on this issue, as long people like those who gave the students times off and no doubt helped in their preparations remain stuck on stupid, they reduce rather than enhance the goal of getting maximal flood protection paid for by the sacrifices of others.
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