Protecting New Orleans

RETIRED ARMY OFFICER Valentino Lite II aptly summarized the Bush administration’s request last week to double the funding for levee repairs in the crippled city of New Orleans. “It sounds like a lot, but $1.5 billion ain’t even a drop in the bucket,” Lite told The Times.

This isn’t a criticism of the administration so much as a reality check. Improving the levees is crucial to luring businesses and residents back to New Orleans, along with tax incentives, home rebuilding and other infrastructure repairs. But the levees are just one ingredient in a very expensive recipe for protecting southern Louisiana against another catastrophic storm.

On Thursday, Donald Powell, President Bush’s point man on Gulf Coast recovery, said the administration wanted an additional $1.5 billion to make the levee system “better and stronger than it ever has been in the history of New Orleans.” That’s on top of the $1.6 billion the administration had previously requested to restore the system essentially to its pre-Hurricane Katrina status. The new funds, to be spent over the next two years, would fortify the levees, bring them back up to the height they were originally designed to be and build new barriers between Lake Pontchartrain and three long canals that exacerbate the flooding threat.

By some estimates, the rebuilt levees would be formidable enough to protect the city against a repeat of Katrina. Other experts disagree, saying they wouldn’t be able to withstand a Category 3 hurricane (Katrina’s winds were just below Category 4 strength when the storm hit Louisiana). Either way, the chance of a storm stronger than Katrina hitting New Orleans is disturbingly real, given the growing frequency of extreme weather in the Gulf.

Rather than trying to hold off nature with concrete, the region’s best hope for the long term is to sap storm surges before they reach the levees and Lake Pontchartrain. The consensus among experts in the Gulf is that levees and other man-made barriers have dangerously undermined the coast’s natural defenses against hurricanes, such as its wetlands and barrier islands. Rebuilding those protections and restoring the mechanisms that used to replenish them is an enormous job, with cost estimates running from $14 billion to $32 billion.

The administration’s latest proposal included $250 million for wetlands restoration and about $5 million to study long-term solutions. There have been so many studies already, however, that there seems little point in doing another. As its support for improved levees makes clear, this administration is committed to rebuilding New Orleans. The residents and businesses that move back in -- and the taxpayers who are making it possible -- need to know that their investments won’t be wiped out by the next Katrina. The cost of restoring Louisiana’s natural defenses is high -- but not nearly as high as the price of rebuilding the region again.