John McQuaid’s Posts

• Restoring coastal restoration

  Down the bureaucratic rabbit hole with the Corps of Engineers 1

  Posted 12 months ago

  In a post last week on the bureaucratic inflighting over Louisiana's coastal restoration efforts, I took a "the system's broken" point of view. Chris Macaluso, a spokesman for the state's coastal restoration efforts, sent me an email that elaborates on some of the ways the system is broken.

  The state government -- which ought to have strong voice in how billions of dollars are spent to rebuild, well, a large area of the state -- is effectively marginalized by the Corps of Engineers, which is jealously guarding its own turf and funding. In a nutshell: A federal task force… Read More

• A dangerous diversion

  Louisiana's coastal restoration efforts hit a costly snag 2

  Posted 1 year ago

  

  It seems that in the fraying marshes of southern Louisiana, we can't afford to maintain both shipping and coastal restoration at the same time. Louisiana's biggest freshwater diversion project -- essentially, a set of gates in the Mississippi River levees that let river water to flow over marshlands, depositing much-needed silt -- must be closed because it's affecting ship anchorages nearby. That requires dredging, which would cost $140 million over the next 15 years, and there's no money available for that:

• Warning signs from Hurricane Gustav

  How did so much water get into a New Orleans canal? 1

  Posted 1 year, 2 months ago

  Here's a question I'd like to know the answer to. Hurricane Gustav dealt New Orleans a glancing blow, passing it by to the west. Yet as the world saw, the city's Industrial Canal -- a large ship channel running north-south close to neighborhoods -- filled nearly to the top, and there was some alarming, if mostly harmless, overtopping due to wind and waves.

  Why did this happen, and what does it say about the city's vulnerabilities in future storms -- and Louisiana's disappearing coast?

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