Levees Not Enough on Louisiana's Vanishing Coast
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By Brad Heath  BURAS, La. -- The defense of Louisiana's hurricane-battered Gulf Coast begins in the muck -- or what's left of it.    The land is vanishing so quickly here from marshes and barrier islands that what went away in the past 50 years alone could cover all of Rhode Island.
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You might be surprised how far you have to drive from New Orleans, LA to get to the Gulf of Mexico.  Following     the west bank of the Mississippi River along Hwy 23, you go through the separate and well-separated towns of     Belle Chasse, Pointe a la Hache, Port Sulphur, Empire, Boothville, and finally over 60 miles from New Orleans     the tiny oilfield supply and marina town of Venice.    At Empire the highway goes over a pretty tall bridge and on the other side of the canal, beyond the levee     system, Katrina's storm surge came through with a vengeance.  The roads have been cleared but everywhere along     them are the twisted skeletons of steel buildings with vegetation hanging out of shattered second-story     windows.  A refrigerator sits atop the flooded husk of a house.  A perfect square of fenceless pickets     surrounds a perfectly bare concrete slab.  The occasional forlorn FEMA trailer can be spotted parked on one of     many slabs in a field of such slabs that was once a neighborhood.  The carcass of a cow is wedged improbably     in the canopy of a tree twenty feet up.    What is striking is not that the landscape looks like this; most of the coastline of Louisiana and Mississippi     experienced such damage.  What is striking is that it looked like this when I visited last week, in August     2006, almost an entire year after the storm came through.
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The massive federally funded program for rebuilding hurricane-damaged Louisiana homes is short nearly $3 billion largely because Louisiana officials are compensating thousands of homeowners who were not originally supposed to benefit, according to an analysis by the Bush administration.
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Weakened but still formidable, hurricane Frances was downgraded to a tropical storm last night as it spun slowly toward Louisiana, leaving a trail of flooding and destruction up and down
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By Bill Hanna, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas  Sep. 24--HOLLY BEACH, La. -- When Jackie Monceaux walks the abandoned streets of this once-thriving blue-collar resort town, she doesn't see the empty concrete slabs and dozens of for-sale signs that dot the barren beachfront.
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Heavy sediment deposited in the Mississippi River delta in the last ice age has caused New Orleans to sink and will continue to drag down coastal Louisiana bit by bit for hundreds of years, according to a new study by NASA and Louisiana State University scientists.
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NEW ORLEANS, La. - Faced with a nightmare scenario of floodwaters that could drown this below-sea-level city, thousands of evacuees jammed highways Tuesday in an agonizingly slow escape from 140-mph Hurricane Ivan as it bore down on four Gulf Coast states...
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By The Macon Telegraph, Ga.  Feb. 4--Macon's 5.5 mile long, 65-year-old levee has had a "growing" problem for years, one that should have been corrected but wasn't. Now that problem threatens, in a worst case scenario, to leave the city in danger of flooding.
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By Mike Dunbar, The Modesto Bee, Calif.  May 27--Deteriorating levees. Dying fish in a dying delta. Dismantling  dams or building new ones. Climate change. Peripheral canal. Drought. Welcome  to Randy Fiorini's world.
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âHurricane Katrina broke through the levees,â the president said. âIt broke a lot of hearts. It destroyed buildings. But it didnât affect the spirit of a lot of citizens in this community.â
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A divided Louisiana state appeals court has ruled that people who lost their homes in hurricanes are not necessarily entitled to recover the full amount of their losses if their insurance policies covered only some perils but not others.
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By CAIN BURDEAU  SHELL BEACH, La. - Unde
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PASS CHRISTIAN, Mississippi  - When hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans it also ravaged a series of small towns. Nearly two years later they have faded from the spotlight but are still struggling to rebuild.
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NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 19 -- Louisiana lags behind Mississippi in forwarding federal aid to cash-strapped communities after Hurricane Katrina, lending support to complaints by local officials in the New Orleans area that the state is holding up money they need for repairs and rebuilding.
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When hurricane  Katrina devastated New Orleans it also ravaged a series of  small towns. Nearly two years later they have faded from the  spotlight but are still struggling to rebuild.
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The government's repairs to New Orleans' hurricane-damaged levees may put the French Quarter in greater danger than it was before Hurricane Katrina, a weakness planners said couldn't be helped, at least for now.
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The most remarkable feature of Hurricane Frances was not its gargantuan size, or its glacial speed, but rather its flooding -- or, more precisely, its lack of flooding.