The Choices in New Orleans

The Choices in New Orleans

This case mainly discusses and analyzes the key choices of the man-made hurricane defense project and the slow decision making on each level of government. As we known, New Orleans was located on Mississippi river alluvial plain and most the area of the city was below the sea level. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and resulted in the worst natural disaster in American history. The storm surf found the vulnerable spot of the levee system, flooded into the drainage, broke through the floodwall and drowned the north and middle area of the city. Spontaneously, another big wave from the east flooded into the Industry Canal through the “funnel” form of the Gulf Outlet, destroyed three main floodwalls and drowned the east area and the Low Ninth Ward. The failures of the floodwalls and other flood prevention infrastructures led 80% area of New Orleans into the inundation. It seemed like a tragedy caused by natural disaster in common sense, but it was breed in the choice of hurricane prevention projects and the delay of construction schedule. The previous work for reducing the harm of Mississippi River flooding may contribute to the inaction to mitigate the influence of hurricane surge on New Orleans. In comparison with the 800-year protection from the river, the plan of 200-year protection from the hurricane is far from enough.

Human survival is the top priority to the civil society and creating an effective levee system is the way to prevent drowning the population in New Orleans. If all parties can put down the divergence and dedicate to achieve this clarified and simplified goal, in a sense, it may complete the project in time and minimize the loss of life and property. But in reality, “many contending interest groups compete for influence over policy issues and continually force the administrator to secure agreement among the competing parties” (Stillman, 2010). The authors used different examples to illustrate how the...