Cost-benefits don't add up for Plaquemine levees

Reuters:

Seven months after Hurricane Katrina, Richard and Brenda Simmons still agonize over whether to rebuild their smashed two-story home in lower Plaquemines Parish on the southeastern tip of Louisiana.

Their decision got harder this week after the U.S. government said it may not spend the hundreds of millions of dollars it would take to raise all the levees on the thin strip of land jutting into the Gulf of Mexico.

Like many here, the announcement hit Brenda, 48, hard. She said she is angry that lower Plaquemines, a seafood and energy hub with an eroding coastline, may get left out while much of southern Louisiana wins beefed-up flood barriers.

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Residents and business owners now wonder if they will be able to get insurance if they try to rebuild the ravaged area.

Virtually every structure in Buras, a town with a pre-Katrina population of 3,300 about 60 miles south of New Orleans, was damaged by Katrina on August 29. Less than a month later, Hurricane Rita's storm surge swamped it again. The Simmonses' street is strewn with wrecked homes and debris.

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated it would cost another $1.6 billion to protect just 2 percent of the at-risk population, or about 14,000 people in small towns like Buras, Triumph and Venice.

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