Aug
31
Is Stream Restoration Working?
August 31, 2010 | Posted by Michael "Aquadoc" Campana
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Here in the Pacific Northwest, stream restoration is a growth industry (purely anecdotal – I have not done a study). The big issue is restoration as it relates to the salmon fishery: trying to undo the mess we’ve made of the environment. I’ve been told that the Columbia River produced something like 20 million adult salmon per year prior to European settlement. It is now on the order of one million or so. By the way, that 20 million figure is an estimate, since no one was really scientifically studying the salmon in those days.
At this point I should note that the current Columbia River run of sockeye salmon is setting a record.
Although stream restoration can be viewed strictly as a fluvial geomorphological or hydraulic engineering problem, the relationship between restoration, or renaturalization (as preferred by friend and colleague Bill Woessner of the University of Montana) and fishery recovery is apparent. Purists: mea culpa if I tend to conflate the two; I will try to be good.
When I came here from New Mexico in 2006 I knew of the importance of stream restoration, especially as it pertained to the iconic salmon, a charismatic creature with economic, recreational, religious, culinary, and cultural, and ecological significance. Yes, we had stream restoration and endangered fish species in New Mexico, but nothing like that in the PNW (far more perennial streams) and nothing as charismatic as salmon (e.g., the Rio Grande silvery minnow).
Little did I realize just how important stream restoration was (and still is) in the PNW and other places, too; my Bay-Delta committee work has certainly brought that home.
So why am I tackling stream restoration? Simple. I’m curious – how well is it working? Can we test hypotheses? Here is a previous post questioning some of the models of stream restoration.
What piqued my interest was this article at the JAWRA blog (run by the JAWRA editor Ken Lanfear) Testing Stream Restoration. Lanfear discusses a recent JAWRA article,“Design of Experimental Streams for Simulating Headwater Stream Restoration” (you can read the abstract for free but will have to pay for the article if you are not an AWRA member).
Here is what he says:
Stream restoration is a billion dollar industry in the U.S. [emboldening mine] — and a very controversial topic. JAWRA has published a number of articles on this topic in the past several years, and almost all have generated spirited discussions and replies. One problem is the uniqueness of each restoration project: a park agency restoring a stream, for example, is not inclined to build several different versions just to test the theories. At the Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, Columbus, Ohio, however, researchers are doing exactly that.
This study designs three experimental channels – two-stage, self-design, and straightened channels – on a human-created swale for long-term evaluation of headwater stream evolution after restoration. The swale receives a continuous flow of pumped river water from upstream wetlands. These stream channels, after construction, will be monitored to evaluate physical, chemical, and biological responses to different channels over a decade-long experiment.
This article is the first of what likely will be a series of journal articles over the years describing the progress of the restoration project. It looks at the characteristics of the facility and how the experimental channels are hypothesized to evolve.
Stream restoration is an important issue, one that I plan to follow a bit more closely.
At the JAWRA blog you can view some of the other articles JAWRA has published on this topic.
Enjoy!
“One man’s fish is another man’s poisson.” — Unknown
Aug
22
Watering the Southern High Plains Aquifer
August 22, 2010 | Posted by Michael "Aquadoc" Campana
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In May 2009 I posted an item Saving the Ogallala (aka High Plains) Aquifer, in which I reported on an article from the March 2009 Scientific American.
The southern portion of the High Plains Aquifer is well-known for drastically lowered groundwater levels because of unsustainable pumping. Schemes have been proposed to recharge the aquifer, generally involving pumping water from the Mississippi River, which Pat Mulroy mentioned last summer, or other regions.
When I was in graduate school almost 40 years ago, a number of large-scale water importation schemes were being bandied about. In addition to importing water from the Columbia River or Canada (NAWAPA or NARA), a plan to use nuclear-powered pumping plants to pipe water uphill from the Mississippi River was being kicked around.
Thanks to reader Ken, here is one such plan that invokes a 1984 Journal of Hydrology paper: “Preliminary study of the diversion of 283 m3/sec (10,000 cfs) from Lake Superior to the Missouri River Basin” by J.W. Bulkley, S.J. Wiright, and D. Wright at the University of Michigan’s Department of Civil Engineering.
The paper’s introduction has a brief summary of some proposed large-scale water diversions and cites the 1976 High Plains Study authorized by Congress. (Download S79BANKS-2)
But the title of the paper describes a non-starter. In 1984, the Great Lakes Compact was not in existence. Trying to import water from the Great Lakes theses days would run afoul (an understatement) of the governors of the eight states and premiers of the two Canadian provinces in the basin.
Back to Ken’s comment: he posted a link to a site in which he reviews a plan to recharge the High Plains Aquifer and a possible way to add water to the Canadian River. He has used information from the aforementioned paper. He’s done a lot of work, including some interactive spreadsheets accessible from the site:
His plan to add water to the Canadian River requires taking water from the Rio Grande. There is no unallocated water in the RG and if there were, I am unsure the Rio Grande Compact would permit this interbasin transfer. So the engineering exercise may be futile.
As a final item, it is instructive to note that the Bulkley et al. paper came from a special issue devoted to Global Water: Science and Engineering – The Ven Te Chow Memorial Volume. Wonder if anyone would dare propose such a special issue these days. Maybe it’s time.
Since I wrote this in Ashland while taking in some Shakespeare, what better way to close this than a quote from the Bard of Avon:
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” –Puck, in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Aug
18
Ten Laws of Western USA Water
August 18, 2010 | Posted by Michael "Aquadoc" Campana
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Thanks to Lloyd G. Carter for sending these my way. They are the product of Hugh Holub, a water attorney down Arizona way, who has given me permission to post these. You can also find them on his WWW site.
Holub was once asked to give a talk summarizing Western water law to non-lawyers, and this resulted. I suspect all appreciated his ‘dry’ sense of humor.
Perhaps his list is too close to the truth; you might laugh till you cry.
Here goes:
Introduction: It does not take a law degree to understand water law and policy in the western United States. Ten basic legal and historical principles govern the rights to and uses of water in the West. By understanding these ten Water Laws of the West anyone can then understand the current issues of water and its relationship to the future of the West.
I. The Law of Gravity: The First Water Law of the West is the Law of Gravity. Water runs down hill. The initial uses of water in the West involved the use of gravity to tap rivers and divert their flows into canals for delivery to farms and mines. This is also known as Newton’s Law.
II. The Law of Los Angeles: The Second Water Law of the West is the original law of Los Angeles. This L.A. Law states that “water runs uphill to money“. The development of energy technologies to lift water against the pull of gravity is the basis for modern Western civilization. Los Angeles pioneered the effort to defy gravity with money in the early 1900?s with its Owens Valley Aqueduct. Southern California is now served with a network of pipelines and canals such as the Metropolitan Water District’s Colorado River Aqueduct. Phoenix, Tucson, San Francisco and Denver also utilize massive pumping and diversion systems to transport water from great distances in defiance of gravity to serve their growing urban populations.
III. The Law of Supply Creating Demand: The Third Water Law of the West, also invented by Los Angeles, is that “if you don’t have the water, you won’t need it.” This is sometimes stated as “he who brings the water brings the people”. Both are attributed to William Mulholland, a pioneer director of the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (DWP). Los Angeles and other Western cities operate on the premise that in order to assure growth of their cities, water supplies for the future must be developed well in advance of that growth. This is in contrast to the general approach in Western cities of developing freeways and other public infrastructure long after the growth has actually happened.
IV. The Law of I Got It First: The Fourth Water Law of the West, embodied in the West’s surface water laws, is the doctrine of “prior appropriation” translated into “first in time is first in right”. First in time for most water uses in the West were farms and mines. Instead of “first in time is first in right”, we have seen the evolution of “we’ve got more votes than you in the state legislature” to decide who gets water.
V. The Law of Beneficial Use: The Fifth Water law of the West is that to have a right to water it must be “beneficially” or “reasonably” used on that appurtenant land. This is only understood in the context that water left flowing in a river maintaining the survival of fish in that river and vegetation growing along side that river was not originally defined as a “beneficial” use in Western water law, whereas drowning gophers or growing rice in deserts were deemed “beneficial” uses. In recent years, environmentalists have succeeded in gaining recognition of “instream” beneficial uses of water and a new category of water rights is beginning to emerge to preserve flows in rivers. However this process is emerging only after most rivers and streams in the West have been dammed and dried up by diversions of the flows to the previously established beneficial uses. To fully appreciate why this happened, it must be remembered that the fish in these streams only recently were able to obtain the services of water lawyers via various environmental and conservation organizations.
VI. The Law of Worthless Land: The Sixth Water Law of the West is that without a water right or access to water, land is worthless. There is not enough water available to use all available land for all the potential beneficial uses. Thus lands with water rights or access to water have value for use, whereas land without water rights is known as the desert, with zero value except when being subjected to state and local property taxation. It is also a historic fact that farmers, ranchers and miners figured all this out about a hundred years before the average city council or environmental group, thus most Western water laws are heavily weighted in favor of using water for farming, ranching and mining. This law is also known as the “appurtenancy” rule meaning the rights to the use of water are tied to specific parcels of land, which are usually owned by farmers, ranchers or miners.
VII. The Law of Expropriation: The Seventh Water Law of the West focuses on how water (and other natural resources) are obtained for Western civilization. This Law depends on finding some fairly impoverished and unsophisticated water right holder (usually Indians, farmers, or rural communities) on the other side of the mountain a city can steal water rights from. Los Angeles pioneered this approach by buying up the Owens Valley on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada for water rights nearly 100 years ago. What we are now experiencing is not so much a water shortage, but a shortage of people on the other sides of the mountains who are willing to let their water resources be stolen from them by cities. “We didn’t run out of water,” said a city official, “we ran out of dummies we could steal water from”.
VIII. The Law of the Price is Right: The Eighth Water Law of the West is that there is no water shortage if the price is right. It is widely believed in city halls that the farmers will sell their water rights if the price is high enough so the farmers can go raise martinis in La Jolla instead of cotton in the Salt River Valley of Arizona, or the Imperial Valley in California. Thus when someone asks “is there enough water for Los Angeles or Phoenix or Tucson to grow?” the answer is probably yes–if you don’t care about how much the water will cost.
IX. The Law of Water Monopoly: The Ninth Water Law of the West is that water management in an arid environment almost always results in the creation of a water monopoly. Thus (along with the discovery of fire and religion) the first steps towards civilization included the construction of irrigation ditches and the immediate creation of some sort of bureaucracy to run the system. Not surprisingly where irrigation water monopoly civilizations rose, they lasted for thousands of years. The Westlands Water District in the Central Valley of California and the Salt River Project in Arizona are merely the modern counterparts of one of humankind’s most ancient of institutions–the water monopoly. Many western urban areas figured out the value of water monopoly and created enormously powerful regional agencies such as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Central Arizona Water Conservation District in Arizona, to do essentially the same thing–building vast networks of canals to bring water to their constituents.
X. The Law of Vanishing Civilizations: The Tenth (or Last) Water Law of the West should be called the Hohokam Law of Water and Gravity. Under this law, if there is no rain, there is no water to flow down hill. What went up–the buildings and the civilization–may crumble to dust if Mother Nature decides to hold a long drought. Lying beneath the streets of Phoenix and downtown Tucson are the ruins of ancient Hohokam Indian cities that vanished prior to 1400 AD. Phoenix is the second city to be built on the same site in reliance on the erratic flows of the Salt River. When there are curtailments of water deliveries to Los Angeles due to drought many Southern Californians had been heard to ask “what do you mean this used to be a desert?”
Conclusion: The principles that govern Western water law and policy have a long and somewhat distinguished history. It should also be noted that similar arid environment ditch-dependent civilizations ultimately collapsed under extreme environmental stresses, internal political conflict, and invasion by barbarian hordes. This is worth contemplating during a drought with various water interests fighting over who will get water in times of future shortages while the streets of Santa Monica or Scottsdale or Tucson are filled with RVs with New Jersey license plates.
“Human beings were invented by water to transport it uphill.” — Unknown
Aug
8
Wally’s Warming World Warning
August 8, 2010 | Posted by Michael "Aquadoc" Campana
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Time for a shout-out to a remarkable scientist (thanks to columbiawater for alerting me to this).
Thirty-five years ago, on this date in 1975, renowned geoscientist Wallace (Wally) Broecker published a seminal paper in Science titled,“Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?“. To say that Broecker was prescient is an understatement.
Here is the abstract:
If man-made dust is unimportant as a major cause of climatic change, then a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide. By analogy with similar events in the past, the natural climatic cooling which, since 1940, has more than compensated for the carbon dioxide effect, will soon bottom out. Once this happens, the exponential rise in the atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend to become a significant factor and by early in the next century will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years.
Over at Foreign Policy Brad Johnson has an informative article, “Wally’s World,“ not only about Broecker, but also a brief history of the work of those who set the stage for Broecker and those who came after him. It’s global warming in a nutshell. See also this post from Andrew C. Revkin.
Here is an interview with Broecker, who coined the term ‘global warming’ and is regarded by many as the father of climate science. He is 78 and still going strong at Columbia University and The Earth Institute.
I knew of Broecker long before I knew of global warming; I cited some of his work in my dissertation. Broecker was one of the pioneers of radiocarbon and isotopic dating and I used carbon-14 and tritium dating of groundwater in my tome, Finite-State Models of Transport Phenomena in Hydrologic Systems (Pretentious? Moi?), which I was completing about the time Broecker’s paper appeared. I confess I did not read the paper until almost 15 years later.
I had the distinct pleasure of meeting and chatting with him in the early 1990s when he spoke at one of our E&PS seminars at the University of New Mexico. He was a terribly nice fellow. His topic was something with which I was unfamiliar: the disruption of the North Atlantic’s thermohaline-driven ‘ocean conveyor belt’ (which he first recognized) that brought heat from the tropics to the northernmost Atlantic and kept northern Europe from having a climate like Siberia’s. Brocecker posited that if global warming melted enough of the polar icecaps, the northernmost Atlantic would freshen, thus weakening, and possibly terminating, this heat transfer mechanism, thus plunging northern Europe into a freeze. It has happened in the past.
I thought that was quite remarkable: global warming leading to dramatic cooling in one part of the world (here’s an article by Robert B. Gagosian on this topic). But that’s the nature of global warming: worldwide, average temperatures rise, but not every region warms.
Broecker also noted that these climate changes occurred rather abruptly:
The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change… Over the last several hundred thousand years, climate change has come mainly in discrete jumps that appear to be related to changes in the mode of thermohaline circulation. We place strong emphasis on using isotopes as a means to understand physical mixing and chemical cycling in the ocean, and the climate history as recorded in marine sediments.
I’ll never forget Broecker’s talk, lucidly and cogently presented. It was in the pre-Power Point era so he used transparencies and slides. He had some simple cartoons, and his closing transparency, showing a ferocious dragon-like creature with some humans annoying it, bore these words that have remained with me ever since:
“The climate system is an angry beast, and we are poking at it with sticks.” – Wallace S. Broecker, Albuquerque, NM, c. 1991
Aug
7
Voodoo Volumetric Analysis: Relative Volumes of the Gulf of Mexico and Dispersant
August 7, 2010 | Posted by Michael "Aquadoc" Campana
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A Tweet rolled across my screen the other day. I can’t recall the exact verbiage but it was something like this:
Gulf volume: 643 quadrillion gallons; dispersant volume: 1.5 million gallons. What’s the problem?
Sounds like the Tweeter had a great point: the volume of the Gulf is so huge relative to the volume of dispersant that the dispersant is unlikely to be a threat to Gulf life.
Let’s do some arithmetic. If you divide the dispersant volume by the Gulf’s volume (6.43E+17 gallons) you find the former represents something like 2E-12 (or 0.0000000002 %) of the Gulf’s total volume. Put another way, it is about 2 parts dispersant per one trillion parts of Gulf water, or 2 pptr. I have trouble imagining that small of an amount. Nevertheless, if you are trying to demonstrate that the dspersant is not a problem because its relative volume so small, the reasoning is specious.
The dispersant is not uniformly distributed (‘perfectly mixed’ in chemical engineering jargon) throughout the Gulf’s entire volume. There’s more of it some parts of the Gulf, and less of it in other parts. Recall the Gulf is not like a big fish tank with relatively uniform or regular dimensions. About 38% of the Gulf’s area consists of shallow intertidal zones, followed by 22% for the continental shelf (<200 m or <650 feet depth), 20 % for the continental slope (depths between 200-300m or 650 – 1,000 feet), and 20% for the abyssal regions (depths >3,000m or >10,000 feet). The greatest depth in the Gulf is 4,384m or 14,400 feet. Because of depth variations and currents, the dispersant is not likely to be evenly distributed. So the 2 pptr figure is likely a fiction.
Perhaps more importantly, keep in mind that this analysis does not consider the toxicity of the dispersant, how it degrades, or the effects of the dispersed (smaller particle size) oil. And some compounds can be toxic in extremely small amounts.
You can play the same game with the total volume of oil leaked. It is far greater than the dispersant volume, but it will still be small relative to the Gulf’s volume., So it’s not a problem, right?
Click here and scroll down to my comment for a similar analysis of the total volume of oil released relative to the Gulf’s volume.
As an aside, a fascinating book is How to Lie with Statistics, first published in 1954.
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” – Ernest Rutherford
Aug
4
Two Reports: 1) Western Water Management Case Studies; 2) Western Water in the 21st Century
August 4, 2010 | Posted by Michael "Aquadoc" Campana
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Today, like all days, is Western Water Day! Two blockbuster reports!
1) Cherise Estes just sent me this report released by the Family Farm Alliance on 30 July 2010: Western Water Management Case Studies.
Download Final_Western_Water_Management_Report
From her email:
The report discusses several creative and successful ways that scientists and agricultural leaders in the Western states are working together to conserve water, develop safe and effective water markets, fix aging infrastructure problems, and restore watersheds. It was developed as a practical tool for policy makers and water users who are struggling with the complications created by a host of new rules, policies and prescriptions for water and the environment.
Looks like good coverage of issues.
2) I missed this report when it came out over a year ago: Western Water in the 21st Century: Policies and Programs that Stretch Supplies in a Prior Appropriation World. It’s by Adam Schempp of the Environmental Law Institute.
Thanks to Steve Parker for sending this my way.
Enjoy!
“Leverage, cunning, and guile always overcome money and bluster.” – Unknown
“You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.” – Evan Esar
Aug
2
Western Governors’ Association DC Workshop: Drought, Climate, and Water
August 2, 2010 | Posted by Michael "Aquadoc" Campana
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The Western Governors’ Association and the Western States Water Council will sponsor a two-day
workshop in DC, 14-15 September 2010, on: Drought, Climate and Water: Using Today’s Information and Designing Tomorrow’s Services.
Here is a copy of the flyer:
Download Western States Water Council Conf Info
PURPOSE: To bring together a diverse group of federal, tribal, state, and local partners from the public and private sectors to prioritize decision-makers’ needs for drought, water and climate-related information. Ultimately, we seek to ensure that the National Integrated Drought Information (NIDIS) and climate services are designed and implemented to meet those needs. This meeting will focus particular attention on coordinating services among federal agencies and at federal-state-local and non-governmental intersections, including the development of specific follow-up steps to improve climate response going forward.
You can register here.
Thanks to AWRA President Ari Michelsen for sending this my way.
“Any party which takes credit for the rain must not be surprised if its opponents blame it for the drought.” –Dwight Morrow
Jul
29
Walter A. Lyon on Water Governance in the USA: No Captain, No Rudder
July 29, 2010 | Posted by Michael "Aquadoc" Campana
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Several weeks ago I learned that my AWRA colleague, Walter A. Lyon, had written an article on water governance in the United States. Since the article had not been published I offered to post it on WaterWired and Lyon agreed. You will find it provocative and thought-provoking.
I am presenting the article in its entirety, with the usual disclaimer that the opinions expressed within it are those of Lyon alone. Any edits were of the minor variety (i.e., typos, etc.).
Download Lyon_Water_Governance_in_US_final_26July2010
Here is Lyon’s short biography, with a briefer one below.
Download Lyon Short Bio Updated 2–6
Walter A. Lyon, Engineering Consultant, has served as Professor of Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, and as Deputy Secretary for Planning of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources. He received his undergraduate and graduate education in Environmental Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University and pursued graduate studies in Political Science and Public Administration at American University.In his state government assignment he was responsible for the State’s Environmental Master Plan, which gives direction to the many diverse resources and programs of State Government, the State’s Recreational Plan, federal environmental and resources legislation and policy analysis.As Director of Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Water Quality Management, he led the Commonwealth’s water pollution control and drinking water programs for over two decades and instituted many program innovations such as the State’s groundwater and aquatic biology programs. The program grew in scope and size and Pennsylvania’s municipalities and industries cleaned up well over 1,000 miles of streams, including Lake Erie, the Delaware Estuary and the Ohio River.He has lectured at universities in the United States, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Mexico, Japan and China and has been a consultant to a number of states, the Chicago Sanitary District, the Jamaica Water Commission, the International Joint Commission, the Puerto Rico Public Health Association, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a number of other clients. Mr. Lyon has published over 80 professional and technical papers, and is now working on a book on environmental decision-making.Enjoy!
“If the Federal government really means to orchestrate its water management in a more effective way then Congress and the President must first agree on some basic goals which must include a much strengthened focus for water management in the Executive Branch and Congress as well as wholly new relationship with states and basin agencies.” – Walter A. Lyon
Jul
28
Global Water Magazine Launched by Johns Hopkins University
July 28, 2010 | Posted by Michael "Aquadoc" Campana
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Johns Hopkins University’s Global Water Program has just launched its Global Water Magazine, an online publication with free access. It will be published every two months.
From the ‘About’ section of the site:
Every two months we will release a new issue, a collection of articles based on a specific topic from leaders in the water sector, and every week we will post new articles on any topic relevant to our program.
Our next issue is schedule for September 2010.
The inaugural issue has a trulyimpressive assortment of authors and topics; check out these 15 articles:
Emerging Challenges and the Future of Surface Water Quality Monitoring, Francisco J. Artigas
The Challenges Facing Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration, Angela Arnold Sowers
The Energy-Water Nexus: Finding Solutions in the Balance, Jan Dell and Kathy Freas
How to Improve Development Assistance in the Rural Water Sector, Harold Lockwood
Sustainable Approach Towards Development, Peter Phelps Macy
10 Years from Now—Rethinking Water Supply Management in the Developing World, Edward D. Breslin
Agriculture—Meeting the Water Challenge, Nadia S. Halim
The World is Dry, Erik R. Peterson
H2Ownership: Ancient, Equitable Traditions of Efficient Water Resource Trading in Desert Cultures, James G. Workman
H2Own: Water Ethic and an Equitable Market for the Exchange of Individual Water Efficiency Credits, Montgomery Simus
Water Rights and Human Rights: The Poor Will Not Need Our Charity if We Need Their Water, David Zetland
The First Stop on the Road to Corporate Water Reporting: Measurement, Eva Zabey
Imperatives for Urban Water Professionals on the Pathway to 2050, Paul Reiter
Towards an Interdisciplinary Ecological Approach to Infectious Disease, Rita R. Colwell
Breaking the Cycle of Neglect and Failure Through Evidence-Based Research, Luke MacDonald and Kellogg J. Schwab
“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” – Unknown
Jul
27
Gulf Oil Spill: An Open Letter From Coastal Scientists to Adm. Thad Allen
July 27, 2010 | Posted by Michael "Aquadoc" Campana
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Ken Reid sent me this letter. It’s from twenty-one coastal scientists, written by Dr. Robert (Rob) S. Young, who directs the Program for the Study of Developed Coastlines at Western Carolina University.
Download Thad Allen Letter Open Letter
The letter, addressed to Admiral Thad Allen, expresses concern over the re-engineering projects that are being employed to mitigate the effects of the Gulf oil spill, with little regard for or study of the potential long-term impacts of these efforts:
Our concern is that the cumulative, long-term impacts of all these projects are not being examined in any scientific or thoughtful way. As individual projects, we believe that they would fail a reasonable scientific evaluation. As a cumulative re-engineering of the US Gulf coast, they become a major problem.
Sounds like a really good idea to me!
Here is a story about the letter from a New York Times blog. It includes some comments by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA).
“No good deed goes unpunished.” – Clare Boothe Luce
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