I've been gadding about the NOLA blogs trying to find out what's going on this weekend, as the Rising Tide 2 Conference is now underway!
Thus far, and this is by no means an exhaustive survey, there's been some great blogging going on.
My biggest regret over not being able to attend (stuck in NYC, and I have a headcold and aaaaah!) is missing the fried chicken and red beans and rice from Dunbar's, which was served for lunch today. Mmmmm. But I digress. See below for what I managed in my (cough! cough!) Camille-like state to gather.
I started my blog search at Ray in New Orleans. At first, Ray seemed a bit befuddled with the intricacies of sucky liveblogging rt ii.:
Faux live blogging at Rising Tide II.
Got off to the typical New Orleans late start. The comfy tables all got claimed by early risers who didn't stay out at Buffa's into the wee hours last night. Naturally I'm in the back with the cool kids: Scout, who is quite charming even when she's hungover like a dog (and was a very gracious stumbling drunk last night), and her friend Lisa. Fuck the people at the tables...we got AC power back here.
The politics forum. Governor's race: boring. Seriously, there's nothing to talk about. Jindal doesn't have it locked up yet but until he gets caught in bed with a live boy, there's just no drama there.
But soon enough Ray got into the swing of things, and in particular, paid close attention to a riveting talk by Tim Ruppert of Tim's Nameless Blog:
Tim Ruppert of Tim's Nameless Blog (and also, incidentally, a civil engineer with the Corps, but speaking only as a private citizen) made a presentation that by itself was worth the $20 registration fee (which means now we get Dunbar's for free).
The focus was on risk management in relation to the "1% flood" (the so-called "100 year flood"). To sum up briefly (and I hope his slides make it onto the web), you have a flood risk, and then you have multiple means of reducing that risk down to a low (but non-zero) level called "residual risk". Build big-ass levees? You reduce risk. Coastal restoration? Reduce risk some more. Zoning and channeling development into less flood-prone areas? Reduce risk some more. Flood insurance? Reduces risk. Any time you want to go without one of those reduction strategies, the risk reduction needs to be picked up by some other component. Choose to not have flood insurance? Fine, but then that slice of risk becomes part of your residual risk.
He also described the flood control approaches taken to protect London from surge flooding up the Thames, and the Netherlands from storm surge from the North Sea.
I'm trying not to quote too much but oh it's so tempting! I strongly recommend reading the whole thing and especially the quote from Teddy Roosevelt!
Anyway, whether one agrees with Tim's analysis or not, it must be a novel experience to rationally discuss this issue of how to protect New Orleans and our coastal wetlands. In a sane world we would have had this discussion among our national, state, local and traditional media leadership in September of 2005.
Moving along, I found some information at Scout Prime's First Draft:
UPDATE: Dangerblond puts question of what bloggers can do in regard to corruption. Michael relates that the new inspector general has a very small budget, far smaller than what he has requested. Oyster states whoever replaces Oliver Thomas will be very important--predicts James Carter will run for it. Michael predicts Cynthia Willard Lewis to run for Oliver's seat as council president which would make a great deal of sense as that seat is an at large seat elected by the whole city. Right now Cynthia Willard Lewis lost much of her base for her present seat as she reps area including Lower 9th and other hard hit areas....so may as well try for at large.
Crime is a tough issue in New Orleans, and there have been many rallies, protests and other forms of activism to address the lack of effective policing in the city. Many communities have pushed to have databases of information for each neighborhood, and it'll be interesting to see how these community groups and present law enforcement, along with the bloggers getting out the true information, will impact what changes will be made in the NOLA criminal justice system.
Onward, onward. I next visited sophmom's site, DotCalm. Sophmom had a lot to say, and this in particular stood out for me:
Up Next: Matt McBride of Fix the Pumps, by video conference from Maryland. While Matt is no longer actively blogging at FtP, the content that he posted during his blog's short life is packed with importance, bringing a critical engineer's view to the current state of NOLA's flood protection, primarily as it relates to the outfall canals. His work is chocked full of raw scientific data and, while it's not easy reading, it helps us understand the problem, not just from an engineering standpoint, but politically as well.
Update: Matt's doing a great job of explaining the role of the pumping stations during flood conditions. The video conference includes his voice on audio (imperfect feed) with a small live video picture of him in the upper right hand corner of the screen and his PowerPoint presentation, which he's controlling (in Maryland). I am hoping that both Tim's and Matt's PPTs will be made available somewhere online after the conference, and, if they are, I will post links as updates. While Matt is no longer posting on FtP and no longer living in NOLA, his voice continues to be heard at places like Daily Kos and via email at Humid City.
Finally, I checked out the Rising Tide Blog and found more about Tim Ruppert:
Engineer and blogger Tim Ruppert of Tim' Nameless Blog introduced us to the term polder, the Dutch term for impoundments of flood-vulnerable land that makes up the majority of the land area of the Netherands.
Tim (who attended as a NOLA resident and blogger) works with the Corps of Engineers and remarked that at the Corps they had several Dutch engineers and that everyone at the CoE had stopped speaking of basins (the common term for an area in terms of drainage and flood protection) and had begun to speak of polders.
There's lots more information to check out, including panels on civics and the arts, and a keynote speech by Dave Zirin, author of
Welcome to the Terrordome, and lots lots more.
This conference appears to be rocking!
And of course, I gotta leave you with a little lagniappe. Here's Billie Holiday along with New Orleans great Louis Armstrong, singing "Farewell to Storyville" (1947):
And present-day heir to Louis Armstrong, Leroy Jones, playing "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans" solo and boy does he sound good!
Ok, now I'm gonna go have some chicken soup and dream of Dunbar's. Sigh.