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[red_pill]

(Reuters) - When Jeroen Aerts, a Dutchman tasked with crafting a plan to defend New York City from flooding, first looked at its coastline seven years ago, he was taken aback by how vulnerable it was.

Unlike some of the other large cities around the world, such as London and Amsterdam, that have comprehensive flood defence systems with levees and

Comments

[chaya]

You need an article title.

[omimouse]

My mom talks about her baby clothing getting sent to people from the North Sea Flood, and about growing up in the Netherlands as they worked their asses off to make sure that it never happened again. The few years I lived there when I was a child hit right during the 40th anniversary of the flood, and it was a major topic of pretty much everything, including conversations on climate change and how it would affect the sea levels.

Hell, the Dutch system of government owes a lot of how it works to where the Netherlands *is*.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder_model

[nicosian]

This. I lived there for a while last yr with family and they take flood management seriously. ( and to an art, the Gemaal Croquis is a gorgeous pump station!) Some of the modern flood management is pretty amazing stuff.

Do people think if a storm can't flood one location it'll shuffle to the next town like a thief looking for an easy target?

How much money gets sunk into damage repair when a bit of foresight now would save so much later ( oh, right. Political short sightedness)

[linda_lupos]

Water is really just a constant presence here. Swimming lessons are almost mandatory (we used to have school swimming lessons, like gym class, but I think most schools have cut them by now to save money and because most kids get private swimming lessons anyway), and most cities have a beautiful city centre with lots of canals, for example. During the winter, flooding is unusual but not unexpected (all that melting ice and snow). There are several villages, especially in the north of the Netherlands, which have been build on artificial hills in the middle ages just in case there's a flood. My father was born in the year of the North Sea Flood and grew up right on the other side of a dike (in the north of the Netherlands, about as far away from the flood as you could possibly get) so the sea was never far away. Hell, even our crown prince has dedicated himself to water management!

In hindsight, yeah, it's just... inconcievable that they build New York so close to water and did NOT build any protection for the city. O_o

[romp]

When I read the first sentence, I thought the Dutch guy was in the 1600s in New Amsterdam. This news surprises me 'cause I'd never heard of such a thing and NYC sometimes seems like the centre of the universe. Yet I'd hear about the levees in NO being in crisis for years before Katrina. In short, interesting article.

[keeperofthekeys]

My bf is a civil engineer and he will almost certainly be taking a FEMA assignment in NYC. He was there after Irene, too, but there wasn't much talk to making major changes then afaik. Here's hoping the attitude is a bit different this time around (or, probably more relevant, that the funding is there to make it happen).

[ook]

Looking at photos of the NJ and NYC coastlines before and after Sandy, I am amazed that so many people had been allowed to build so many tightly-spaced homes within a mile to hundreds of feet of the water and AT SEA LEVEL. And they never expected to have a storm surge wipe them out

[red_pill]

notto be flippant, but if i were the NYC goverment, i would say to tell with picturesk and the people who worrys so much about it. dito NJ and NY state.

[layweed]

GALVESTON YEAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! \o/

sorry just grew up there, and the SeaWall was a fact of life.

[ook]

Hahaha. Yeah! I spent many a Saturday down by the seawall when I was a kid and my family drove down to Galveston for seafood. I never really thought about it, but I guess a seawall does kind of "spoil the view," however the seawall is great to have during a hurricane. If you want to see open beach, you just have to drive down to either end of Galveston Island.