Dear Editor,
I am writing about the article by Xavier Cortada (“A 20-Foot Sea Wall is Not the Answer,” July 2021), to which I completely agree! The thing that was missed in the article was the number of gigantic mistakes the Army Corps of Engineers has made over many years.
(NBC News)
A 26-foot-high New Orleans storm surge barrier that is part of an updated14.5 billion hurricane and storm damage risk-reduction system, considered the strongest and largest of its kind in the U.S. Despite its size, another Hurricane Katrina-size storm will not prevent flooding.
We could start with the jetties that line beaches up and down the coasts, which have proven over time to exacerbate rather than correct what they were supposed to do. Or we could look at the canals that were cut through the Everglades and have done more harm than good. We could also look at the walls along the Mississippi and in New Orleans, which breached during Hurricane Katrina.
Their idea of protection with a wall along the coast of Miami-Dade County is ludicrous. It seems to me that they just decided to throw this idea out without really thinking it through – “Let's just put up a wall and that will solve the problem of sea rise and heavy storms!” I agree with Xavier, that our politicians are either not using their heads or capable of understanding the problem, or taking the time to look for genuinely viable solutions. We need input from scientists, ecologists and people willing to take the time and energy needed to put a proper solution in place. Rushing this through would be wrong on many, many levels.
Richard DiRenzo
Miami Shores