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Posted Jun 4, 2009, 6:48 PM
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Join Date: Jun 2006
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Houston Planning the 'Ike Dike' Defense
Quote:
U.S. NEWS
JUNE 4, 2009
Houston Planning the 'Ike Dike' Defense
Houston-Area Leaders Envision a 60-Mile Barrier Against Hurricane Flooding
By BEN CASSELMAN
GALVESTON, Texas -- As the Gulf Coast braces for hurricane season, Houston-area leaders are pushing a plan to build a wall stretching some 60 miles along the coast, hoping to end the annual storm threat once and for all.
Dubbed the "Ike Dike" after the hurricane that ravaged the Houston area in September, the 17-foot-high wall would straddle the narrow entrance to Galveston Bay with 1,000-foot-long floodgates, allowing access to the city's port in good weather, but swinging shut when a storm approached to block floodwaters. Most damage from hurricanes is usually caused by floodwaters.
The total cost, according to project backers, would be $2 billion to $4 billion, although those numbers would almost certainly rise, experts say.
The idea is still in the conceptual stage and has plenty of detractors worried about cost, environmental impacts and whether it would really work. But the Ike Dike has gained significant traction in recent months.
A state commission set up by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to study disaster preparedness after Hurricane Ike supports moving ahead, and a coalition of elected officials is promoting it. The Houston business community, including powerful interests such as the chemical and shipping industries, has also signed on.
"This actually has more political legs than I ever dreamed it would have," said Bill King, a member of Gov. Perry's hurricane commission and the former mayor of the Galveston Bay city of Kemah.
Dike supporters argue that the project has implications far beyond Texas. The area is home to three of the country's 10 largest oil refineries, 40% of its chemical manufacturing capacity and the country's second largest seaport, handling some 600,000 tons of cargo a day.
"It's a national-security issue," said Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, a local business group.
Supporters hope that emphasizing the national importance of the project will help win federal funding. Robert Eckels, the chairman of the governor's commission, said most of the money would likely come from the Army Corps of Engineers, which would have to approve the project.
Supporters also are looking at building the dike along existing seaside roads, rather than directly on the coast, which might allow them to tap federal highway dollars. Even if funding is secured, Mr. Eckels said it would be more than a decade before the dike is completed.
Bill Merrell, the Texas A&M University at Galveston professor who first proposed the Ike Dike, said he based the structure on existing designs, including swinging floodgates built in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in the 1990s. London has had closeable floodgates on the Thames since 1982, and the Russian city of St. Petersburg is nearing completion of its own massive gates.
The Maeslant Barrier near Rotterdam, Netherlands, is among the structures that inspired the Houston-area coastal-wall concept, said Bill Merrell, the Texas A&M professor who first proposed the project.
"All the technology's proven. We're not asking for a miracle," Mr. Merrell said.
Dike supporters find inspiration in past disasters. After an unnamed 1900 hurricane nearly wiped Galveston off the map, island residents built a 15-plus-foot seawall along the island's east end, then raised the island itself by as much as 17 feet, jacking up more than 2,000 buildings and filling in underneath them with sand.
Compared with that project, Mr. Merrell said, the Ike Dike looks trivial -- at least from an engineering standpoint. But the perception that the project is too difficult could be hard to overcome. Mr. King, the former Kemah mayor, said he initially thought the idea was too far-fetched. But he said the simplicity of Mr. Merrell's plan, combined with the cost of leaving the coast unprotected, won him over.
"The elegance and the appeal of something like the Ike Dike is, with one swath, all the problems are solved," Mr. King said.
Skeptics already are lining up. Beachfront property owners worry the dike could block their ocean views. Some environmentalists fear the dike could disturb the fragile ecology of Galveston Bay. Communities at the end of the proposed dike worry they will get more flooding if the wall diverts water their way. And some worry the attention focused on the dike could hurt less-ambitious efforts.
"It's a distraction from more immediate, more affordable, more realistic things that could be done to make people safer quicker," said Mary Kelly, a vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund and a member of the governor's commission.
Gordon Wells, a University of Texas researcher who advises state officials on hurricane planning, warns the Ike Dike could actually make flooding worse in Galveston in certain scenarios, trapping water behind the wall.
Houston isn't the only coastal city looking for a quick fix to hurricane threats. Scientists and engineers recently met in New York City to discuss ways to protect it from hurricanes like the one that struck in September 1821, flooding all of Manhattan south of Canal Street. Among the proposals: a $6 billion, five-mile-long barrier between New Jersey and the Rockaway Peninsula in New York City's borough of Queens.
Write to Ben Casselman at ben.casselman@wsj.com
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Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124407051124382899.html
Last edited by BTinSF; Jun 4, 2009 at 8:06 PM.
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