The EconomistJuly 27th 2019 United States 272
A
s hurricanes go, Barry hardly quali-
fied for the title. Poorly organised and
slow-moving, it achieved the requisite
wind speed for just a couple of hours on
July 13th before being demoted to a tropical
storm. But for New Orleans, mild Barry was
a wake-up call, exposing a new vulnerabili-
ty for a low-lying city: the possibility that
the vast Mississippi—still swollen in July,
months after it typically crests—could be
pushed over its banks by the surge a tropi-
cal storm often brings.
In flood-prone New Orleans floods can
come from the sea, from the river or from
the sky. Much of the city is below sea level,
and its topography is bowl-like, with levees
forming the edges. When torrential rain
falls, as it often does, there is nowhere for it
to go, so it must be pumped out over the
walls. The potential for disaster is greater
when a levee is overtopped—or worse,
breached—by tidal Lake Pontchartrain or
the river, which bookend the city.
Hurricane Katrina, now 14 years ago,
was the modern standard-setter for local
catastrophe. Katrina’s formidable surge
overwhelmed a system of levees and flood-
walls designed to keep the sea at bay in hur-
ricanes, a system later revealed as badly
flawed. Eighty percent of the city went un-
der water, much of it for weeks. Since then,
most New Orleanians—and the Army
Corps of Engineers, which oversees the
system of levees—have understandably fo-
cused their attention on improving the de-
fences facing the sea. The Mississippi river,
the very reason for the city’s precarious sit-ing, has lately been an afterthought.
Barry helped change that. Though hur-
ricane season runs from June 1st until No-
vember 30th, the first two months are usu-
ally quiet in the Gulf. Barry came early for a
Louisiana cyclone, arriving when the Mis-
sissippi, which rises every spring with
snowmelt and rainfall in the northern
states and Canada, was still swollen. The
river’s height as it passes the city is mea-
sured against sea level. When Katrina hit in
August 2005, it was around three feet above
sea level. When Barry was approaching it
was at 16 feet above.
Just as they do to the seas in their path,
hurricanes can change river levels. When
Katrina churned through Louisiana the riv-
er level shot up from less than four feet to
nearly 16 in the city, not enough to threaten
the river levees, but close. Early forecasts
had said that Barry might raise the Missis-
sippi by four feet. That would have been
enough to reach the tops of some of the
city’s levees. Scientists are still trying to
understand how the extra force a high river
has might counteract the opposing surge a
powerful hurricane carries. But had Barry
been a monster like Katrina, or even a less-
catastrophic storm like Gustav in 2008 or
Isaac in 2012, it is likely that the flood de-
fences along the river would have failed.
New Orleanians are used to thinking
about stacked threats, for instance the pos-
sibility that a slow-moving hurricane
could dump tons of rain, flooding the city
from within even as a storm surge menaces
from without. Barry introduced a new one:
a high river in the summer, pushed over its
banks by a hurricane. This new menace
showed itself even though the Corps of En-
gineers has taken steps this year to lower
the height of the river. The Bonnet Carre
Spillway, a man-made sluice about 30
miles upriver from New Orleans that di-
verts water to Lake Pontchartrain, is not put
into service in most years. This year, it has
been open for 120 days, a new record. And
yet the river remains high.
For New Orleanians, the brush with
Hurricane Barry was a reminder that their
city has been made more vulnerable by glo-
bal warming, which brings rising seas and
an increased likelihood of powerful hurri-
canes. Oil and gas exploration has has-
tened the erosion of the wetlands that once
protected the region. And the river’s levees,
while keeping the Mississippi in its banks,
have starved the delta of sediment and led
it to sink more quickly. Engineers and aca-
demics are starting to talk about ways to di-
minish the river’s flow safely in the fu-
ture—by creating new reservoirs
upstream, or perhaps restoring wetlands.
While those questions are debated, New
Orleanians will be keeping an eye on their
mighty river, which is expected to remain
well above its usual height as the peak of
hurricane season approaches. 7NEW ORLEANS
More snowmelt to the north plus
storms in the Gulf equals troubleA new threat to New OrleansBarry scary
swered questions with either clipped one-
word replies or legalistic language did not
help their case. He refused to read portions
of the report aloud, for fear of becoming a
political prop in their campaign adverts
(some of which were uploaded online be-
fore he had left his chair)—leaving the va-
rious questioning congressmen to stage
their own dramatic readings. Throughout
much of the day it appeared that the con-
gressmen were testifying to Mr Mueller,
rather than the other way around.
For House Democrats this was deflat-
ing. An impeachment effort last week,
called by Representative Al Green over the
president’s racist remarks, died after being
turned back by a majority of Democrats. It
also comes after months of oversight au-
thority—and the subpoena authority that
comes with leadership of the House—have
failed to turn up as much scandal as was ex-
pected at the start of the year. Jerrold Na-
dler, the chairman of one of the commit-
tees, already has a primary challenger who
charges that he has been too tame in his
oversight of the administration.
The Republicans were almost uniform-
ly in Trump-defence mode. Though they
took nearly every speaking opportunity to
assail Mr Mueller’s credibility and impar-
tiality they did gleefully accept the conclu-
sion that “the investigation did not estab-
lish that members of the Trump campaign
conspired or coordinated with the Russian
government in its election interference ac-
tivities” without question. Several, includ-
ing Devin Nunes, the senior Republican on
the intelligence committee, advanced the
conspiracy theory that the entire affair had
been a hoax concocted by Democrats and
Russia. If an aim of congressional Demo-
crats had been to present the public with a
clear and convincing view of presidential
misconduct, this seesawing from one sym-
pathetic Democrat to the next Republican
inquisitor will not have helped.
Stuck at the epicentre of a political
storm, Mr Mueller sought to extricate him-
self as painlessly as possible. It was an un-
derstandable strategy. Political showman-
ship reigned in this congressional hearing,
as it does in many. His few flashes of emo-
tion came when discussing the prospect of
recurring electoral interference. “Over the
course of my career, I’ve seen a number of
challenges to our democracy. The Russian
government’s efforts to interfere in our
election is among the most serious,” he
said in his opening remarks. Later on, he
remarked that “It wasn’t a single attempt.
They’re doing it as we sit here. And they ex-
pect to do it during the next campaign”. Nor
did he sound hopeful that Congress would
heed the warning. Asked whether the med-
dling of foreign governments in elections
was a permanent feature of American poli-
tics, he answered: “I hope this is not the
new normal, but I fear it is.” 7