US urged to abandon ageing flood defences in favour of Dutch system

Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian (UK): America, now entering its hurricane season, was today urged to abandon the outmoded "patch and pray" system of levees – whose failure magnified the devastation of Hurricane Katrina – and borrow from the Dutch model of dykes and water management. Mary Landrieu, a senator from New Orleans who was brought to tears during a helicopter tour of the destruction of 2005, said America needed to rethink its entire approach to low-lying coastal areas and adopt an integrated model of water management like that of the Netherlands.

The US has budgeted $14bn since Katrina to shore up the flood defences of Louisiana and other low-lying areas. "I believe I have found a great model that will work for protecting the people of Louisiana and the people of the Gulf coast," she told reporters. Louisiana's ageing flood controls rely on a series of levees along the Mississippi river built over the past 80 years by the Army Corps of Engineers.

In the Netherlands, water management is incorporated into urban planning, taking into account parks and other open public spaces that could function as safety reservoirs in case of floods, and also barrier islands and wetlands. "They have engineers and architects that build a flood control system that is integrated into the landscape," Landrieu said. "We have a one-size-fits-all military model that is out of date – building levees – when we should be managing water."

The Dutch also build to a far higher standard of preparedness than in the US, with structures designed to hold up in even the most extreme storms and flooding conditions. "The system we have now in South Louisiana and in some measures in much of the country is unsustainable," Landrieu said. "It is literally a patch-and-pray system and it doesn't even try to patch us to the same level that is customary in other parts of the world.

Landrieu was speaking on her second visit to the Netherlands to study water management since Katrina, and said she planned to ask Congress to approve funds to improve water management along the Gulf Coast….

Alexander Allison took this shot of New Orleans in the early 20th century: Street flooding from overflow of Old Basin Canal in neighborhood around Claiborne Avenue, Orleans, and St. Peter Streets. Undated; may be aftermath of the hurricane of either 1909 or 1915.