Free Republic

President Trump on Saturday ripped the "sea wall" that was proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers to protect New York City from damaging natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, calling the plan costly, foolish [and] environmentally unfriendly." "A massive 200 Billion Dollar Sea Wall, built around New York to protect it from rare storms, is a costly, foolish & environmentally unfriendly idea that, when needed, probably won’t work anyway," the president tweeted. "It will also look terrible. Sorry, you’ll just have to get your mops & buckets ready!" he added. The proposal, which would create a six-mile long barrier...

Ancient Neolithic villagers on the Carmel Coast in Israel built a seawall to protect their settlement against rising sea levels in the Mediterranean, revealing humanity's struggle against rising oceans and flooding stretches back thousands of years. An international team of researchers from the University of Haifa, Flinders University in Australia, the Israel Antiquities Authority and The Hebrew University uncovered and analysed the oldest known coastal defence system anywhere in the world, constructed by ancient settlers from boulders sourced in riverbeds from 1-2km near their village. In a study published today in PLOS ONE, Dr Ehud Galili from the Zinman Institute...

A British woman plunged to her death, along with her partner, while taking a selfie on a picturesque wall in Portugal, according to local authorities. Perth man Michael Kearns, 33, Louise Benson, 37, his British partner, fell 30 metres off a beach wall and were found by shocked locals early on Tuesday morning. Rui Pereira da Terra, the captain of the maritime authority in Cascais, said the two victims appeared to have lost their balance while taking a photograph overlooking Fishermen’s Beach. “Everything seems to indicate that the fall happened when they were probably trying to take a selfie,” he...

Tokyo Electric to Build Seawalls to Protect Fukushima N-Plant Fukushima, April 30 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo Electric Power Co. <9501> will build temporary seawalls by mid-June to protect its stricken nuclear power plant from tsunami that could occur if a strong earthquake happens again, officials said Saturday. Based mainly on forecasts by the Meteorological Agency, Tokyo Electric will prepare itself for an aftershock with the maximum magnitude of around 8 on the Richter scale and subsequent tsunami less than 10 meters high, the officials said. The barriers will be installed on grounds to the southwest of the No. 1 to No. 4...

The sea wall protecting the nuclear reactors at Fukushima in Japanese was beached by a recent tsunami because its height was calculated with 1960s geology, according to Mary Olson, a scientist at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. If modern supercomputer simulations were rerun, then the current nuclear disaster could have been averted with more technologically advanced sea walls. "It survived the earthquake—it was the tsunami beaching the sea wall that caused all the damage," said Olson. "The Fukushima Power Plant was built around 40 years ago, when plate tectonics was a radical idea. As we learned more about what...

An Iraqi welder fabricates the steel structure of the Umm Qasr pier and seawall project. The $53 million project is being managed by the Gulf Region Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Iraq. GRD photo by A. Al Bahrani. BASRAH — As part of a comprehensive plan to develop the Iraqi Navy’s (IqN) capabilities, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is partnering with the Government of Iraq (GoI) by managing a $53 million pier and seawall project at Umm Qasr. Funded by the GoI, the new project in southern Iraq will provide the IqN new port facilities as...

Maria Sanchez Lake was formed in the late 1800s when Henry Flagler had the upper reaches of Maria Sanchez Creek filled. A dam was built to regulate tidal flow. Over the decades the lake has become a beauty spot, habitat, and food provider for many water bird species. There are some erosion problems. The City of St. Augustine is now building a concrete seawall around a large section of the lake. There were better plans, less expensive plans, plans that would have enhanced the beauty, and benefitted wildlife. The big problem with urban engineers seems to be an addiction to...

This hurricane is much worse than Katrina in terms of loss of life. Hot dry Saharan air mixes with warm moist air of the jungles of Africa interact sometimes in mid-August, which a cluster of thunderstorms forms and moves off to the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of western Africa. This cluster of thunderstorm of persisted over the open water. Most of the thunderstorms, which are tropical waves or easterly waves fade away harmlessly. However this one did not die out. The tropical wave gains strength and becomes a tropical depression and tropical storm. Then this storm makes landfall over...

After Hurricane Betsy swamped New Orleans in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson... pledged federal protection. The Army Corps of Engineers designed a Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Barrier to shield the city with flood gates like those that protect the Netherlands from the North Sea. Congress provided funding and construction began. But work stopped in 1977 when a federal judge ruled, in a suit brought by Save Our Wetlands, that the Corps' environmental impact statement was deficient.... Speaking for environmentalists, the Center for Progressive Reform called the charges in the Los Angeles Times "pure fiction" because the judge stopped construction only until the...