Intricate Flood Protection Long a Focus of Dispute - New York Times

This is what bech nourishment is about. Stopping Storm damage. Katrina is the worst case scenario for a coastal storm and NO is in the worst place to have one, below sea level. Yet I don't hear anyone arguing that people shouldn't live there.

Intricate Flood Protection Long a Focus of Dispute - New York Times: "Since 2001, the Louisiana
Congressional delegation had pushed for far more money for storm
protection than the Bush administration has accepted. Now, Mr. Naomi
said, all the quibbling over the storm budget, or even over full
Category 5 protection, which would cost several billion dollars, seemed
tragically absurd."

:"It would take $2.5 billion to build a Category 5 protection system, and we're talking about tens of billions in losses, all that lost productivity, and so many lost lives and injuries and personal trauma you'll never get over," Mr. Naomi said. "People will be scarred for life by this event."