Disaster Predicted 4 YEARS ago

Scientific American: Drowning New Orleans:

The current devastation in New Orleans was clearly predicted, and this Scientific American article (linked above) clearly had predicted the situation that we are seeing today.

There had been talk for a long time about doing something to prevent this type of situation...but for whatever reason (money & politics) the status quo was apparantly worth the risk.

A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city

One of the questions I have is, what would it have cost to prepare the delta for this kind of problem? Apparantly the answer doesn't come with only a dollar figure, but it had to have a tremendous human price as well. I just hope that the problems are addressed to handle this kind of event (and larger) immediately following the clean up.

(Perhaps someone can dig up the names of the officials who stopped any projects that would have protected the region. It would be nice to ask these leaders what they think about their decisions today.)