"It's not just the Port of New Orleans" that benefits from ships that call at New Orleans, Barry said. "It's all the cities (upriver) that New Orleans makes into a port."
He also encouraged bloggers to stress that "practically the entire country" has contributed to the deterioration of Louisiana's coastal wetlands.
The country needs to know that more than 2,000 square miles of coastal land have been destroyed since the introduction of large-scale, man-made control devices on the Mississippi River, Barry said.
Those devices -- jetties to assist shipping navigation, hydroelectric dams that block sediment flow, dredging of canals and waterways for oil and gas production -- have benefited ports and powered homes but have harmed Louisiana's coastline.
"We don't get a damn bit of benefit from electricity produced in the Dakotas," he said, referring to large dams in North and South Dakota that he said are responsible for about one-sixth of the Mississippi River's lost sediment deposits.
During the Q.& A. portion of Barry's segment, an audience member asked about the importance of "building higher" as a strategy for flood mitigation. Barry interpreted this as a question about official policy vis-a-vis risk management in general. Barry advised that the most effective... and overlooked tool is to "just tell people the truth" about the risks they face.
"Just tell the truth" seemed to me the simplest but most universally applicable line one could have come away from yesterday's event with.
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