[b]Well, protecting New Orleans against the elements. It's never been easy. Marshlands have provided a natural barrier against hurricanes, but over the years many of those swampy areas have vanished. CNN's Rob Marciano has this "Best of CNN" report.
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ROB MARCIANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): The marshes around New Orleans are disappearing, slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. The marshes are shallow waters that block a hurricane's surging waters as it comes ashore.
CHRIS PIEHLER, DEPT. OF ENVIRON. QUALITY: The marsh is really the first speed bump that the storms come through that slows down their energy and so they're not as strong by the time they get up to New Orleans.
MARCIANO: Chuck Velerubia (ph) has been monitoring the health of the marshes for Louisiana. Over the years, he's seen fewer and fewer of the big trees whose roots anchor other plants.
PIEHLER: We used to have cypress down here, which are no longer here in a lot of areas because of salt water intrusion.
MARCIANO: This is a diversion. A gated lock that helps move water from the Mississippi River into the marshes.
PIEHLER: They deposit sediment and nutrients out into these wetland areas.
MARCIANO: There are only two diversions in place along the lower Mississippi, but several more are planned. Velerubia says a bad situation got critical when Katrina bulldozed through the Louisiana marshes.
I'm standing in the marsh about 15 miles south of New Orleans. Before Katrina, we'd be waist high in healthy marsh grasses, but the storm ripped up those grasses leaving little more than mud flats and open water behind.
In other words, first the trees disappear and then, when the grasses are gone, there is little to keep the soil from washing out to sea. Imagine what the loss of the marshes means to the fishing industry here.
Pete Gerica is a Louisiana fisherman. He's worried about the fish and the crabs that make their homes in the marshes.
PETE GERICA, LOUISIANA FISHERMAN: And without that marsh being their protection to protect them from larger criters, you're not going to keep them.
MARCIANO: The marshes are a nursery. Shrimp, crabs and fish all rely on the wetlands to grow. Gerica knows that no marshes means no fishing.
GERICA: You look at this pass here and you can see where the birds are. They're standing. They're on land. This pass here, the shoreline, probably came out another hundred feet this way.
MARCIANO: Velerubia is also worried. He knows the next hurricane season is little more than four months away and worries if another big one comes there is little to stop its full force.
PIEHLER: Certainly this next season or two until the levees get put back together a little bit and some of the marsh comes back, this area will certainly be more vulnerable.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...26/sun.02.html