Government Finances Climate Change Flood Barrier For DC

Someone in the federal government knows there is something to like about a wall - - and that climate change is a clear-and-present danger:

It has been quietly constructed over the past 2½ years to protect a vast swath of downtown Washington from a devastating flood. No longer a theory, climate change is here. The wall is a small part of the tens of billions of dollars Americans will have to pay in the future just to take the edge off the devastating effects of climate alteration.

Without the flood wall the experts deem necessary, a monstrous stream of water could surge from the Potomac up 17th Street and curl for over 2½ miles through the heart of the city. Such a flood would inundate all of the national museums and the agencies along Constitution Avenue, as well as the Reflecting Pool, a piece of the Ellipse behind the White House, the Federal Triangle, the National Archives, the I-395 tunnel in front of the Capitol and the Federal Center in Southeast Washington. The damage to our national treasures would be literally beyond calculation....

The plan is that when the largest storms threaten to raise the Potomac, the Park Service would quickly seal off 17th Street with a 9-foot-tall insert in the wall, which now stretches from the grounds of the Washington Monument to the edge of the World War II Memorial.