If anything has been learned from a regional water study that began ten years ago, it’s that results require persistence, David Waggonner, president of local architects Waggonner & Ball, said last week. He spoke Tuesday at Greater New Orleans, Inc., where local leaders discussed progress on the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, adopted two years ago. Waggonner & Ball began working on the plan in 2006 after visits to flood-control structures in the Netherlands. In the ensuing Dutch Dialogues, experts from the Netherlands assisted in the initial study.

It’s one thing to have a big plan on paper, but quite another for those projects to be implemented. “Politicians have to allow conditions for change,” Waggonner said Tuesday. In what’s become “a numbers story” since his firm’s initial look at regional water, each project’s costs and and benefits must be weighed, he said.

Source: The Louisiana Weekly