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How Politics Buries Science in Landslide Mapping
http://www.nbcnews.com/#/news/investigations/how-politics-buries-science-landslide-mapping-n73256
How Politics Buries Science in Landslide Mapping
.
By Bill Dedman
he six geologists were just starting their work, climbing the mountains of Western North Carolina to map the debris left behind by landslides over millions of years, when the political footing gave way beneath them. Opposition had been building from real estate agents, from home builders planning subdivisions, and then from politicians. When all that energy was released, the science was crushed flat.
The new Republican leadership in the legislature cut off all funding for the state's landslide mapping project in 2011, and the five geologists were laid off. They had mapped just four of 19 counties. Only one geologist kept a state job, but he is not allowed to do any landslide mapping. Another is helping a mining company search for gold. Two are in private practice. The fifth is checking the work of road paving crews. And the sixth moved to Virginia, mapping landslides until the temporary funding for that project ran out.
Against the backdrop of the March 22 mudslide in Washington state, which killed 33 people and left 12 still missing as of Monday, geologists say the story of the team in North Carolina illustrates how America has never put forth a serious effort to learn from the earth's past. Geology experts say science is often a casualty of land politics, as the nation fails to protect others who are unaware they are at risk from deadly landslides.
Signs of an insufficient effort to save lives:
•The federal government hasn't made a national map of areas with landslides hazards in 32 years. That last map was made in 1982 — years before computerized mapping tools became commonplace.
•That 1982 map is so poorly defined — the official in charge of the federal landslide hazard program calls it a "cartoon" — that officials discourage the public from zooming in too closely to look at the map, lest they get bad information.
•The entire federal budget for landslide research is $3.5 million a year — far less than the property value lost on a single day when 17 mansions slid down a hill in 2005 in Laguna Beach, Calif. (For comparison, $3.5 million is about the same amount Medicare spends per month buying penis pumps for men with erectile dysfunction.)
•States have been left to pick up the slack, but budgets for landslide mapping have been severely cut in Nevada, Colorado, Georgia, and others, including the politically tinged cuts in North Carolina that cost those five geologists their state jobs.
How Politics Buries Science in Landslide Mapping
.
By Bill Dedman
he six geologists were just starting their work, climbing the mountains of Western North Carolina to map the debris left behind by landslides over millions of years, when the political footing gave way beneath them. Opposition had been building from real estate agents, from home builders planning subdivisions, and then from politicians. When all that energy was released, the science was crushed flat.
The new Republican leadership in the legislature cut off all funding for the state's landslide mapping project in 2011, and the five geologists were laid off. They had mapped just four of 19 counties. Only one geologist kept a state job, but he is not allowed to do any landslide mapping. Another is helping a mining company search for gold. Two are in private practice. The fifth is checking the work of road paving crews. And the sixth moved to Virginia, mapping landslides until the temporary funding for that project ran out.
Against the backdrop of the March 22 mudslide in Washington state, which killed 33 people and left 12 still missing as of Monday, geologists say the story of the team in North Carolina illustrates how America has never put forth a serious effort to learn from the earth's past. Geology experts say science is often a casualty of land politics, as the nation fails to protect others who are unaware they are at risk from deadly landslides.
Signs of an insufficient effort to save lives:
•The federal government hasn't made a national map of areas with landslides hazards in 32 years. That last map was made in 1982 — years before computerized mapping tools became commonplace.
•That 1982 map is so poorly defined — the official in charge of the federal landslide hazard program calls it a "cartoon" — that officials discourage the public from zooming in too closely to look at the map, lest they get bad information.
•The entire federal budget for landslide research is $3.5 million a year — far less than the property value lost on a single day when 17 mansions slid down a hill in 2005 in Laguna Beach, Calif. (For comparison, $3.5 million is about the same amount Medicare spends per month buying penis pumps for men with erectile dysfunction.)
•States have been left to pick up the slack, but budgets for landslide mapping have been severely cut in Nevada, Colorado, Georgia, and others, including the politically tinged cuts in North Carolina that cost those five geologists their state jobs.
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