re: #129 Gus 802

I see by that decision that we may have a shot at suing the descendants of the French Monarchy to recover the funds:

As Albert Cowdrey wrote in ‘‘Land’s End,’’ a history of the Army Corps of Engineers’ battle with the lower Mississippi River: ‘‘When men set about building a civilization in the flood plain, they had to interfere with this natural balance. Unless they were willing to give up cities, towns, large-scale agriculture, and industry, and live at a subsistence level, the river had to be restrained.

‘‘To raise its natural levees was the simplest and cheapest course, and the first Europeans had hardly settled in the valley before they adopted it,’’ Cowdrey wrote.

As with much of the state’s early history, Louisiana State University fisheries biologist Richard Condrey says we can blame it on the French monarchy.

In 1719, Father Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix was sent by King Louis XV of France to explore Canada and the Mississippi and make recommendations on how best to develop New France.

After three years of exploration, ‘‘He recommended to the king that French settlers should learn to live with the annual inundations of the river because it fed and fattened the land,’’ Condrey said. ‘‘The French knew that these annual overflows were very important to maintaining the fertility of the soil.

‘‘But the court wasn’t interested in long-term economic development or social equality,’’ Condrey said. ‘‘They were out to make a short-term profit, and leveeing quickly became the policy because they wanted the land cleared, the cypress out of the way, and the bison gone so they could build plantations.http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/6016