By Dr. Robert Thorson

Hurricane watchers lost something special this year: hurricane season. Vermont still has mud season, thanks to its unique combination of cold winters and slate-rich soils. Accountants still have tax season, thanks to the insanity of our tax code and the April 15 filing date. But this past year, we’ve been watching and worrying about globally warmed tropical storms all year-round.

I read a story this week about waste-management contractors profiteering from the hurricane cleanup effort. The previous week I read one about damage to offshore oil platforms and its relationship to high gasoline prices. Before that I read about new rules for rescuing flood-stranded pets, the politics of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the engineering stability of levees, the political race for mayor of New Orleans, and plenty of other news as well. But the worst story of all is the prediction that 2006 will be another very active storm year, if not a disastrous one.

You know your wallet is in trouble when a three-month season of special concern goes annual, especially if a regional one goes national.

Imagine that northern Vermont got a steady drip of federal cash to manage its mud all year. Imagine that every nail-biting, ledger- bending accountant received free, year-round psychiatric care. Yet you don’t have to imagine something similar being offered to the Gulf Coast and Florida because it’s taking place already.

Before the past few years, residents knowingly exchanged the obvious benefits of nonexistent winters and beautiful beaches for the anxiety of watching storms during late summer and early fall. They did so, in part, because they knew that folks up north would help them out when a particularly devastating hurricane struck. But from now on, however, nothing short of a steady hemorrhage of federal cash will keep the regional economy going and its population healthy.

For the Mississippi Delta, the war against tropical cyclones was lost many years ago when they overbuilt neighborhoods below sea level, with beaches facing the hurricane engine of the subtropical sea. Two years ago, I described New Orleans as an American Atlantis in the making.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, I listed five reasons we should not repeat the mistake of overbuilding: Sea level is rising; the land is sinking; the shoreline is retreating; the bed of the Mississippi River is getting higher; and strong hurricanes are predicted to become more frequent. Practically every geologist in the country agrees.

Geologists can now add a sixth reason for giving up on the city. Borrowing a quote from Paul Simon, much of New Orleans is “Slip Sliding Away,” into the Gulf of Mexico. Based on geodetic data collected by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, much of the city lies on an enormous semi-consolidated block of sediment that is slumping into the Gulf of Mexico as part of a gigantic landslide. This recent finding by Roy Dokka of Louisiana State University is simply one more nail in the coffin now being built for the city at your expense.

When will the public finally learn that the shock and awe of Hurricane Katrina wasn’t caused by some unexpected catastrophe or by incompetent emergency management, but by the purposeful ignorance of a compelling natural hazard? Yet where is the federal administrator (not nearing retirement) who will stand up to demand we stop throwing big money at the Big Easy? Where is the prominent federal politician who will stand up and say, “Enough is enough”?

New England work crews are just now finishing the cleanup of road sand from last winter. This month I watched the giant mechanical street sweepers along with the arrival of robins and daffodils. I recall thinking how weird it would be if these cleanup crews kept working all year long at great cost to the taxpayer.

This is analogous to what’s now taking place along the Gulf Coast. What was once a seasonal and occasional cleanup after the storm season is now taking place all year long, thanks to a river of taxpayer cash.