Or rather, silt. Rebuilding on a mistake;
What’s more, that sinking, unstable soil is in a bowl below sea-level surrounded by the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico, and Lake Pontchartrain, bodies of water that are eating away the coastline at a rate of 25 square miles or more each year.
In September of 2005, I interviewed a geologist who was the former Dean of his southern university’s Coastal and Marine Studies program. His closing, unsolicited recommendation was that New Orleans “should be largely abandoned as a city.”
New Orleans is doomed city, a geographical mistake destined to fall to geologic and hydraulic forces beyond our control. It is sad they we are too arrogant to concede this failed city to the sea, and seem destined to waste the billions of dollars that could be spent moving the inhabitants to higher ground.
And before any nitwit comments on the fact that all of the Netherlands are below sea level also,guess what? They don’t get hurricanes and storm surges of 30 + feet. NO is just more proof of man’s arrogance when it comes to Mother Nature.
I visited New Orleans a year ago. On our last day there, we take a tour of the devastated districts. Part of the tour involved climbing up on top of the dyke that surrounds Lake Pontchartrain and looking down(!) onto residences, well below the water level behind us. The tour guide’s point was clear.
Given that this is a hurricane zone, can anyone tell me what’s wrong with this picture?
Maybe they should rename New Orleans “New St. Petersburg” (or “New Versailles”…)
It sure shows up the fact that common sense isn’t so common anymore.
The same people who condemn inaction against global warming in the name of restoring nature’s “natural balance” are the same people who condemned the Bush administration for not building sufficient artificial dams and levees to prevent nature from doing its natural thing in New Orleans.
Mankind’s favourite places to build;
River flood plains.
Coastal, barely above sea level.
Volcanic ash plains. (Active or not)
Ferile farm land.
Hurricane alley.
Tornado alley.
Oh well, keeps the fear-mongering media in business 🙂
And yet man has the nerve to refer to himself as the “higher intelligence” mammal !!??
I guess the displaced Acadians get to move again, eh.
Forget the common sense, it’s all about politics, no connection between the two.
They can’t be believers in the global warming scam or they’d be concerned about it causing them more disasters and move to higher ground.
“Port Royal” the second,would be so much more,appropriate a name for this city. This would give the future scuba divers a look at the past,and
the arrogance of man.
Rebuilding on a mistake? Besides Nawlins, there’s the city of Venice; about half of Holland – all definitely below sea level.
Liz J. makes an excellent point.
Same goes for waterfront properties. You would think that the global warming crowd would be buying up the properties that are across the street from the waterfront properties.
This is a classic example of thinking with emotion rather than thinking logically. Any politician who even thought about suggesting a city relocation would have been committing career suicide. It is like suggesting that the Katrina refugees in Texas should get off the free ride: you would be labelled a cruel heartless SOB.
The levees are continually sinking and require constant maintenance just to keep them at the same level. It is the classic example of throwing good money after bad. Time to cut the losses but the combination of clinging to the past and government payola(yes, even in Chocolate City) will make this an impossible task.
Hey Richard. I already have my soon-to-be waterfront property in Alberta! You mean you haven’t got in on it yet? What a maroon.
Rebuilding an entire sea-side city -below- sea level is the kind of thing that only gets done with public money. If home and business owners in the affected area had to pony up for the dikes and the maintenance, they’d move.
This problem could be solved by a big TAX CUT. Now please.
Can anyone comment on the Insurance angle? How much to insure property there… or can you?
While I agree that the destroyed parts of New Orleans should not be rebuilt, it’s going to be difficult to abandon it altogether since New Orleans is one of the busiest ports in the world and a critical part of the Gulf-Of-Mexico oil industry.
Either these things need to be relocated further upstream or special measures need to be taken to protect them (and the people who work in them).
This might be providing some of the motivation for rebuilding NO. It ain’t just Bourbon Street.
offshore of New Orleans the tertiary and cretaceous sediments are over 20,000 feet thick. Its a subsiding delta.
It has also been destroyed 11 times since its founding. It just got big between Katrina and the previous hurricane.
time to leave it like Chiztchan Itza, times up.
“It sure shows up the fact that common sense isn’t so common anymore.”
Well, since New Orleans was founded in 1718, apparently it hasn’t been common for a while.
Paul: The Cajuns actually don’t live in New Orleans proper.
testing
Re the Netherlands: I think you will find that they experience storms which are as severe as hurricanes. I remember a couple of terrible wind storms while living there for six years. Indeed, some of the winds experienced routinely off Newfoundland are of hurricane force. Of storm surge I couldn’t say.
Dave in Pa: Do some googling on Venice and sinking; they are worried that the entire city might disappear in the next 30-50 years, and that’s without any affect ascribed to global warning. The changes due to man’s actions (mostly pumping out water from beneath the ground for drinking, etc.) is about 3 times that ascribed to increased tidal levels.
And I remember reading articles in the Atlantic Monthly over 20 years ago describing how the Army Corps of Engineers’ activities to “tame flooding” on the Mississippi were destroying the wetlands south and west of New Orleans that actually protected the city from storm surges. The ACE’s goal was to protect the surrounding lands from the major floods that the Mississippi. You can read about their activities at:
http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/bro/misstrib.htm
The problem is, that by straightening the river’s course (“revetment”), more of the flood water was diverted into the delta than had done so in prior years. This is like taking a low pressure hose, and suddenly turning it into a high pressure one. A lot more of the delta gets washed away with each spring’s run-off, regardless of whether the river floods or not. If those wetlands had been in place when Katrina hit, the chances are good that New Orleans, while damaged, would not have been devastated to the extent it was.
So Venice and New Orleans both suffered from man’s actions, but neither had anything to do with global warming.
eccchhhh…Leave New Orleans alone.
What could go wrong?
…New Orleans theme song:
“Rubber duckie, you’re the one…”
My brother is a geologist. About ten years ago he visited New Orleans and the gulf coast as part of a geological field trip. When I asked him what he thought of New Orleans, the first words out of his mouth were, “It’s doomed.” The shared opinion of him and his colleagues was that NO is sinking and it will eventually require dykes and levees the height of skyscrapers to keep NO dry, and even then it will succumb at some point. It’s not a question of if NO will be abandoned, but when. The comparison with Holland is invalid, the geological formations upon which Holland’s dykes are built are very different — far more stable than NO.
How about calling it “New Atlantis” ’cause one more good storm and it will be there.
I predict that the death of New Orleans will not come from a hurricane, but from a dam failure on the Atchafalaya River.
Here is a long, but excellent read, on the control dam on the Old River/ Atchafalaya River diversion.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1987/02/23/1987_02_23_027_TNY_CARDS_000348555
The Mississippi has been trying for a long time to do one of it’s channel diversions that it manages once every 1000 years. The Corp of Engineers have been preventing the latest one by the control dam on the Atchafalaya River. That inadequately maintained system is always one really, really large flood or one barge hit away from the Mississippi River changing it’s course, suddenly and desi.
That would be economic ruin for New Orleans and Baton Rouge, plus a major hit to the US economy.
Again, long, but an entertaining and informative read.
*
Castles made of sand
Slips into the sea
Eventually
– Jimi Hendrix
– Electric Ladyland LP around 1969
*
Point 1
Not all of N.O. is below sea level. In fact, much ofthe nicer, older neighbourhoods aren’t. That isn’t a coincidence.
Point 2
Most of the really badly below sea level bits got destroyed already
Solution to this problem:
LANDFILL.
Ladies and Gents. We have the technology. They already have to dredge the river, so just dump the muck in the hole. It’s cheap to do. Build on top of the landfill with structures that “Float” in the in the civil engineering sense, on the fill. Then your dikes and levies don;t have to be be quite so critical.
…Fred, while a nice idea of using the dredge, I guess you’ve never seen what floats down that river.
Do you really want to have a house on top of a toxic dump?
I waiting to hear all the cancer and sickness cases in rescuers from the last flood.
Yoop: That’s a great link. The link I had posted easier (I’ll repeat it below) shows a map which makes it a little easier to understand the geography described in the article.
http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/bro/misstrib.htm
Hey, Somebody call in the Dutch- they seem to be doing OK with the sea in their neck of the woods!
If the majority was white they’d fix it since it’s all working class colored they don’t care.
If it were white rednecks living in a regularly occuring disaster area and in recurring need for Federal Bailout money I’m sure you’d feel the same way.
If it were rednecks living in a regularly occuring disaster area and in recurring need for Government money to bail them out I’m sure you’d feel the same way.
Not many factories in New Orleans. Not much industry but tourism. That’s why no one gives a damn. Much like the west gets treated by Ottawa.