Posted on 08/31/2005 1:52:50 PM PDT by Congressman Billybob
My engineering training kicked in when I saw the NASA photographs from space of New Orleans, and of the whole Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. There is an obvious solution to the New Orleans problem. The Dutch have already demonstrated it.
Take New Orleans as the first and worst example. The pumps, levees and canals intended to protect New Orleans have been controlled by local authorities. They left three of the four pumping stations dependent on the local power grid.
Hellooo. The precise time those pumps are most needed is during a storm when the local power grid may fail. Yet local authorities saw fit to outfit only one pumping station with backup diesel generators to continue functioning.
At least one station was knocked out because its roof blew off. Hellooo. If a pumping station, desperately needed in a hurricane, has a roof that cannot withstand 130 MPH winds, someone was asleep at the switch.
The Internet gives some history of local control of these facilities. I understand that years ago, new and more powerful pumps were bought for these stations. But they were not installed, because the contract didn’t include that. So those pumps sat in a warehouse owned by a friend of Mayor Moon Landrieu (father of the current Senator Landrieu), incurring storage costs for four years, before another contract with another friend of the Mayor could be signed to install them.
This story is typical of many about various parts of New Orleans government. In any crisis in that city, it’s a race between corruption and incompetence for which will be the primary cause of the latest public failure. If New Orleans is to survive as a city, the first step must be to yank authority for flood control out of local hands and give it to the Army Corps of Engineers.
I refer to the Dutch example because that nation seized thousands of square miles from the Atlantic Ocean, and has held it for decades against the worst storms the Atlantic could toss at its dikes, dams, and flood gates. Apply that thinking first to New Orleans.
Nearby Lake Pontchartrain is one of the largest lakes in the United States. Its water storage capacity is enormous. So, the answer is simple. Dam the mouth of the Lake where it meets the Gulf, and release water only when the Lake level is higher than the Gulf.
Locks could guarantee continued access by boats and barges between the Lake and the Gulf. And that would make the Lake a safe refuge for boats, when the next major storm comes.
Second, rebuild the levees at a reliable level to withstand the worst storm surge in history, and rebuild the pumping stations so they can handle the demand, running on generator power that won’t fail. Build in redundancy, so maybe half of the pumping stations can fail, but the remaining ones can meet the demand.
The water storage capacity of Lake Pontchartrain may even be sufficient to prevent floods on the Mississippi from threatening New Orleans. Build a storm canal above New Orleans from the River into Lake Pontchartrain. Then, when a flood stage from heavy rains anywhere in the central US up to Minnesota threatens to break into New Orleans, open the canal to divert into the Lake enough water to break the flood crest.
Now look at the whole Gulf Coast. Word is now coming out that thousands of people, not merely hundreds, have died in coastal areas in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. All that area cannot be protected. On a rational basis, using shortest lines, build dikes (Dutch example again) to protect part of those areas.
Beach areas which are the basis of the important tourist industry, would remain open. However, areas outside the dikes would have mandatory evacuation. Any who refused to evacuate would be given up for dead. Rescue would not be attempted.
New construction in the beach area should be on stilts. If illiterate Hondurans can get the message, so can Americans. The market would guarantee minimal functional construction in that area, if the Feds said, “No insurance, you’re on your own.” Like beach bars in the Caribbean, it would be enough to serve the purpose, easily replaced when destroyed.
There you have it. Problems solved for the long term. Here’s the link to the NASA photographs which show exactly how this could work: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3
About the Author: John Armor is a First Amendment attorney and author who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
Lemme know what y'all think.
John / Billybob
Wonder what would happen to Holland if it got hit with a Cat 5 hurricane?
Good idea, but it'll never happen, the enivornmentalists will go nuts.
From Prydain:
A positive way to think about the future of New Orleans
This comment by Charlie E., a commenter at Kendall Harmon's "Titusonenine", gives a hopeful way to think about the future of New Orleans: emulate the Dutch in their reclamation of the Zuider Zee. Charlie E writes:
I pray for all caught up in this. It is a sad and hard thing to lose your house and possibly your job. But the people caught up in this should not despair too much. The rest of the country is there and they appear to be more than willing to help.I know there are undoubtedly obstacles to face that I cannot even comprehend--but I think this could well be a model for us to follow, and give long-term hope to New Orleans, although it will take years to do so.
It must be overwhelming at this point but this is a bit more gloom than necessary unless the people of Louisiana don’t have the fortitude of the Dutch. I remember watching a documentary a couple of years ago about the devastating North Sea storm of 1953. Thousands killed, well over 1/4 million acres of land inundated and fouled when the polders/dikes were breached in 67 places. There is only about 8 million acres in the whole country so this was a very substantial part of it and a number of important cities were involved. So, the Dutch did not abandon all of this. No, they looked things over and acted on a long-term project. The Zuider Zee was turned into the Isjelmeer. The took back what was lost and added to it.
The lowest point in Holland is over 20 feet below sea level, the lowest spot around New Orleans is only about 8 feet below sea level. And the North Sea is no pussy cat when it comes to bad storms.
Maybe it is just that I am a Texan but it doesn’t seem like all that big of a project to me. If the powers that be in Lousiana can’t figure this out maybe they should phone the Dutch. They keep the North Sea out of their country.
There is too much shipping and refining infrastructure to abandon it just because of a bit of water.
Windmills?
Little boys sticking their fingers in holes?
I do not know the answer to this question buy has anything even close to a Category 5 Hurricane ever hit The Netherlands?
The Dutch used wind mills to pump the Zider Zee. Gore would be proud.
If you look at the photos in Alabama, the island houses on stilts are there suspended above waves that obliterated the roads and all except the houses.
I'm all for rebuilding New Orleans---RIGHT. In fact I'd love to basically wipe out NASA's budget and devote it to that.
I lived in Amsterdam for a year. The Dutch have a saying, regarding their land reclamation activities - "God made the earth, but the Dutch made the Netherlands".
I entirely agree their approach, which is dedicated and serious, is worth study and possibly replication.
Regards, Ivan
Well that should protect all the wildlife inhabiting the former New Orleans.
"Moon" Landrieu was a pioneer in gaming local political corruption - he was a master of the big money and could care less what happens as long as he and his brethren continue to hold power (ie daughter Mary who used her daddy's long pull through the local parishes to hold on to re-election just a couple years back)
NOLA may never be rebuilt per se. It may just be jigged up to allow the port to get materials through. If I got 100K of insurance money for my house or biz in NO I'd never even consider investing it back in there. Wdyoo? America is too darn big. If your country only has a few hundred miles of coastline almost anything can be done. From Brownsville to Virginia Beach is a long way.
In the Dutch news the other day there was something about Katrina being about 4 or 5 times as powerful as anything that has ever hit The Netherlands.
Nevertheless, they have had some devastating storms. A storm surge in February 1953 overwhelmed the old dyke system and killed well over a thousand people. I've seen an old photo of the house that I'm currently living in with about three feet of water surrounding it. The water level was higher in the neighboring village.
No...weed and spacecake.
CB, Holland takes land from the sea because it doesn't have much land and has nowhere else to get it.
Louisiana is a good-sized state. There is higher ground well west of New Orleans to where the government can move the city - and from there, the Corps can also build a canal to deal with the day when the Mississippi shifts channels to the Atchafalaya. And such a canal would be a shorter and safer route to the sea than through the shifting channels and bars of the delta inlets.
Technology only buys you time in the race against geology in SE Louisiana. There is no point, IMO, setting up the bowling pins for nature all over again.
Be prepared to always be rebuilding the levees and still lose eventually. Especially with the river levees, they keep sediments from being deposited in the lowlands during floods. The entire region subsides as deltaic sediments settle. Flood-borne sediments normally keep the overall land profile above sea level. But with the river in levees, no sediment is laid down - and large areas of Louisana to the south of NOLA have been overtaken by the sea - and that process will continue as long as there are levees.
In other words, the levees that would protect the ciy would also eventually lead to its demise - no matter how high you make them. Best to move to a site where you don't have that cold calculus against you.
One problem with damming the mouth of lake Ponchartrain is that it has low ground all around it. Your dam would have to be 100's of miles long to close off that lake. Also the Mississippi overflows into the lake during spring floods in order to save New Orleans. I supposed that could be changed to overflow the other way into the gulf, but I'm not sure.
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