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.
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.
"Dam the mouth of the Lake where it meets the Gulf, and release water only when the Lake level is higher than the Gulf."
The lake level is already higher than sea level. That is why it drains INTO the ocean, it's draining down.
As for giving people who live outside the area up for dead. Sounds like that's already what's happening.
The Dutch built most of those dikes and reclaimed the bulk of the Ij long before anyone had ever heard of a "corps of engineers." It was a local effort.
If the City of New Orleans wasn't self insuring and couldn't run to mama FedGov, you can bet your bottom doughnut that insurer would have made sure there were appropriate provisions for disasters, in place and periodically tested, else the policy would have cost more than the preventative measures.
I have been livid at the lack of planning by the Dimocratic dolts who have run the state of Louisiana. I think a whole bunch of them should be in jail. They're already blaming it on the Bush, the Iraq war, the tax cut and global warming but what is happening in NO is a total lack of planning and acting.
Could you or someone link to the photos? Threads are flying by and I haven't found them.
This sounds like a great idea. I'm no engineeer, but I hope this provokes some serious discussion as the politicos work out their pointy fingers over the coming months.
You need another look at those sattelite images. That lake can't even hold half a day's flow of the Mississippi when its at flood stage, and floods last a week. The lake is higher than the city. If you have to pump the city, it makes no sense to pump it into the lake with the river and the ocean just as close.
Further, the Dutch have no expierence with a river the size of the Mississippi, let alone storm surges like the one seen two days ago, reported to be 30 feet in some places.
Nothing in the Netherlands compares to the size and power of this river and this storm. Further, the Dutch countryside has flooded more than once in my lifetime. The only smart thing the Dutch did was not build cities in the reclaimed area untill the city area was rasided above sea level.
Lets face it. It was a dumb place to build a city, and its a dumber place to try and maintain one.
I thought this story was gonna be about wind mills.
When the storm first hit, I said, "Well, this isn't Bangladesh ..."
But is the government of New Orleans (and La. as a whole) really much better?
There is a vehicle for getting the Mississippi River to Lake Ponchartrain, the Bonne Carre Spillway. It is up river from New Orleans, just past NORCO oil refinery.
Whatever ideas are put to the task, this one fact will always stand out, even if it's the Army Corps of Engineers in charge. They would still have to deal with the local graft ring authorities.
I lived there off and on for 15 years or so, and it's hard to get past the graft--although the incompetence sometimes plays a very strong role.
Unfortunately, now that the gambling interests have taken over the Mississippi coast, it will never be turned back to the sleepy community of beach houses on stilts that you suggest. The gambling companies are going to demand to rebuild - all those jobs and tax revenues depend on it, you know. Mississippi sold it soul to this devil and it will be in thrall to it forever. I guarantee that the casinos will be the first things rebuilt, and probably with our tax money too. The lobbyists are already preparing their assault on Congress and the state legislature. No doubt they will get special tax-exempt boinding authority and all sorts of other largesse to pay for the reconstruction. There are reports that they have already asked the legislature to repeal the offshore requirement so they can rebuild on land. They are saying Mississippi is losing a half-million dollars in tax revenue every day the casinos are closed.
I think the idea of rebuilding NO where it is(was) needs to be given up. There is plenty of places in La. and other parts of this country where a lot of people from there could live and work for a better life.
I'll tell you what I think:
I think this is a damned odd proposal to come from an alleged conservative.
Just damned odd.
Where would you find the authorization to do this in the Constitution?
Yeah, yeah, I know: "Commerce clause." But really, don't you think the people of Louisiana, and specifically, the residents of New Orleans, should solve their own problems?
And my perspective is this: I HAVE family there (well, not there now) and I still feel this way.
My suggestion would be this: remove ALL federal subsidies for insurance for coastal areas, or any flood-prone areas, for that matter.
Then those who can still afford to live in flood-prone areas can purchase their own insurance - or not, as they see fit - and the federal government can deal with NATIONAL issues.
And one more thing: ever wonder why nobody's tried to dam the channels between Ponchartrain and the Gulf - other than the fact it's a ship and barge channel?
It's because that's not one neat little watercourse, but a vast morass of swampland, a large area of porous ground that is little inclined to support a dam.
I think the Dutch solution is like a Dutch Date-- New Orleans can pay its own way without expecting Uncle Sam to treat.
Lets do it. The pumping issue alone, as it stood, was a cluster$%#! when I heard about it. Commercial power only? WTF were they thinking? If they'd had proper pumps, and full 24/7 capability things would not be as bad as they are now. All the rest; levee's locks, damns whatever, are doable.
Do they mean 3 out of 4? There are about 22 pumping stations in N.O.
Has Holland withstood Class 5 hurricanes like this one?
Do you have a link to see those photos??
Well, it would probably be pretty hard to do all that looting with wooden shoes....
Man, that's some engineering feat! The Atlantic is hundreds of miles away (unless you mean the Netherlands Antilles).
Why should I pay for these people's misjudgement?
Why should I pay to rebuild a place that should not exist in the first place?
If you must raid our wallets, at least move the site to a sensible location so we don't have to be raided again after the next storm submerges the City Below the Sea.
The local authority has been a curse for those people. Anytime Dems get control, patronage kicks in and efficient government is out the door. However, given the chaos this time, I wonder if the Dems are going to be able to organize their New Orleans urban machine and constituency the way they have been able to in the past. If they are all scattered and relocated, it may take time before their get-out-the-walking-money-and-turn-out-the-vote tactics will work quite so effectively.
Just another reason to make Bush out to be the villain and cause of their discomfort so early in the game. Of course, this must be done while simultaneously getting government money--and probably making out like it wasn't enough down the road.
[snip]
As U.S. military engineers struggled to shore up breached levees, experts in the Netherlands expressed surprise that New Orleans' flood systems failed to restrain the raging waters.
With half of the country's population of 16 million living below sea level, the Netherlands prepared for a "perfect storm" soon after floods in 1953 killed 2,000 people. The nation installed massive hydraulic sea walls.
"I don't want to sound overly critical, but it's hard to imagine that (the damage caused by Katrina) could happen in a Western country," said Ted Sluijter, spokesman for the park where the sea walls are exhibited. "It seemed like plans for protection and evacuation weren't really in place, and once it happened, the coordination was on loose hinges."
[snip]