Posted on 05/23/2016 8:20:30 PM PDT by Tilted Irish Kilt
New Orleans is sinking fast — with one neighborhood losing as much as an inch per year, a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research found.
The study, which was conducted between 2009 and 2012 and published last week, used GPS and radar, including one device that captured images from seven miles above ground.
The most threatened section of the already-below-sea level city is Michoud, a neighborhood that sits between Lake Ponchartrain and Lake Borguen, and is being swallowed up at a rate of half an inch to just over one inch per year, the researchers found.
It’s not the city or groundwater themselves causing New Orleans to sink. It’s all of the man-made flood controls and levees. Before all of those were built, every time the river would flood these areas, sediment would be deposited and the ground would not sink.
But with all these flood controls, the river just shoots the sediment out into the gulf without leaving it to rebuild the delta. The Mississippi delta should really begin basically at Baton Rouge. In the past the Mississippi flowed over this entire area building the land in southern Louisiana. It should really be allowed to flow and flood the Atchafalaya today, but the US army corps of engineers won’t allow it.
“Parts of New Orleans Are Sinking Fast, Study Finds”
Heh. So’s the rest of the country.
“Even after the Super Bowl victory of the New Orleans Saints, I have noticed a large number of people implying, with bad jokes, that Cajuns aren’t smart. I would like to state for the record that I disagree with that assessment. Anybody that would build a city five feet below sea level in a hurricane zone and fill it with Democrats who can’t swim is a genius.”
And the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming crowd, aka the Warmist Alarmists, will blame this on a sea level rise, not on land subsidence. You just watch.
Ironically, as the ground sinks, it probably does make the sea-level rise...The seas may rise, but it won't be because of globull warming.
The French Quarter (built on high ground) was fine (I believe they only lost power); everything added afterwards was screwed...
It’s the weight of all the houses, cars and stuff. At least it won’t tip over, like an island can.
I will never forget trying to help some people dig a water line in the muck just north of New Orleans along the river. You could only stab it with a pick axe. It started about four inches below grade.
Coastal erosion is always an issue there, too.
That’s essentially it. You can have flood control or you can have ground level stability, but you cannot have both. The soils that were replenishing the delta are being dumped somewhere off the continental shelf into the depths of the gulf. The velocity of the water, due to the channelization and levee systems, exiting the mouth of the Mississippi means that the soils which formerly were deposited in the delta in flooding cycles, are now lost. And that’s a lot of soil. So you get subsidence.
No self-respecting Cajun would live in NOLA. This is a bit like saying New Yorkers live in Boston.
Today it was announced that Gord Downie, singer, has terminal brain cancer.
That’s sad news.
I remember when I lived up in Buffalo, and listened to Canadian radio, they were huge there.
Women, minorities hardest hit
Step 1: Do not build in a swamp.
Step #2:" Do not build below sea level"
especially where life vests are optional.
Yep, makes no sense.
Don’t build on landfill in an earthquake zone as was done in San Francisco and Oakland.
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