Posted on 08/31/2005 2:23:09 PM PDT by Graybeard58
Another summer, another hurricane disaster to highlight the recklessness of Americans' desire to live along storm-prone coasts.
Hurricane Katrina likely will be the most expensive storm in U.S. history. Federal Emergency Management Agency officials say it's too early even to guess the extent of the losses. But at least $26 billion will be needed to cover insured losses in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and that might be just the down payment on the total cost.
Is anyone surprised? For decades, New Orleans has been a catastrophe in waiting. Geologists have predicted it would be destroyed by the tidal surge from a powerful hurricane sometime this century. The city sits below sea level, below massive Lake Pontchartrain and below the Mississippi River. Since 1930, more than 700,000 acres of Mississippi Delta south of the city have disappeared into the Gulf of Mexico, the victim of the same natural forces that one day will consume New Orleans. The city sinks further every year as the silt beneath it compacts; so do the bayous and the barrier islands that shield the city from hurricanes and strong storms.
With or without a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, The Big Easy is doomed. Judging from news reports, Katrina seems to have hastened the city's day of reckoning.
Optimist authorities predict it will be months before New Orleans can be made habitable again; one is compelled to ask whether, everything considered, the effort would be worthwhile.
Gulf Coast states are threatened every year by erosion and hurricanes, yet people and businesses have built right up to the water's edge, safe in the knowledge that if disaster strikes, their government will bail them out. And in the wake of Katrina, bailing will be the operative word. FEMA intends to throw tens of billions in disaster relief to reclaim hurricane-ravaged regions from the sea. Untold millions more will be spent rebuilding the levees and sea walls and modernizing the pumping stations that heretofore had kept New Orleans from sagging into the sea.
To what end? So when subsequent big hurricanes blow through, the government can do it all over again and again and again? As it is, the government (read: taxpayers) will have to pay for the copious flood damage because owners of coastal properties have policies from the National Flood Insurance Program. Such coverage is unavailable from private companies because few could afford the premiums. The government is the biggest insurance writer in the United States.
But not only has cheap (relatively speaking) flood insurance encouraged more and more people to build up to and beyond the brink of disaster, it has left taxpayers liable for what happens to $700 billion worth of waterfront real estate, including the homes, businesses and parishes soaked and submerged by Katrina.
Americans' hearts go out to the people in Katrina's path. But if the people of New Orleans and other low-lying areas insist upon living in harm's way, they ought to accept responsibility for what happens to them and their property. And if the government insists on rebuilding ravaged homes and businesses along Gulf Coasts, it should stipulate that the next time a hurricane blows through, it will be up to the people living there to make themselves whole.
However, before the government commits to reclaiming New Orleans and its marshy environs, it should think long and hard about whether the investment of time and money would be worth it.
Interesting but sobering article, thanks for posting it.
A worthwhile, and necessary national debate..and I concur...but IMHO, a few days too soon to start it..
California is on a fault line. The southeast is one big hurricane bullseye. NY and DC are prime terrorist targets. Where do these clowns want us to live?
To the people who live there, yes.
If I were a homeowner in New Orleans, I would be pretty anxious to rebuild.
Any city purposely rebuilt under sea level while boarding the sea and a massive river amounts to a romantic folly.
It will all fail again because it is meant to. Engineers can't stop Mother Nature.
Yes, but after bringing in a few cubic miles of fill dirt.
Live wherever you want but taxpayers everywhere else shouldn't have to bail you out.
I live in an area that has tornados and I am fully insured by a private insurer, if I weren't it would be 100% my loss.
New Orleans should be written off FEMA's and the Army Corps of Engineers accounts. If anybody wants to build live and work there, they need to do so at their own risk.
Well, if anyone were to ask me, and it is way probable that they won't, I would say....NO to the rebuild of NO.
I can understand rebuilding the port facilities that are neccessary for ships, oil, etc...
No way to rebuilding the "human" habitation part of NO, and if I have to explain why, forget about it. I do not care about the "tradition".
A thoughtful fellow wrote a book way back in the 60's... do a google search if you are seriously interested in how I formed my opinion on such matters.
Ian Mcharg... it is a Scots name, I think...
Move the city west to higher ground between the Atchafalaya and the Mississippi. That area is 18-20 feet above sea level and doesn't have a large lake with connection to the sea above it.
It would still be close enough to the existing port to use that facility for the mid term. Surviving manufacturing plants would still be part of the overall metropolitan area.
Next, have the Corps build a huge canal from east of Morgan City to the Mississippi, along with a dredged port facility inland - a canal that parallels the Atchafalaya but does not use it or levee it further. Because sooner or later, just about the entire Mississippi will flow down the Atchafalaya - it's a shorter route to the sea and water seeks the shortest route.
That way, what is now New Orleans will be spared from the three dangers facing it - hurricane surge, subsidence and the loss of the Mississippi channel. We take out all three threats with one bold move - it'll take fifteen years to complete it all, but it has to be done at some point - because the main channel will go away some day, and with it NOLA's reason to be - and we'll keep shipping communications open between the Gulf and the upper river. We can take this disaster and be pro-active against the other looming disaster and mitigate the risk from both in a manner of our own choosing, not nature's.
The question as to whether cities like New Orleans, San Francisco, NYC and other cities should be rebuilt that could be devastated sinply because they are where they are is not even up for discussion.
What will come up with next is how to make the city of New orleans safe enough to withstand a similar event. So the cost is not just to rebuild the city. What will come up next is how to strengthen the levees to withstand Class 4/5 hurricanes. Now we are talking some more big bucks.
Don't forget...taxpayers bailed them out in 1814, along with the rest of the country. One Nation, under-God, and indivisible...we help our own, no matter where they live.
In Davenport, IA where I grew up, a neighborhood in the southwestern side of the city was bought up and bulldozed because of repeated floodings and clean-ups due to the nearby Mississippi river. The same fate should happen to New Orleans, but it won't for two reasons: the enormous cost of such a task and plain old irrational human stubborness.
I agree...but, to those who are suggesting NO shouldn't be rebuilt, are they saying Insurance companies should not be paying any claims?
That's what it sounds like to me.
Not all of it. Not the lower 9th or the other slums. Rebuild elsewhere: higher ground.
Part of me agrees with this argument, the other part thinks the US just wouldn't be the same without a New Orleans.
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