Posted on 09/03/2005 1:44:14 PM PDT by Rebelbase
Rebuilding New Orleans below sea level is just asking for another disaster even if the levee's are strengthened.
Bulldoze the city except for the downtown and French Quarter and fill it in with spoils from Lake Ponchartrain. The lake is very shallow and could supply the material necessary to fill in the city.
This city is too important to national commerce to just abandon.
Don't know, but my guess is that it's more salt water than fresh. I have driven across the old Pontchartrain bridge several times and drove around the west shore once on a really awful road, but have never been in the water. It's brownish colored and doesn't look anything like the blue-green gulf water around FL where I once lived, but I suppose that's due to runoff from the swampy area all around it.
"Similarly, whatever possessed the people of Mississippi to force casinos to be afloat on a hurricane-prone coast?"
Simple, they're gambling people.
Intesting idea, but you need to add in the cost of dredging channels all the way across Lake P(avg depth 25') and to the northshore port. And if the port is going to be replaced, it might be more financially feasible to simply expand the ports in Mobile, Lake Charles, Beaumont, and Houston.
I'd suggest a less sweeping approach. Instead of abandoning the massive port and industrial complex, simple harden it to the effects of occasional catastrophic flooding, and mandate a 100% evacuation plan and the resources required for such.
Raising the levees to protect against a Cat. 5 is estimated at $14 billion, and probably would end up closer to $24 billion. A better investment might be some strict zoning standards, while allowing each landowner to evaluate whether it is worth rebuilding. No federal flood insurance in the zone, by repealing the atrocious program that encouraged building in some of the most vulnerable places the way welfare encouraged dependency. New buildings must have at least one floor 25' or 30' above sea level, and use materials suitable for exposure to a month of flooding and easily cleaned afterwards. Require critical institutions to have emergency generators maintained ready to meet emergency demand for a minimum of 'x' days located above that 30' level, and built to the toughest hurricane wind standards possible. Keep the existing levees to protect from most storms, but install gates to let in a slow rise of waters when a catastrophic storm approaches that would flood the bowl but reduce the mammoth wave action that would occur from an overtopping. Thus even with a 25' storm surge, the wave action would be lessened and survivable for the large structures that would dominate the new construction. Substantially reduce damage and repair costs. Raise a few key roads, including the dips in the interstates so that access is maintained even after storm flooding is slow to run off.
Since the south shore of the metro will probably never come close to the prior population (maybe 50%), the current roads (with contraflow) should be able to handle a near 100% evacuation. Amtrak has a maintenance base in NO, fund an some extra equipment sets for standby in hurricane season and overflow use in holiday/tourist seasons. Between that and an evac plan to ferry all the city and school buses out with the elderly/invalid/carless, 99.9% evac(less hospital and emergency staff) should be achievable within a 48 hour window.
Am nearly certain the port and much of the industrial facilities will be repaired and will remain, along with the tourist districts along the river. Will be interesting if very many white collar jobs return to the city, but all that downtown inventory will be tempting for some, if the city can build sufficient housing, probably high-rise condo's and apartments, and perhaps sizeable mobile home parks. Might end up with a thriving immigrant population and related start up businesses, willing to take the risk of no insurance. Maybe.
Rebuild it 50 miles up the Mississippi.
Helpful maps; thanks.
Yes they did. But Galveston is not and was not below sea level, it was just not very much above sea level. Still isn't really, but about 15-20 feet higher than it was, at least at the east end.
Galveston was swept by the tidal surge, not by floodwaters that poured in after the surge had breached a sea wall. It's also not built on silt deposits. It's limestone under the fill, IIRC.
About an inch every two or three years.
Somethin' will have to be done...it can't return like it was...look at FLA, Miss, Ala. how many canes hit them since 2004? N.O. can be exactly the same way...
Why is it rich? None of those levees or walls failed, only the ones inside the city itself. I don't even know what those are for, except to deposit rainwater pumped out the land below sea (and more importantly lake) level into the lake.
Now that would be ironic, if what flooded the city was the very structure designed to prevent flooding, by allowing the rainwater to be pumped into the lake, the lake that now covers much of the city.
It wasn't the levees along the lake itself that failed, but rather those on canals, canals essentially at the level of the Lake, designed to allow rainwater to be pumped up to lake level.
Maybe a better solution would be to eliminate those canals. Close off their axes to the lake. Then fix the levees along them to function as a compartmenting structure should the levees on the Lake itself fail.
Add a new levee to protect the area around the river from water from the Lake, including the French Quarter, Bourbon street, etc, and turn the rest of the city into a parks and recreation area.
Well not really. At the time Galveston was not that much smaller than Houston, 38,000 or so compared to around 45,000 for Houston. Houston is now over 2,000,000 while Galveston is only about 57,500. Not exactly thriving, but at least they haven't lost population.
Galveston is primarily a recreation/tourist center. With some shipping activity. (For example the last time I was there, a long time ago, there was a Soviet Ship loading grain). Houston is the business and economic powerhouse. Even today you wouldn't want to be on Galveston during a Cat 3, 4 or 5 storm. A high cat 4, like Katrina was when she came ashore, would do lots of damage, both from the wind and from the tidal surge.
If that could be done some 100 years ago, I suppose NO could be raised (literally) in the same fashion.
But Galveston is not sinking. NO is, and would probably sink even faster if you piled a bunch of fill on top.
Mr. Cat,
I was referring to the term "armored". Too much hype for me.
I think that is the one thing we can count on: forced taxpayer-funded re-development of nightmarish housing projects. Every city needs its breeding grounds for welfare queens, gangs, druggies, murderers and rapists. The new New Orleans will be no exception.
Dom DeLuise ?
AMEN! AMEN!
THX.
I have a faint memory trace that one of the future maps I've seen DOES follow some fault lines amazingly closely especially in the MIssissippi valley. I have no clue where or what that map was or how to find it.
The Dutch have no choice.
We do.
Evidently stranger things have happened in the history of this sin polluted planet.
We shall see.
Cain't argew wid dat!!!
On a serious note, events such as those depicted by the consequence of those maps would annihilate the entire population of the United States and obliterate civilization altogether. So, to be blunt, who really cares? If it's true then we will almost assuredly be dead, and if not we will be savages in a wasteland. If you and your fellow travellers think that this would achieve a glorious revival of some kind of fantasized religious heritage that is no less lunatic than the apocalyptic visions of their own accord.
I don't mean to sound so harsh, but that's what I think. Sorry.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.