Bulldoze New Orleans

My fertile mind ^ | 9/2/05 | rebelbase

[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.

[Rebelbase]

Rebuild it!

[Rightly Biased]

Had a lengthy conversation about that with some people that love NOLA and they agree.


RB

[drlevy88]

and fill it in with spoils from Lake Ponchartrain

Are you sure you want to get them from Pontchartrain? That is going to be one nasty chemical stew soon, as NO's floodwaters are pumpted into it.

[shield]

N.O. has to be rebuilt...must be above SEA LEVEL however, or it'll just be again another accident waiting to happen.

[Coyoteman]

Part of the problem is the area is actually sinking.

[lormand]

How about draining Lake Pontchartrain into the Gulf, thus making New Orleans only vulnerable from the Mississippi levies, which has already been proven to withstand Katrina.

[Mount Athos]

none of the area is above sea level though.
You could make it above sea level, at extreme cost, but landfill isn't the most stable stuff in the world. You're pretty much back to square one in terms of risk possibility.

[Deetes]

Well it is going to be bulldozed . But, it will probably be built back. I have heard a lot of people say they are not going back .

[BCrago66]

Next time, use the label Vanity.

[stboz]

How about draining Lake Pontchartrain into the Gulf, thus making New Orleans only vulnerable from the Mississippi levies, which has already been proven to withstand Katrina

It doesn't work quite that simply. Pontchartrain is essentially already connected to the Gulf. NO sinks about an inch every year on top of that. It's a guaranteed loser over time.

[Rebelbase]

"Next time, use the label Vanity."

Oh great and wise mod, would you please do the honors?

[AntiGuv]

Well, most everything except for the riverside stretch between the Garden District and Bywater (that includes Downtown and the French Quarter) wouldn't be any great loss anyhow..

[Last Dakotan]

Sell the French Quarter to the highest Las Vegas casino bidder. Bulldoze the rest.

[Abcdefg]

Dynamite ALL the levies, then build only on what is dry. No federal aid to build anywhere else except what is above the river and sea level.

[SedVictaCatoni]

Rebuilding New Orleans in situ would be madness. The nation needs an industrial seaport at the mouth of the Mississippi, but it doesn't need a giant below-sea-level slum. Re-establish a smaller seaport upriver.

Everything economically/politically important about New Orleans (the seat of the Fifth Circuit, the Federal Reserve Bank, etc.) should simply be moved to Baton Rouge, which now appears likely to become the region's new metropolis anyway.

[Last Dakotan]

Note the "armored" shoreline. That's really rich LOL.

[AntiGuv]

PS. And most of that stretch has the benefit of being above sea level already.

[shield]

Galveston, TX did it.

[Delta 21]

Terraform it! Get the fill from the delta. If its built below sea level it will flood (again).

Oh the vanity!

[Enchante]

One thing that needs to be looked at extremely closely, I would think, is other land reclamation projects. The one that comes to mind first, since I used to live in Boston, is that in the late 19th century the city filled in a sizable area of bay and mudflats (the now famous "Back Bay") with landfill. The area involved to bring much of NOLA above sea level is vastly greater, of course, but since the depth of landfill required would be much less than filling in a bay, maybe the success of Back Bay in Boston at least suggests a way to look at the problem. I do know that the Back Bay neighborhood became one of the most desireable parts of of the city (well, the part east of Mass. Ave. anyway). It took decades to do this in Boston, but presumably far greater equipment, manpower, and funds could be brought to bear in NOLA.

"This parcel of land was created by filling the tidewater flats of the Charles River. This massive project was begun in 1857. The filling of present-day Back Bay was completed by 1882; filling reached Kenmore Square in 1890, and finished in the Fens in 1900. The project was the largest of a number of land reclamation projects, beginning in 1820, which over the course of time more than doubled the size of the original Boston peninsula. It is frequently observed that this would have been impossible under modern environmental regulations."