New Orleans faces doomsday scenario

Houston Chronicle ^ | December 1, 2001 | ERIC BERGER

[Dog Gone]

This isn't exactly breaking news to residents of Lousiana, and New Orleans in particular.

The question isn't if, it's when.

[SamAdams76]

Very interesting. Did not realize the situation was so perilous there. A disaster of that scale would make 9/11 look like a three-alarm fire.

[daviddennis]

When I visited New Orleans, I remember thinking it was a miracle most of the buildings were still standing; they looked rotted to the core.

Why are the wetlands vanishing? I don't remember hearing anything about dramatic growth or enormous real estate development over there; I thought it was pretty much stagnant. So what is happening to them, and what would it take to reverse?

D

[Theodore R.]

New Orleans has been on a downward spiral for 40 years. It peaked as a "livable" city during the reform administration of the late Democrat Mayor de Lesseps Story "Chep" Morrison, who rescued his city from the corrupt Robert Maestri machine at the end of World War II. Three times Morrison tried but failed to be the Democratic gubernatorial nominee. At the time Morrison was considered a "liberal" and an "integrationist." In retrospect, Morrison looks more and more like a nonpartisan civic booster with a great deal of common sense and business management, something New Orleans now lacks. Woe, could New Orleans only return to the days of Mayor Morrison.

[Theodore R.]

New Orleans might be able to overcome environmental hazards, but it is the inherent spiritual decay that has ruined the "Crescent City," causing traditional familes to flee it in droves.

[Dog Gone]

I think the wetlands are vanishing because silt from the Mississippi River isn't being deposited in them anymore. Without that, natural erosion and wave action is eating them away.

[razorback-bert]

If you stand in Jackson Square and watch ocean going ships traveling above your head on the river, you understand the problem.

I was flooded out twice while living on the Lakefront during Hurricanes.

A Pat O'Briens Hurricane glass will hold exactly $10.00 in pennies.

[cpdiii]

The problem is simple and the solution is simple but not politically acceptable. The River has levees built all the way to Venice (about 80 miles south of New Orleans) and thus none of the silt that was at one time deposited during floods to the south east of New Orleans make it to the bays and esturaries of the river. This area is being continually eroded by wave and tide action and as as result the protective marshes recede a few hundred feet every year. In effect New Orleans is getting closer and closer to the Gulf of Mexico each year.

The solution is to let the river flood into the Marshes to the Southeast of the city as it did in the past. This will entail large tracts of development being destroyed (sorry about that Chalmette, Lousisiana). The compensation required for these areas is quite small as compared to the compensation that would be required to rebuild New Orleans.

The problem of development in areas unsuitable is also a result of idiotic policy of the Federal Government. Private insures will not issue flood insurance at a resonable rate for these areas in danger. The federal government has and as a result areas that are totally unsuitable for development have houses built on them.

The solution that nobody will accept is to let the river flood as it did in the past. You can delay the river, you can put the river in levees, that river will eventully go where it wants.

[Askel5]

Man ... for a moment I thought you were gonna tell me Morial got a recount on his "Third Term" amendment.

[Askel5]

The problem of development in areas unsuitable is also a result of idiotic policy of the Federal Government. Private insures will not issue flood insurance at a resonable rate for these areas in danger. The federal government has and as a result areas that are totally unsuitable for development have houses built on them. The solution that nobody will accept is to let the river flood as it did in the past. You can delay the river, you can put the river in levees, that river will eventully go where it wants.

HEAR HEAR ...

Had the feds not locked the Mississippi in cement and levees (so New Orleans could remain a "vital" port, for instance ... =), she'd still be dumping sufficient sediment to keep the coast from eroding in earnest.

[CoolPapaBoze]

Yeah, I know this is a terrible thing to say, but as a native Louisianian, I don't know that I'd be all that disappointed if N.O. ceased to exist. The place is a cesspool of corruption, crime and is about three notches below a banana republic. If it no longer existed, LA would probably be a better state.

[Cicero]

As you say. The paragraph that sticks out to my mind is this:

A consortium of local, state and federal agencies is studying a $2 billion to $3 billion plan to divert sediment from the Mississippi River back into the delta. Because the river is leveed all the way to the Gulf, where sediment is dumped into deep water, nothing is left to replenish the receding delta.

In other words, the disaster is man-made. Wetland doesn't just disappear. It moves around, it grows and shrinks, but it doesn't just disappear unless army engineers get in there and make it disappear by straightening out rivers and enclosing their banks.

So what's the solution? Break down the lower levees, as you say. It's either give up the new development or lose the whole, historic city. Or, I suppose, use Democrat Senator Breaux's considerable clout to take taxpayer funds to truck and barge topsoil from uninhabited spots in the midwest and dump it into the delta. That might stave off the disaster at the cost of a hundred billion or so, until Breaux has finished his career.

[Redcloak]

No problemo! If the city is flooded, Mayor Morial can just sue gun makers to recoup their losses. Just look at all the money he got from their last suit!

[Joe 6-pack]

Somehow, I think Mardi Gras will still be celebrated next year, and the year after that, and the year after that...

[VOA]

Did not realize the situation was so perilous there.

Yep, it's bad.
I've only visited N'Orleans once, and really loved the place.
But it is in a precarious situtation that is only made tenable by the technology of
some incredible civil engineering such as the pumps that pull water out of the New
Orleans area. These were first built MANY years ago (Depression era?).
I read an article on these impressive devices in American Heritage Technology years
about 10 years ago.

[Torie]

The final "solution."

[exmoor]

Mardi Gra wouldn't be the same..

[WackyKat]

It's gonna happen. Major street flooding occurs every 3-4 years just from unusually heavy rainstorms. There have been incidents in the last decade in which people drowned on major roadways. One Mid-City woman came out her front door to find a body washed up on her porch.

[exmoor]

Thats interesting. My friend lives down in the French Quarter and never mentioned it.