Posted on 09/01/2005 2:22:16 PM PDT by zencat
It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said of federal assistance for hurricane-devastated New Orleans.
"It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," the Illinois Republican said in an interview Wednesday with The Daily Herald of Arlington, Ill.
(Excerpt) Read more at wwltv.com ...
oops ;)
What he says makes sense. I think it will be political suicide for the R's, however to push this point. NO will rebuilt exactly where it is. You and me will pay the taxes to insure the insurance companies against loss in the next hurricane. Watch it happen.
Gretchen Carlson on Fox is just yuck. Send her back to CNN because she still asks the same inane clueless questions as every other liberal talking head. What were they thinking? I've about had all of her I can take.
N.O. has faced this problem for nearly 300 years. They been talking about fixin' it for just as long. Those damn sneaky french.
So, there might not be a need for the most significant port in the South?
If it could be done, it would be great. There really is no longer any need for big cities. They have always been, except in a few cases such as Tokyo, breeding grounds for corruption and crime. And "big" starts well below NO's 1/2 million. Cities which are more spread out (Omaha has about 4/5 th the population, but not near the density as NO) can be bigger. People aren't "designed" to live like ants in a mound.
I agree, and not only that but in the long run this could actually be good for the economy and those who choose to jump in. Undoubtedly it will hurt us for awhile. But the end result just may be prosperous.
Makes good sense.
On the other hand, look at Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Now that's funny.......and true!
That other city built in a swamp you mean? The difference being that it's far enough up the Potomac which in turn is well up the Chesapeake Bay, to be pretty safe from Hurricanes, the few that make it that far north in any strength that is.
And he will probably be forced to resign by the end of next week.
There is higher ground to the west. Levee off the French Quarter as a tourist town, and re-locate the residential and manufacturing facilities to the west.
And build a canal to deal with the eventual shift of the Mississippi channel down the Atchafalaya. Do it once and do it right.
I am getting tired of you being right all the time. :-)
Two things they could do to help, because they aren't likely to follow your advice. They could get off all ground water sources and start taking river water to replace it. That would stop the subsidence and it may eventually reverse itself as the water table recovers. Raise and shore up the levees. Some of those buildings around St. Louis Cathedral are reportedly the oldest existing structure in the U.S. Many in the French Quarter are almost as old. Jean Lafitte, the pirate, supposedly was a regular at the Old Absinthe house. That part would need to be saved if nothing else, as you suggested.
Until the past few years the water was pumped out of the city, even when it rained, by three approximately 300 year old pumps of French manufacture. (Yeah, I know, will wonders never cease.) They were replaced I understand and the replacements don't seem as reliable.
Years ago, perhaps when the levees were built in 1927, the Corp of Engineers included a number of spillways along the way to control the flow of the river and to relieve flooding conditions. One of those was the Bonnet Carre Spillway above Baton Rouge where the Red River met the Mississippi and the Atachafalya Basin began. As you know, the Atachafalya River was also a part of the old river bed and that the Mississippi would at times have its main flow through there. (After large floods, as the flood water was receding, the Mississippi changed courses through that area many times. It is really the more natural path. ) For fear of Isolating New Orleans, they keep the Bonnet Carre either closed or nearly closed to keep the Mississippi in its present banks. As all attempts to control Mother Nature do, this created problems of its own. Silting and levee erosion are just two of them.
Absolutely. This has been my point all along. Cities will always be where there is a port. It is necessary for transportation infrastructure to get goods from port. This means people must be there. Where there is a thriving trade, such as there is at ports, people must also live. We have the technology. Now if we just have the foresight and will to use it.
Actually the opposite. Residential single family homes are usually the first to be rebuilt. Might be a bit different in NO, because about 1/2 the homeowners are not insured. FEMA has a poor track record in rebuilding and getting people out of "Temporary" housing.
It has happened often enough in America's history. Between disasters and just tearing down old stuff to put new and better in place, the entire urban structure has been constantly updated and the economy has profited by the investment over and over.
Hastert: Rebuilding below sea level senseless
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exactly, AGREE! - swampy wetlands just like the properties getting over developed in Florida. So many greedy and sun worshippers are in denial about a lot of things concerning these water zones going up way too fast without a care about what will happen 30 years down the road.
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