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 ...
"Do it once and do it right."
Absolutely.
The truth is not always popular, and Hastert was stupid to have said this under present circumstances. But he was right. Surely, as time passes, common sense will prevail.
I was talking about this with my son the other night. One idea would be to dulldoze destroyed parts of the city into a series of low hills 20-30 feet above sea level, perhaps with canals or small lakes separating the various sections.
They are already sounding off even though they won't be back in session until tomorrow. They could build up a gravel pad to above sea level and build on top of that. Cost of the gravel pad: $1/2 billion. Cost of rebuilding on top of the gravel pad: $1 gazillion. A viable city at the mouth of the Mississippi and the Gulf: priceless.
Like a lead balloon. But he's right - the taxpayers don't need to rebuild another potential disaster in a hurricane zone on the gulf.
With this plan, you can salvage the French Quarter as a tourist destination - it wouldn't be that hard to keep it leveed off, since it is already near or above sea level. I doubt tourists went far into the areas currently under 20 feet of water anyway.
There is land to the west that is 20 feet ABOVE sea level instead of 20 feet BELOW sea level. And much closer to the future channel of the Mississippi. This shouldn't be a tough decision.
New Orleans survived the hurricane itself. It's the fact that it should be underwater that was the problem when the dirt that they'd used to hold the water back gave out.
It was fine when it was built, but it's no longer a place for a major city. Keep the port, the industry as neccessary and enough city to run it, and let everything else move inland and higher.
I have been thinking about the same idea to leave the French Quarter and tourist or historical places but why put so much infrastructure back in harms way...whether 10 or 50 years away. Hastert may have angered some but why are we so afraid to say things that make sense. Is there no open discussion? For the sake of sentimentality, we may doom NO to the same fate some day. Hastert is finally acting like a leader and saying something that may not be popular but deserves consideration.
I agree. But you can bet your federal tax dollars - and mine - will go to rebuilding it, in manner just as vulnerable as before.
This is an incredibly stupid thing for a politician to say right now and it's going to cost Hastert dearly... but be honest, weren't you thinking it on some level?
Which will continue to sink.
A viable city at the mouth of the Mississippi and the Gulf: priceless.
Which Mississippi River? The one that currently flows by New Orleans? Or the one that's gonna form eventually well to the west of New Orleans, leaving the existing channel as a brackish slough?
Move it west. Deal with all three problems once.
The Dutch live below sea level. Their levies are way better than N.O.
Mother nature will always be in control no matter where one lives. That being said. Build the levies higher and stronger. We humans are pretty adept at keeping mother nature at bay, to the extent that we are able, with ingenuity and GOOD Engineering.
Yawn. No loss there.
NOLA is a wet lands and must be returned to its natural state and turned into a wild life preserve.
T-shirt shops would do well on the routes in to the nature preserve.
True, and living in an area not susceptible to hurricanes helps too.
The problem is, the region is subsiding, and those hills will slowly settle. There is natural high ground not far to the west.
I actually think there is a lot of common sense in what Hastert said. Pity his press secretary had to rush in to say he REALLY didn't say it.
BUT: while people have always known NO was in an extremely vulnerable location, always vulnerable to flood, hurricane, disease, fires, etc., from the earliest days economics trumped viability.
No way was there not going t o be a major city and port at the mouth of the Mississippi. When oil was found, that was added to the economic mix. City has been destroyed & rebuilt many many times since its founding.
Not trying to be funny, but what exactly do we "need" about NO, the way it was? I'm not talking about the people, I'm talking about the city itself.
Per Nicole Gelinas of City Journal, writing in the NY Sun today:
The truth is that even on a normal day, New Orleans is a sad city. Sure, tourists think New Orleans is fun: You can drink and hop from strip club to strip club all night on Bourbon Street, and gamble all your money away at Harrah's. But the city's decline over the past three decades has left it impoverished and lacking the resources to build its economy from within. New Orleans can't take care of itself even when it is not 80% under water; what is it going to do now, as waters continue to cripple it, and thousands of looters systematically destroy what Katrina left unscathed?
>>snip<<
New Orleans teems with crime, and the NOPD can't keep order on a good day. Former commissioner Richard Pennington brought New Orleans's crime rate down from its peak during the mid-1990s. But since Mr. Pennington's departure, crime rates have soared, to 10 times the national average. The NOPD might have hundreds of decent officers, but it has a well-deserved institutional image as corrupt, brutal, and incompetent.
How will New Orleans's economy recover from Katrina? Apart from some pass-through oil infrastructure, the city's economy is utterly dependent on tourism. After the city's mainstay oil industry decamped to Texas nearly a generation ago, New Orleans didn't do the difficult work of cutting crime, educating illiterate citizens, and attracting new industries to the city. New Orleans became merely a convention and tourism economy, selling itself to visitors to survive, and over time it has only increased its economic dependence on outsiders. The fateful error of that strategy will become clearer in the next few months.
Sure, the feds must provide cash and resources for relief and recovery - but it's up to New Orleans, not the feds, to dig deep within itself to rebuild its economic and social infrastructure before the tourists ever will flock back to pump cash into the city's economy. It will take a miracle. New Orleans has experienced a steady brain drain and fiscal drain for decades, as affluent corporations and individuals have fled, leaving behind a large population of people dependent on the government.
Hastert has a point.
Yup, and continental drift will continue, volcanoes will awaken and go dorment, lightening strikes and grass fires will happen, earth quakes will continue.
Darn, is there no place that is ok to build? ;)
LOL! Where's the graft and pork-barrelling in that?
LOL! Let them build their "American Museum Of Guilt" there. In a few more years, it will sink, too.
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