That's obstructionist bulldung.
Even nuclear fallout didn't stop the Japanese from rebuilding Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The evacuation should make New Orleans' urban renewal fairly easy.
Just condemn the properties and bring in the bulldozers to scrape the slums away. You could probably use a lot of the rubble to double the width and height of the levees. Come to think of it, that would also be a good way to dispose of those huge slabs of concrete that used to be the bridge across Lake Ponchatrain!
Re:1194 But WHY rebuild? Just look at number of times NO's been hit with hurricanes; some worse, some not. It's only gonna happen again. Remember last year when those three hurricanes, including Ivan, hit the area a week apart from each other? Why go through this again?
Banks just love to loan money without security and guarantees.
"You want us to loan you money to build on a toxic waste site? One subject to massive flooding? We're supposed to trust you that bad things won't happen because you personally assure us that you will pay us back even if the everyone in your building dies within a week and the building is washed away a year later."
DING, DING, DING! We have a winner! Willie Green will be the next Governor of Louisiana!
That's about all those properties will be any good for anyway, after sitting for months in river water filling up with all sorts of putrid sediments. The molds and fungi alone would make them uninhabitable, and you'd never get rid of it all even if you stripped the buildings to the frames. Using the concrete rubble from the bridge and buildings as riprap on the levees is probably the best thing that could be done.
Like it or not, New Orleans will probably be rebuilt right where it is (maybe this time some genius will figure out that the pump stations that were supposed to be used to prevent this from happening need to be elevated so they're not submerged and unuseable when the water comes in!). Maybe they'll throw in a little bit of fill to raise some of the really low areas, but probably not, and then the city will go on until the next Cat 5 hurricane comes, or until the Mississippi finally gets around to changing course and flooding out the Atchafalaya basin, leaving New Orleans in the middle of a salt marsh.
Good thoughts Willie. Not only that, it might give them a chance to enact decent building codes that specify foundation height and materials that should be used for building. Even my 16 year old noticed that today...why are we building homes in hurricane country out of wood? Concrete has a much better chance of withstanding the winds and flooding....