Speaking as a civil engineer (BSCE, 1991), I would say that rebuilding New Orleans to it's former state doesn't make economic sense. Are we going to spend $20 billion to rebuild a city full of adult bookstores, hotels & liquor stores? And don't get me started on the economics of spending the equivalent of 10 Manhattan projects to rebuild low income housing below sea level, because I might not be able to restrain myself.

What's needed here is a project to build a NEW community where New Orleans used to sit. Like Steve Austin (Lee Majors, not that white trash, beer swillin' wrassler), we can rebuild it: Bigger, faster, better.

Ace,

I cannot be the first one to point out to you that no element of Boston's Big Dig should be a model for any civil engineering solution to anything, anywhere. Can I?

I second Rocketeer's objection.

The Big Dig has eaten more federal money than Robert Byrd, and it still doesn't work.

Two comments: On the slurry walls, I don't know if it would help in New Orleans or not, but perhaps it ought to be considered. I lived in Sacramento until recently, and they just ha d amulti-year project reinforcing the levees along the American River with slurry, so there are folks out there who consider it valuable.

Adding to the mix on rebuilding NO, a thought: I've heard that the Mississippi River changes its course periodically, as the delta fils with dirt and silt, etc., but that efforts have been made in recent years (Army Corps of Engineers, IIRC) to ensure that it stays along the same course, precisely because if it rerouted away from New Orleans, the city would suffer economic damage, etc.

There are river control structure NW of Baton Rouge that currently prevent the Mississippi River flow from being captured by the Atchafalaya River toward St. Charles. Had the COE not done this there would not be enough water in the Mississippi from Baton Rouge south to NO and the Gulf for commerce during extended portions of the year and not enough flow to overcome over-silting. The MS River in LA is lined with refineries and other petrochem plants. It would be another economic disaster.

I should add that allowing the Mississippi to flow to the Atchafalaya would also destroy the largest natural hardwood swamp in the US and maybe the world, as well as also result in the destruction of the delicious swamp crawfish.

The trees and crawfish were there before people started screwing with nature's own water managment system.

I suspect they'll still be there long after NOLA is a dim memory of some future civilization.

Why bother?

I'm sure that the levees in New Orleans incorporated slurry wall technology, but let's see what the forensic analysis of the failure says. The problem with building levees higher & higher is that the water on the other side of those levees just gets deeper and deeper as a result. This deeper water inundates more outlying land, which sucks if you live on the "wrong" side of the levee. It also puts more & more pressure on the bases of the levees due to the static head of all that water sitting there. That's not even factoring in the dynamic forces caused by the storm surge and scouring of the saturated face of the levee. When these tall levees break, they BREAK. Logic dictates that 20 feet of water spilling through a busted dike will do more damage than 15 feet of water doing the same.

Once the levee breaks, the only sure way to fix the problem is to dry out the site and start rebuilding from the ground up. The valiant efforts to plug the breach in mid-flow are comparable to a mechanic doing a brake job on Jeff Gordon's car while he's halfway through the Daytona 500 and still in the race. Any engineer that could pull that rabbit out of his hat deserves free blowjobs & margaritas for the rest of his life of leisure.

Rocketeer is correct. Using the "Big Dig" for an example of "how to build something" is like using John Belushi or Robert Downey Jr. for an example of "how to spend a weekend in Hollywood".

And just wait the enviromentalists wackos will be saying this gaia nonsense you know how dumb they are when we have a major natural disaster like this? i mean after the tsunami those idiots at GREENPEACE blamed global warming i mean only a idiot would want to belong to GREENPEACE