Perhaps a huge, crescent-shaped levee instead?

I dont know. Manhattan's bedrock is real close to the surface, especially at the downtown tip. It was scraped bare by the ice age glaciers so there hasn't been a lot of time (geologically speaking) to build up dirt. New Orleans is at the mouth of the Mississippi and probably built on huge layers of silt. Whatever the case, it shouldn't be left to the Army Corps of Engineers to do the cost/benefit analysis. They kind of screwed the pooch on that.

Ace,

I am not so sure about this.

Despite the furious invective and "SHAME" signs of MoveON.org, the reality of this disaster being caused by impersonal and powerful Nature first, and inept local and state authorities second, the voting public may cool the heat currently on the President.

But as you say, politics being what they are, it may be that the calculus to rebuild, no matter the cost or feasiblity, is favorable as a political matter, first and last, and so therefore, it will be done.

...

No matter what, McChimpy NeoBurtonCon is Satan.

Make no mistake about this.

No longer does Nature hold sway over Earth. Nor does any person or group have any agency in their own behavior.

No.

History began with Bush's inaguration in 2001.

Bush is All-Powerful.

All Bad Things Are Bush's Fault.

All.

Bad.

Things.

...

Maybe we should change the calender to reflect this fact?

"..in the year 4..."

I like that.

4.

OK, it's 4 years of the reign of Satan's Terror, but it looks cool.

I like that.

So how high do you want to go?

If 80% of the city was flooded from a Cat 4 (maybe Cat 3+), to say an average depth of 4 feet, do we build it up to be above a Cat 5 storm surge? At the coast, that would be 30 feet above sea level. At New Orleans, that might be 15 feet.

So you need 20 cubic feet for every square foot. NO City covers 180 square miles. That means 3.8 billion cubic yards of fill.

The Panama Canal moved 232 million cubic yards so doing NOLA would take 16 times as much dirt, ballpark.

I'd say do-able, as a first cut, especially if you dredged Lake Ponchetrain and used the city as a spoils dump.

Finally! Someone talking sense...not to put too fine a point on this, but there will be a lot of usuable rubble.
Those Japanese built islands (airport) were what I was thinking, too.

Manhattan's bedrock is real close to the surface, especially at the downtown tip. It was scraped bare by the ice age glaciers so there hasn't been a lot of time (geologically speaking) to build up dirt.

True 'dat. Okay, so maybe drilling down to the bedrock isn't such a hot idea.

Boston just filled in its fens and extended its land area by pouring lots of dirt into the sea.

It's not the, err, most substantial sort of foundation to build a city upon, but couldn't that sort of thing be tried in NO? Perhaps with a grid of slurry walls to keep the loose dirt from just washing away at the next flood?

So how high do you want to go?

If 80% of the city was flooded from a Cat 4 (maybe Cat 3+), to say an average depth of 4 feet, do we build it up to be above a Cat 5 storm surge? At the coast, that would be 30 feet above sea level. At New Orleans, that might be 15 feet.

Not that high. I'm not looking for invulerability to flooding. All coastal or riverside towns have to risk some flooding.

I'm looking to avoid catastrophic flooding. A city like NO has to expect that every once in a while it's going to get flooded.

But there are degrees of flooding. 5 feet of flooding is manageable. 15, 20 feet is a disaster.

Raising New Orleans above sea level would be kind of like shaving the bearded lady. You'd take away some of the dangerous, carnival-like allure of the place. But then, I miss the old Times Square, the one with the prostitutes and drug dealers instead of the investment bankers and lawyers.

But then, I'm splitting hairs.

If it's going to cost a mint anyway and we want to do it right, let's get on it.

Now would Allah please put Nagin's head on Billy Dee Williams?

We don't really need NO.

Just relocate the french quarter to Lake Havasu and be done with it.

Ace,

OK then, just scale it. If you don't like 15 feet (20 feet total), then at 5 feet (ten feet total), you'd only need 8 Panama Canals.

Of course, I didn't include the 20% that didn't flood this time but that's small beer given the accuracy of the estimate.

Then there's Metarie and Kenner too but we've got it scoped - close enough for government work, which it would be.

As long as the houses didn't take a mechanical hit that damaged them, they could be salvagable.

New rock, new insulation, redo the electric, new cabinets (because the particle board turned to oatmeal). New subfloor if the builders used interior ply on the floor.

Probably in the ~$10K to clean out and render one habitable again as long as the flood waters were mostly fresh rather than salt water.

Won't be Trump Plaze, but it would be habitable. Probably would take a couple of months airing in a dry breeze to dry it all out though.

A couple of points regarding rebuilding NO:

Part of the problem with building in the NO area is due to the nature of the soils. Unlike Manhattan, which is largely built on bedrock, NO is built on uncompressed sediments of the Mississippi River. The City wasn't built below sea level originally, it has been, and still is, sinking at the rate of a few inches per year as the soils compress. No amount of fill will correct this situation, only building on an artificial foundation (like pilings) will work.

The bedrock below NO could be hundreds of feet below sealevel, probably not useful for structural support. Friction piles could be used, but would have to be used for every street, house, highway, signpost, etc. and would continue to sink with the surrounding soil.

The other problem with the City's current location is the fact that the Mississippi River is trying to change course, something we have been preventing for many years. The river should be allowed to run its natural course, as a newly rebuilt NO may be washed out by the river in the not to distant future.

All in all, this area is about the worst place to build a City; knowing that, most likely it will be rebuilt in the same place at the same elevation with money from the rest of us.

If I remember correctly from what I've read on the subject...

No matter how much soil you put in place, the city will eventually return to its current levels. The soil underneath is constantly shifting and compacting...which is has caused the level of the city to drop to where it is now.

Perhaps, it would take many, many years to get back to where it is now, but eventually, they would find themselves in the same predicament.

I can't remember which channel, but I recently watched an interview with someone (an engineer?) who explained that the bacteria in the soil would take six months to decompose, and only then if in direct sunlight. He explained how several feet of soil would need to be scraped from the surface of the city, hauled off for decontamination, and then dumped somewhere. If that scenario holds true, they'll/we'll already need to spend millions just to put it back to current levels.

The houses in older parts of New Orleans will be rebuildable, they used the lumber they had on hand to build them, mainly cypress, and cypress is more resistant to water damage tha redwood. They should have what 4 walls and a roof in pretty good shape, that's the kind of the rule of thumb on whether or not it's worth fixing. It'll mostly be the newer areas that are effective, and they are on the higher ground for the most part. My guess is that it will be more economical to raise and reinforce the levees and add more pumps than burying a whole a city and starting from scratch.

bedrock? in new orleans? i don't think any such thing exists. even in the relatively high ground of my home town, Opelousas, bedrock is sort of like baby pigeons ... you're pretty sure it exists, but you've just never seen such a thing. and that's why you don't see basements in south louisiana. dig four feet and get water. that said, one thing that came out of the blame game going on is that the corps. and everyone else was saying it was going to take at least another five years just to STUDY the feasibility of raising the LEVEES to protect against a Cat V storm. the STUDY would supposedly cost approximately a gajillion dollars. now you're thinking of raising the entire town... and putting the gubmint in charge?
might as well let jimmy carter run the show.

"Put Jimmy Carter in charge? Next thing you know, they'll have the Bomb!" -- caller on Howie Carr's show

I still find myself wondering how the founders of New Orleans figured the best city building plan might be "Let's dig a hole in the ocean and put a city in there."

OK, OK, I know it's rather more complicated than that, but still... over the years, they could have expanded in a direction other than towards the sea, could they not?

<gratuitous cheap shot>
No doubt it's the French influence.
</gratuitous cheap shot>

Let's just move the city half a mile in, it seems easier.

We could also push a large blue city, like San Francisco, into the ocean and put New Orleans in its place.

Howie Carr is on frickin' fire today.

Stumbo, where are you that you can listen to Howie?

No matter what happens, large areas of the city must be condemned and zoned as uninhabitable. The outlying areas, which are the lowest, should be used as soil donor areas and wetlands.

Why not Just make the homes above sea level, like the houses that you see on the coast( the ones that are on stilts). So that if the town floods agian these homes will be above water, and it will be cheaper than raising NO above sea level.

There's historical precedent for elevating a city. Check the history of Galveston TX after the 1900 flood. They raised a bunch of areas and built a seriously huge seawall along the gulf coast.

We've gotta rebuilt NO, we're America. No matter how spineless some of our neighbors have become, we can and will rebuilt NO.

Raising the town above sea level does not get you anywhere near raising the town above the Mississippi or Lake Pontchartrain, the bodies of water which were the immediate problem in NOLA when the storm surge backed up their discharge.

You can sit in Jackson Square, which is high ground in NOLA, look over the levees and watch river shipping pass by where the keel iis literally over your head.

Time to face facts. NOLA belongs to the gators. If you were going to build a city from scratch, you would never put it in this location. And that's what we're talking about -- building a city from scratch.

Just relocate the french quarter to Lake Havasu and be done with it.

Good idea. The French Quarter and London Bridge in the same place. Gotta love it.

Let's move the Garden District to Montgomery County, Maryland. It would attract lots of tourists who are going to D.C. anyway, and there's plenty of lobbyists in the area with enough money to maintain those homes.

Problem solved.

Seattle was also rebuilt to make it higher.

Seattle is also adding a third runway.

"The fill will amount to some 17 million cubic yards of carefully tested dirt. That dirt is coming by truck and barge from seven sites in the Puget Sound area as distant as DuPont. Before the dirt can be used as part of the runway fill, the pits where it is obtained must be geologically mapped and tested for contamination.

Moving that dirt from the distant pits to the site requires a fleet of trucks specially equipped for the project. Over the life of the project, those trucks will make a total of 350,000 trips between the airport and the pits, Rothnie said. That means 40 to 60 trucks arriving at the airport site every hour during the day and as many as 90 an hour at night when the freeways are clearer. The filling continues 20 hours daily, six days a week. "

The article doesn't mention how long they will be bringing in dirt, but I seem to remember from local news that it would be a couple of years.

With all the new construction, I wonder if the previous residents will be able to afford to live in the city, without the help of expensive federal programs to subsidize the rent.

All this would be easier if someone invented the bulldozer tool from SimCity.

Rebuild the city but change the building code.

Attics have to be equipped with rowboats, oars, and three days worth of provisions.

"Let's dig a hole in the ocean and put a city in there."

There have been stupider ideas...

Like the Union turning Dry Tortugas key into a "fort" that was supposed to be able to interdict shipping to NOLA.

They shipped millions of red murphy bricks down from the north east, armed Tortugas to the teeth, built 12' thick walls, put a garrison there, etc.

After all this was done, the south's ship drivers apparently realized that a FL key wasn't nearly as maneuverable as their ships were so they "cleverly" sailed around it and allowed the "fort" to mostly operate as a misquito farm for the duration of the war.

The San Francisco Marina district is built on lagoon land, reclaimed ("re"claimed?), which reverted to watery silt in the 1989 earthquake. Bottom stories, beyond the first floor, of snazzy buildings simply sank. I don't know if NO has earthquakes. . . .

There's also all the people living on the westbank of the Mississippi River. Their levees against the marshland are anthills compared to the NO lake levees. Any hurricane coming to the west of the area will likely put all these towns (Algiers, Gretna, Harvey, Lafite, Westwego, etc.) under huge quantities of water as well. That's on the backside. On the frontside, should the Mississippi levees breach catastrophically, anyone on the breaching side is going to be history. I just don't think it's fair for all the rest of the taxpayers to pay to fix up all these peoples' homes when the same thing is bound to happen again at some point in time in the future. I lived in NO and Metairie from 76-86 and enjoyed it immensely. Yet I don't think it fair for these people to be made whole by the rest of us. Shouldn't they have to bear burden as well? Good money chasing bad as they say.

Every state has earthquakes, even FL.

NY has several hundred a year, but they're not "city buster" strength.

How many people will be dumb enough to go back? I’d guess that a lot of people could take various offers from the gov’t and move somewhere else. If you go north over the lake, it's nice and dry. A friend of mine was transferred to NO years ago and moved there.

One program that he gov’t has for places in flood areas is a buyout program. They buy your house and you go elsewhere to live. I think there are about 3 people in Louisiana under federal indictment for playing money games with that program in the recent past.

If that program is offered to people in the NO area, my guess is that a lot would grab it.

I lived on a Long Island barrier island for over 30 years. We never flooded nor had any serious hurricane damage. When that hurricane ripped up North Carolina islands two years ago, cutting some in half, I figured my luck just might be running out. I got a good amount of money for the place and moved inland. If we had flooded and the gov’t offered the buyout, I’d have taken it – after losing everything and a lot of my old neighbors would do the same thing. Since a lot of folks in NO already had their luck run out, I’m guessing they’d be happy to take the money and run.

That would be the cheapest, and probably most politically acceptable answer.

For folks that think the houses can be salvaged, your probably wrong. I worked as a carpenter for quite a few years. Those NO houses have absorbed all sorts of crap. The framing has absorbed that. At the least they’ll smell like crap, and other stuff, until the end of time. Molds will have started growing and, in a wet enviroment like NO, will continue to grow – in the house framing.

I don't know... last time he was in a boat, didn't he get attacked by a rabbit or something?

All woods have mold builtin - right from the mill. The stuff stops growing when moisture percentage goes below some particular point, and starts again when it goes above.

Somejoe --- We've gotta rebuilt NO, we're America. No matter how spineless some of our neighbors have become, we can and will rebuilt NO.

So we will take hundreds of billions from taxpayers located well above sea level in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Arizona so we can rebuild a city run by blacks too incompetent to use schoolbuses to evacuate in a state too corrupt to maintain their own levees or fund an emergency response system?

And a City sinking a few inches a year anyways and with a Port that is 50-50 to survive for another 50 years given the Mississippi is on the verge of cutting a new route through the Atchafalayah despite the Corps of Engineers desperate efforts to stop it??

The "we gotta do it because we are Americans" is not a voice of prideful confidence but stupid hubris on the order of the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war to make Iraq a secular, Israel-loving democracy.

The last thing we should be doing is figuring out how to spend a hundred billion to recreate the flooded 80% of New Orleans which was predominantly slums consisting of the least educated, most criminal elements of a black underclass that had long lost hope of any future in NOLA, but were too stupid, lazy, or depressed to move elsewhere and start a new life.

Now the scum are out, and have a chance to finally build a life in areas freer of crime and ignorance, with more job opportunities if they are so inclined. The Lousiana Dems are desperate, though. That 250,000 concentrated underclass was the margin to victory and oodles of graft over the Republicans. Who will continue the corruption, but hopefully more competently if they win. Which they will if a good chunk of the 100% Dem black underclass is moved out of state.

lauraw: I went first., Your turn.

Usually I'm a spectator in here, but I just couldn't resist putting my two cents in...

As a 30-year New Orleans native, there are a couple of surprising things going on here. The first is that the Westbank, except for specific regions, largely did not flood. Westwego flooded, parts of Gretna flooded, but Algiers, upper Marrero, parts of Harvey, et cetera, are not only dry, but have power and water again. Jefferson Parish is springing back nicely, and as that's where a significant element of the population lives, there's less to actually rebuild than you think.

Orleans Parish is another story. Cedarford, much as I think your tone is a little harsh, I largely agree with you. There's a lot in the lower 9th Ward, Treme, Bywater, and the like, that will probably be uninhabitable for months anyway. It is the grim hope of many, particularly in Jefferson Parish, that the result of this is a significant demographic shift (oriented more around income than race). That will regrettably sound bigoted; it is not intended as such.

The equation is simply that if you carry Orleans Parish in statewide elections, you largely carry Louisiana. In order to change that, and begin to undo some of the corruption, it requires the dispersal of these monolithic blocs of voters.

New Orleans was just beginning to get a sniff of urban renewal when this came down... this will actually kick-start things.

I sympathize with the guaranteed mis-management of taxpayer dollars that will come with this- the unfortunate situation is that we can't move the Port of New Orleans further upriver- the majority of farming exports leave the country through the port. We also take care of a lot of steel through the port. In addition, the major port of entry for offshore oil and natural gas comes through Port Fouchon- just to the SW of New Orleans.

A quick finisher- Jim, you're absolutely right about what has been absorbed by many houses down here. In May of 1995, we had an unusual non-hurricane related rain event- 24 inches in 8 hours (May 8, 1995 if anyone wants to look for it). The majority of the construction down here is thin-walled on lower floors... you rip out the walls and insulation and start over. We had to do it in our house, which was on the high part of Metairie Ridge, and we still got two feet of water in the house. Most houses down here are raised a minimum of three feet anyway.

I think a majority of us who are from NO are all too aware of how this is going to be handled... poorly, and unsatisfactorily, but I would point you to an article at stratfor.com-
http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=254609

for a pretty good analysis of why NO has to be at least functional.

In any event, I've seen a lot of what makes our country as wonderful as it is poured out from the moment the s*$# hit the fan... a heartfelt thank you to all of you for doing what you have and what you can. When this is all over, I hope you can all come do Mardi Gras with us... a big steaming plate of jambalaya, some Abita beer, and some Community Coffee awaits you. Geaux Saints.

Thanks,

tmi3rd

Umm, john, I think she meant the 'Open Thread for Morons' :)

I hope everything works out for you tmi3rd and for N.O. We live in a great country that sometimes needs a kick in the pants to solve its problems so I have great hope that N.O. will be rebuilt, were it is, better then ever. We have the technology we just need the will.

Slu:

Framingham, MA.

(But for those not in New England: http://www.wrko.com , 3-7 p.m. Eastern. The *cough*Internet*cough* version of Howie's show is worth checking out, too.)

Nice. I'm in Bangor, Maine.

Listen to it on my local talk radio station: WVOM.

I think this idea is more do-able than it first seems.

Ever been though the Seattle Underground? Seattle was build on a tidal flood plain, which caused all sorts of problems. After a fire, the city required all reconstructed buildings to have reinforced ground floors and entrances on the second floor. Then over a span of several years, the city walled in the streets and built the streets up to the second story level, covering over the sidewalks and connecting the second story entrances to the street. The second stories became the first floors in effect, while the original first floor became building basements.

If NOLA rebuids, perhaps certian zones should be required to rebuild the lower floors of buildings so that they can tolerate occasional flooding. Then fill is only needed to bring the streets up above the flood level. Buildings can be required to have sumps in the ground floor and generators and drainage pump motorss can be located above the floodline. After a flood, the city can coordinate with individual property owners to ensure that the overall drainage system isn't over-taxed when de-watering the buildings. (Drains work by gravity -- you don't drain something below the waterline, you dewater it. Ask a sailor.)

A plan like this would not only make NOLA more resistant to flooding, but would also spread a great deal of the cost out amongst individual property owners and minimize the actual amount of material required to do so. It would also provide a great deal more readily-accessable flood-safe shelter in the event of another big storm, while minimizing the overall impact on taxpayers.

If you want to relocate NOLA, the easiest way to do so is to convince flood insurance providers not to write new policies in the NOLA area. Under Federal law, anyone lending on a property in a flood zone MUST ensure that the owner/borrower has flood insurance before closing the loan. No flood insurance, no loan. No loans, no money to rebuild. No money to rebuild, people go elsewhere.

You don't need to raise all of New Orleans. You just need to make sure a huge increase in water level and volume can get past the higher ground.

...so make a canal/lake. Cut a big swath right through the middle of the low-lying areas, put tall levee/seawalls on either side of it, widen the Mississippi channel (build tall levees a mile or so from each other), and let the Pontchartrain flow right on through to the sea. Build a couple of nice big bridges before you let the water in (cheaper to make them then), and lete the river run...

Make New Orleans a city of islands, instead of a bowl.

Any way we can encourage the Mississippi to hurry up and switch to running through the Atchafalaya like it's been wanting to do for ages? And when it does, build New New Orleans near its new mouth?

Rebuilding it in place isn't as dumb as it sounds. I mean, this is the first big hurricane to hit the place in 300 years; I don't see any reason to expect to do another rebuild anytime soon.

At the very least, we need to put a port there, and enough of a city to support the people working at the port. Whatever that costs ought to be paid by the port, and through it by the shippers, and through them by the people that use the shipped goods and imported goods bought with same. If it doesn't make sense, the port will close, the people will bugger off, and we'll do our trade through Houston or Norfolk or New York or San Diego or... well, you get the idea.

I believe your whole post was an excuse to use the phrase "bugger off" ;-)

Before I'd raise the whole stinkin' city, I'd think about floating the damn place (well, the structures; especially a lot of the housing). Cheaper. More elegant. Give us the engineering experience we might be needing in the not too distant future in lots of coastal areas.

Besides, it would be cool.

The problem with New Orleans can't be compared to places like Seattle or Galveston because the NO soil isn't the same. Unless engineers have come up with a way to build a firm, permanent, hurricane-proof foundation on SILT, all the while having to fight against the will of a HUGE river, then it makes no sense to build New Orleans back where it was. The ground is going to continue to sink.

I am for rebuilding, just not in the same place, because the same place will have the same problems as before. I originally thought it would be neat to have a Venice-type setup of canals around the city...but the gators and the water mocassins would like that a little TOO much, I think.

One thing is for certain: all practical ideas should be considered, including those that may get some NO natives upset. We shouldn't spend billions of dollars to build something stupid out of sentimentality.

Later,
bbeck

O ne thought is the preserve the French quarter--which is on relatively high ground, and rebuild the rest somewere else.
The economy of NO mostly runs on tourism, and the
FQ is what tourists want to see.

Here in Seattle we disassembled an entire hill and used it for landfill in the flooded parts.

www.djc.com/special/century/10060862.htm
www.vrseattle.com/pages/browse.php?cat

...but the gators and the water mocassins would like that a little TOO much, I think.

There's a canal in back of my house. The gators don't eat much and keep the level of strays down in the neighborhood. They're so efficient the local chinese restaurant has been complaining.

I was quite fond of the General Tsau cat. The possum substitutes are too greasy.

http://www.superlaugh.com/1/chowmein.swf

Did you ever think when you eat Chinese,
It ain't pork or chicken but a fat Siamese,
Yet the food tastes great, so you don't complain,
But that's not chicken in your chicken chow mein...

--- Weird Al Yankovic, "Cat's in the Kettle"

Back on topic: Rebuild it, just to show our enemies WE CAN.

bbeck is right (apparently, her brain is as large as her breasts; you go girl). Building new structures on a base of saturated silt just insures that their lifespan will be GREATLY decreased. Another commenter early in the thread made a good point about the E-FREAKIN'-NORMOUS amount of fill material that would be required to raise the entire town of NOLA to an elevation above sea level (and account for a small amount of future settlement - remember the silt?)

Unless anyone has a good idea for a cheap source of fill material in the NOLA area (chopped MoveOn activists mixed in with shredded copies of all the pre-election "The Chimperor Bush is a Nazi/Idiot/Fascist" books that are gathering dust in warehouses right now?), I think the best solution would be to identify areas already at reasonable elevations within the town, areas that could be brought up to those elevations with a small amount of fill, and areas which have sunk below the point of no return. The redevelopment of NOLA could then be redirected to the first two groups of the aforementioned three, and the third group would just sit idle (the City could use it for park land....you know....when there isn't a freakin' hurricane bearing down on them).

A final thought before knocking out for the evening...

Particularly among the coastal residents, i.e. Grand Isle, outer St. Bernard Parish, and the like, most of the construction is up on pilings. It's the damnedest thing to head out to such places that most native Louisianians haven't even heard of (Yscloskey, Toca, Florissant) in St. Bernard and see entire concrete school buildings up on 10-foot pilings... it looks like a spacecraft landing.

Many downtown NO buildings don't begin with office space until about 20 to 30 feet up at the lowest- it's usually parking garages down low, specifically to fight flooding problems. I would have you hearken back to Tropical Storm Allison which flooded out downtown Houston... some poor bastard took the elevator down to check on his car after the flooding but before it had been pumped out. Say goodnight, Gracie...

Anyway, my point is, particularly in the last ten years, there has been very little true ground-level construction of either buildings or new homes. Most of them are raised a minimum of three feet, and the number is usually closer to five feet.

We're pretty accustomed to dealing with flooding on significant levels- I think that as the paper trail continues to surface (pun unintended), you'll find that the vast majority of federal money spent on Louisiana was supposed to go to levees. In typical Louisiana fashion, however, you'll find that it went to any of a number of projects elsewhere in the state that are utterly useless.

This is a pumping system that in most conditions can handle rainfall rates of about 3 inches an hour. That's an incredible capacity- but then again, we have the typical roster of incompetents and political hacks who don't maintain their gear, and then the pumps go down. At that point, it's like trying to teach quantum physics to chimpanzees- all they do is make a lot of noise and fling shit at each other. For example, I direct you to the current battle between Nagin and Blanco. "He did it! Nuh-uh, she did it!"

This is a region that typically shrugs off most good brushes from hurricanes- in my lifetime, we've been in the broad path of at least thirty storms, including Andrew in 1992. The levees survived that, so the sense of security was maintained, despite the rather prophetic crowing of the Times-Picayune. It was just finally our turn, and we regrettably did not have people, particularly in the role of first responders, that were equal to the challenge.

As a final thought- there have been studies done on moving the port facilities further upriver where they wouldn't be so vulnerable. Unfortunately, this was deemed infeasible due to some odd soundings in the channel... I don't have the link in front of me, and I can't remember the specifics of it, but apparently they couldn't deepen the channel to accomodate full loads of some of the heavier materials. If I find that link, I'll put it up in the future.

Bbeck, no argument with your point from here... it cannot be resurrected board by board in its ante-hurricane form, and some tough decisions will have to be made. I'm pretty sure I won't like everything that comes down the pipe, but we're stuck with our mess. I wish it were just us in Louisiana, but we all apparently get to take a bite of this.

Thanks again, folks.

Tmi3rd

Unless anyone has a good idea for a cheap source of fill material in the NOLA area

The low areas - make artificial lakes. Most new developments in south FL are using this trick to get the fill needed to raise building sites around the "lake" several feet above ground level.

Then all the lots around the "lake" [Rovian cackle and evil laugh] can be sold for more money because they are now "waterfront" property.

Ground up MoveOn members won't work. They have no moral fiber and thus would just be pouring more sludge on top of the existing sludge. The pulp from the books would be overwhelmed in meeting the fiber requirement for the mess to form stable fill.

BBeck is right. Remember, NO's problems are just a subset of the entire issue of the Louisiana and nearby costline. A major portion of the land we purchased from Napoleoon back when simply no longer exists. It's ocean. Much of the rest has sank substantially since then and will continue to do so.

There are worse things than flooding. Many of those drown neighborhoods may be recoverable but not all. By comparison, several small costal towns hit directly by Katrina were reduced to toothpicks.

NO has two primary value arguments in favor of rebuiding. The tourist trade and economy surrounding the port operations. The problem is that NO is several times larger than either of those factors can support. Taking this opportunity to remake the city in a smaller version with the touristy French Quarter focusing on the historical and the port infrastructure focused on the modern would make more sense in terms of investment and avoiding a repeat of this disaster.

New Orleans is built on silt that is VERY deep. IF they rebuild the city at it's present site, they need to bring in fill dirt. The problem with building where it stands is the levee system on the Mississippi. There used to be 25 miles of marsh between the ocean & New Orleans & because the Missisippi is no longer depositing silt, the marsh is shrinking at a rate of 25 feet a year. New Orleans will soon be ON the ocean and nothing will stop a 20 foot tidal surge. My vote is to move the damned place to a safer location.

my 2 cents;

1. NO has no reachable bedrock.

2. I think most of the citizens dispersed around the country will choose to remain where they are. The outpouring of assistance is going to leave favorable impressions on those people and they will come to realize that where they are is preferable to where they've been, emotional connections to NO aside. Subsequently I don't think there's going to be as much of a need to rebuild as expected and NO can rebuild a modified city. The oldest sections are probably the highest since I'm sure they didn't start building 300 years ago by saying, "Let's start in the swamp and then work our way up to the highground in the future. So the historic areas can be saved and the commercial areas, well, they NEED to be saved, somehow.

Let me also point out that NO already has canals. Adding more, especially connecting to the gulf, will only allow hurricanes more passages to spill water into NO. Lake Ponchartrain is already an arm off the Gulf and that's why Katrina pushed water into it and Lake Borgne. The water from Borgne topped the levees where they come together from Orleans and St. Bernard Parishes. The levees then contained and thus funneled water into NO East and the Ninth Ward. Water from Lake P apparently placed too much pressure on the eastern flood wall for the 17th Street Canal resulting in a breach that flooded Lakeview and points south. Water in the Industrial Canal pushed a barge into the flood levee wall there causing a breach adding more woes to those east and south. There was also a breach in the London Ave Canal. So more canals may be problematic. Katrina pushed so much water up the Mississippi levees in Plaquemines Parish that levees were overtopped causing flooding. Even if NO is rebuilt, Jefferson Parish (east and westbank), St. Bernard, and Plaquemines Parishes will still be just as vulnerable as they are today to the next Katrina that happens along. The entire area is still vulnerable to Mississippi River levee breaches during periods of high water. Witness St. Louis in 1993.

Hi. Is there some way I can read the original post? I don't know where to find it.
Thanks.

Bucky Fuller had a floating pyramid design for Baltimore harbor. It was only on paper but it seemed like a good idea.
It was about one mile on each edge!

Maybe Katrina will give us the Ninth Ward Pyramid.

.... no cars, some escalators, only walking or biking.
Hydroponic gardening....

The base would be a big barge made of cement that would float on the swamp. It would be connected to neighboring barges and the land by bridges at different levels.

just another idea