New Orleans could survive Hurricane Katrina, only to be hit with a second economic disaster...
As Hurricane Katrina stalks the historic city of New Orleans, and massive evacuations are ordered, my thoughts turn to an already-stressed structure located several hundred miles upstream of New Orleans at the distributary channel of the Atchafalaya with the Mississippi River. The Old River Control structure was built by the Army Corps of Engineers to prevent the Mississippi drainage from switching to the steeper Atchafalaya channel.…
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— go to most recent comments26 - John Aiken
All and especially DrPat,
Does anybody know of any reports of Katrina causing any damage to the Mississippi River levees; that is, other than the usual walk towards catastrophy which heavy rain always causes on the Mississippi?
I have looked hard on the web and have perused the newspapers and the TV and I have not seen any reports one way or the other.
I ask because DrPat's Comment 17 referenced "extensive damage to the lower Mississippi's levee system" in the context of Katrina dangers, but it was not clear if the the damage of which he spoke was caused by Katrina, and, if so, if it had already been reported to have occured or simply something which might occur in the future.
Yours,
John Aiken
27 - DrPat
At ~5 AM, Katrina made landfall. At 11:15, a "Levee Breached At Industrial Canal" according to New Orleans station WDSU.
Paul of Wizbang reported from his post in the Superdome that "MAJOR levee break on the 17th street canal [was] flooding both [New Orleans] and Metairie". The International Herald Tribune also reports Levee breaks devastate New Orleans.
Breaks in the the levee system upriver of New Orleans may develop over time as rescue, disaster response efforts concentrate on getting survivors out...
28 - John Aiken
Reference: Dr Pat's original post and Comments 9, 11, 16, 17, 18, 26, and 27.
Dr. Pat,
Thanks for your reply [27] to my question [26].
I guess you are saying that "as far as I know, no Katrina damage to the lower Mississippi River levee system has been reported." Do I interpert your reply correctly?
Of course, the breaks of which you speak are breaks in the Pontrachain levee system and are much less serious (though still very serious) compared to damage to the lower Mississippi River levee system. For the purpose of sensationalism the media often tries to make it sound like it is all the same thing.
To delve further, it seems to me that damage to the Mississippi River levee system below the Bonnie Carrie spillway would be much less serios than damage above the Bonnie Carrie spillway. Would you agree?
I'm still trying to get a handle on just how likely a break in the next couple of weeks is as a result of Katrina's action. The tone of your reply [16 & 17] to my Comment 11 seemed to indicated that you think that it is likely to occurr in the next couple of weeks. Am I interperting your Comments 16 and 17 correctly?
The only fact I know which argues in favor of damage to the lower Mississippi River levee system is that they were built to withstand Cat 3 hurricanes and they got a Cat 4. But, not only is that indirect evidence of damage very weak, it would imply damage below the Bonnie Carrie spillway which seems to me would be not so serious.
Finaly, Dr. Pat, thank you for all of your very informative posts. To me, they show that you really care about the victims of the current disaster; you are at least giving some serious thought to what might happen next. Diagnosis is the first step to prevention, and prevention is better than after-the-fact knee-jerk responses.
Yours,
Dr. John, PhD, New Orleans native (ex)
P.S.
By way of explanation to other readers and posters: the reason I stress "lower" is to specifically refer to two possible catastrophic events: 1) a "stream change" as mentioned in Comments 16 and 17 or 2) a "1927 repeat" as in Comment 9.
In other words, the use of the word "lower" is meant to exclude a "1993 repeat" which is also described in Comment 9 and seems to me to be less serious (though still very serious) than a stream change or a 1927 repeat. Not that a 1993 repeat would not be horrible, but, it's better to take one problem at a time (a 1927 repeat for me, a "stream change" for Dr. Pat, but those two problems are very closely related as explained in excellent The Quaker Exconomist (TQE) article referenced in Comment 16.)
29 - HerbLady
Dr Pat:
I can say "liability," but my first thought is "folly."
In light of the past 24 hours, particularly 2 major breaches in the Pontchartrain levees and the total evacuation of the city, what comment do you have now about the Corp's mission?
Could some of that good old American hubris for once take the long view? It couldn't possibly cost any more to relocate the entire city, than it's going to cost now to rebuild it in place AND "ensure its safety."
In fact, isn't this largely a man-made disaster, in the sense that allowing people to rely on the alleged "Control of Nature" simply exacerbates our vulnerability? Thank you so much for the benefit of your thinking.
30 - DrPat
HerbLady, it isn't the displaced people in the flooded Mississippi basin who are the major financial problem. As we've all seen in the last few hours, the area is home to industries that are critical to the whole US economy.
Even placing the historical value of the city aside (and it may need to be placed very far aside as we attempt to deal with the disaster), the physical infrastructure of a city the size of New Orleans cannot simply be moved from one basin to another.
This has been the argument for continuing to bolster the existing levee system for decades. And since we ARE spending all that money on the current system, and we ARE protecting the status quo, there has been little incentive to begin building a similar system on the Atchafalaya.
I'll go futher: there has been a major DISincentive to build such a system: the bayous and wetlands of the Atchafalaya Basin. We're riding the tiger with these river controls, people - and once you've straddled the cat, you can't simply dismount...
31 - John Aiken
Dr. Pat,
A new question (new to me, anyway).
Does the existence of the "Old River Control" make a repeat of the 1927 disaster very unlikely?
In other words, if the levees which protect the state of Mississippi and adjoining states from a repeat of the 1927 disaster were endangered, is it likely that the Corps of Engineers would simply divert more of the Mississippi River into the Atchafalaya and thereby avoid a repeat of the 1927 disaster?
Yours,
John
32 - sky
Dr. Pat,
I was fascinated to find your post, as I just finished reading The Control of Nature last month and it has been much on mind these last few days. I keep hearing government officials say that no one could have predicted this cataclysmic event, as yet it is so clear that science has known it would happen. The talking heads on TV keep saying "natural disaster". I keep thinking "totally predictable man-made catastrophe".
Finally tonight I did hear CNN broadcast a piece on a New Orleans Times-Picayune article from 2-3 years ago that discussed this in detail and accurately predicted exactly what would happen.
Good point about the historical and industrial value of New Orleans...but now that it has happened, a good part of the historical side may have been washed away...as for industry perhaps we can now see that a concentration of the industries (fuel, etc) in this one place leaves us too vulnerable. I would argue for relocation of some as a hedge against localized disasters in the future.
33 - DrPat
These discussions arise again every time a levee breaks along the lower system. It doesn't help; the whole plan, top-to-bottom, for protecting the lower Mississippi Basin from the disaster that would follow river capture by the Atchafalaya is geared to "keeping on keeping on."
So we have people incensed that the Corps didn't rebuild the levees after the floods of 1993 to a higher level. We have folks complaining that funds for the Corps were shifted to an ecology agency for the purpose of enhancing the coastal wetlands. (Some of the same folks who castigated authorities for "not caring" about the wetlands in dryer years.)
People and their choices, however ill-thought-out and ominous of effect, are part of the social ecology in which the choices on where to spend money are made. All of which means, I believe we will rebuild the levees and remake New Orleans. People will move back into the city. And over time, we will forget. This was a hundred-year-event. Plenty of time to forget, there.
Unless Old River Control fails, in which case, the decision will be taken out of our hands.
34 - Dave Nalle
These are, of course, levees, not dams. Building them up to a higher level isn't really an option.
Dave
35 - DrPat
Building them up to a higher level is necessary for levees in the Mississippi Delta, because they're sinking at the same time -- that's why I liken relying on a levee system to riding a tiger; you can't simply step off and walk away.
The river levees, especially -- because the riverbed is rising, and that means the head (kinetic power potential) of the water when it does escape is increasing all the time.
36 - Bob A. Booey
Dave, read the Chicago Tribune article I linked on the "I Won't Contribute" thread. The Army engineers and administrators in charge of the levees all agree that had they had more funding, they could have built the levees higher, finished incomplete levees, and probably saved more lives.
Don't comment so authoritatively on things you're not expert in.
That is all.
37 - Dave Nalle
Ah, good point, DrPat. With the sinking factor they do need to be built up periodically. But just building them higher to have them be higher won't actually help.
Babs, I don't argue with that. But even their ultimate dream plan for the levees would not have averted this disaster. The nature of levees is such that they could not possibly stop a storm of this magnitude.
Dave
38 - Bob A. Booey
They couldn't have prevented it altogether, but that article says they could have been higher and prevented some of the breaches in critical parts of the city and thus saved probably hundreds of lives and millions of dollars in property.
That is all.
39 - Dave Nalle
My other point, Babs - is that this levee improvement is part of an ongoing problem that dates back literally hundreds of years. No one has ever been willing to do what's really necessary which is move the damned city. Yes, better levees might have helped in some small way, but nothing would change the fact that NO has always been a disaster waiting to happen.
Dave
40 - DrPat
Excuse me, BAB, the people who wanted more money to spend on these projects complained that administrations since the early 90s (Clinton's as well as George W's) have reduced funding for levee-building.
This has more to do with getting money for new projects than it does with maintainance of the existing system -- when funds were reduced, the Corps and local agencies ALL decided to spread the funds around to pet projects.
In any case, the focus of this particular article is not the levee system, flawed though it is, but the river "valve" at Old River Control. As with the levees, hindsight is always 20-20.
41 - Bob A. Booey
Of course, it's a geographical nightmare. It's still no excuse for not doing the things that were proposed the last few years that could have saved lives and at least salvaged some of the city.
It's not OK to throw up our hands and say "Oh well, what can you do?" when the engineerings and project leaders who weren't taken seriously or funded adequately are telling you their hands were tied when they wanted to do more.
And we had SPECIFIC, DETAILED critical warnings from scientists and the press of the danger of a hurricane hitting New Orleans in the last few years that hadn't been brought to our attention before.
It's disturbing that they weren't listened to, at all. New Orleans has always been a potential disaster area, but the potential for that disaster got markedly higher the last few years, and more importantly, we knew MUCH more about the risk and possible consequences without acting on it.
That is all.
42 - Bob A. Booey
Dr. Pat, read that article before you comment.
This isn't a Clinton vs. Bush thing. What everyone does acknowledge, regardless of their partisan blame game, is that A) we knew MUCH more and had many more warnings from scientists in recent years than we had under Clinton, including scientists under federal employment and B) the deterioration of wetlands and the decline in funding for projects to study Category 5 hurricanes on the Gulf Coast and to build the levees higher made us more defenseless than we should have been. Of course, people would have still died, but a river valve is no excuse for inadequate foresight and preparation.
You're not an engineer -- I'll take the word of the engineers and administrators that know the logistics best.
That is all.
43 - DrPat
Oh, but BAB, I AM an engineer. I read the reports and budget requests from the Corps of Engineers for a reason. Been reading them long before the latest round of hindsight and finger-pointing.
And the original citation on THIS thread was John McPhee's book, published in 1990 -- just before the disastrous floods in 1993 that spurred the blame-game THEN.
Do you begin to understand that flooding on the Mississippi is a problem that the Corps has been fighting -- with mixed results -- for decades?
44 - Bob A. Booey
Existing problem going way back -- yes, Pat, we all know.
And as an engineer (albeit one without inside knowledge of the specific logistics of the situation there), you should really expect more resources and emphasis given to the good engineers who should have been allowed to do more to save lives.
Funding levels were higher for the projects during the Clinton administration, as you undoubtedly know from reading budget reports.
That is all.
45 - Silas Kain
Excuse me, BAB, the people who wanted more money to spend on these projects complained that administrations since the early 90s (Clinton's as well as George W's) have reduced funding for levee-building.
So, DrPat, do you think now would be the time to check out where all the pork barrel spending went for the last 15 years? I'm sure it's going to come out that the pork barrel rewards went to the same handful of reps and states over the last decade. Every penny of that money which went into frivolous projects is blood money in my book. Alaska alone got millions in pork. Talk about's Seward's folly. This is America's blunder.
46 - DrPat
You have a talent, BAB, for siezing on the least important detail in a response, and spinning it 180 degrees.
Let me lay this out more obviously for you:
47 - EMB
Dr. Pat,
I remembered the story about the near failure of the Old River Control diversionary dam and that if it failed it would have destoryed New Orleans. By "destroyed" does this mean flooded or "econonically destroyed"? Would flood waters have entered New Orleans from the west or missed the city completely?
EMB
48 - DrPat
The economic disaster that would come from the capture of the Mississippi by the Atchafalaya following the failure of Old River Control would be due primarily to the lack of water flowing in the existing channel.
Right now, the area doesn't need more water, but in normal times, almost all of the commercial activity that draws businesses and people to New Orleans is supported by the river flow. New Orleans without the Big Muddy would be just a dying town on a vast mudflat.
Kind of like now, only for hundreds and hundreds of years to come...
49 - HerbLady
Guys, guys!
Statements like this:
It's disturbing that they weren't listened to,... we knew MUCH more about the risk and possible consequences without acting on it.
...do nothing to solve a problem. Just as the jackals of the press are cashing in on the sick appetites of the disaster junkies, the political opportunists are looting for propaganda. Meanhwhile, you have to scan hundreds of stories of floating corpses and missing relatives, to find one or two about geological effects and engineering proposals for the future, which should be the real story for all of us.
BAB, the Corps has been acting on the risks all the time, as Dr Pat says, with mixed results. Not the least of the reasons for the mixed results is the curious mix of economic, political, social and geological pressures they were working under.
My whole point is, this disaster should be seen as an opportunity to triage amongst these pressures for a change. You can be sure politico-emotional pressures will be brought to bear to allow survivors to "rebuild their lives" right back in harm's way."
If it makes the most economic sense to ensure that the refineries can keep operating, that should be done at the expense of more sentimental considerations. Whether it will or not depends largely on politics.
In the interest of keeping the dialogue rational, blame should be kept out of it.
Dr Pat, in the event that Old River Control should fail, despite the best efforts at reconciling the conflicting interests, is there a long-term what-if plan for the Delta? Where can it be accessed? Thanks! HL
50 - DrPat
There's the Corps' report on the Atchafalaya Basin Project, which is more PR-level than engineering, but useful for gaining an overview of what their focus is in the basin.
There's also the lay-level Designing the Bayous (Amazon ASIN 9998134617), a publication of the Corps, which gets into a great deal more deal of the history and engineering concerns of development in the Atchafalaya Basin. It's the second link in my articla above.
51 - DrPat
The Corps DOES have a long-term plan for the Basin, but it is apparently not yet fleshed out with data. Last year, the Corps commenced a study for the Atchafalaya Basin, expected to be complete in four years:
52 - Lew Fite
Some 4-5 years ago I watched a very detailed televised documentary about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, battle with the Mississippi River, and Atchafalaya River related to flood control and flooding. Does anyone know what that piece was and how to find it again?
53 - DrPat
The History Channel had a Modern Marvels program about the Army Corps Of Engineers. It wasn't focused on the river control, though. The write-up says, "Ironically, the Corps' trademark blend of military perseverance and technical skill will undoubtedly provide the experience necessary to restore that which it has worked so hard to control -- the natural environment."
Other than that, I'm not finding this...
54 - Mark Wright
Dr. Pat,
yr thoughts in comment 46 would be news to everyone I knew in Monroe, Louisiana, where I lived (directly across from a levee in the north side of town) in 1973. A great flood was pending, and Monroe was a town scared to death of a breach in the levee system. Should the levee break, the water would have flowed through the entire town, and, like NO this week, nothing but near equilibrium in the water levels between the river and the area behind the levees would have even admitted repair work. It is understood, however wrongly, that the levees protect the city.
While technically, the intent of levees may be to hasten and control downstream flow, the practical effect is to protect & encourage development behind the levees. This is certainly the understanding of all those without very specialized understanding of such arcane issues of water flows, geology, &tc. It is implicit in any development that the levees hold back the waters.
I think we should think hard before trying to fix NO. The longer-term inevitibility of nature taking over this situation is simply impossible to refute, despite out investments to the contrary. The policy question will be brought into sharp focus, once the rescue is more complete. And the cost in lives (and national treasure) of another serious hurricane, flood, or terrorist attack on the levee system is just too horrible to contemplate. The luck finally ran out in NO, and that is the sad, hard truth of this week's events.
55 - DrPat
Mark, what happens when you overfill the river between the levees is exactly what happens when you let the water run in your washbasin. Overbank flow, while unwanted, is not the reason the levee is there.
As we see when the levee breaks -- that's when the flow of the river leaves the riverbed and enters town.
McPhee pointed out a harsh reality of life when Mother Nature goes extreme. People who have made lives, homes and businesses in the path of the escaped river are no worse off than those who build in the path of the cyclical mudflows in California, or live beside a volcano in Iceland.
The idea that we can always fully control Nature is false. We can partially control it, sometimes -- that's the purpose of the levee.
Estimates are that New Orleans will be unlivable for perhaps 15 years. Maybe now is the time to spend our efforts creating a new system on the Atchafalaya, and then let Old River Control go.
56 - John Aiken
Dr. Pat,
From a practical viewpoint, if the river changed its course and came down the Acthafalaya instead of the New Orleans river bed, would it not be most likely for the ports in the state of Texas to pick up the shipping business New Orleans enjoyed before Katrina?
Yours,
John
57 - SFC Ski
Dr Pat, you Rock for both your article and for your opening in comment #46.
58 - DrPat
Thanks, Ski! John, the Texas Gulf ports are already gearing up to take on the demand:
59 - DrPat
New Orleans had SEVEN MONTHS warning, according to this article from Natural Hazards Observer, when Hurrican Ivan (a Cat4 storm) headed toward the city.
In the wake of that event, the city and state governments both set up emergency prepardedness plans for evacuating all who could get themselves out of the city, housing those who truly could not get out (in the Superdome), and then evacuating them after the storm had passed.
These plans were not followed in the teeth of Hurrican Katrina. Supplies were not available in the Superdome, some people who could get out of the city chose not to, then swarmed the Superdome (and were sent to the convention center as a stopgap), and city personnel who were supposed to be part of the plan evacuated themselves instead of remaining behind to work.
Seven months is long enough to arrange practices so everyone is on the same page. Seven months is long enough to replace all the supplies that are supposed to be in the emergency shelters. Seven months is certainly long enough to change what didn't work this time, and get the amended plan to FEMA so they don't ignore a whole building full of flood victims.
I don't expect the blame-somebody crowd to care. But you ought to know that this nearly happened last winter, right at the end of hurricane season. New Orleans caught a break them, and like the gambler with a win on the table, decided the city was on a lucky streak.
Katrina blew on the dice, and their luck ran out.
60 - Lew Fite
So the question becomes -- will there be sensible debate about the course of action to take? Rebuild New Orleans or restore the enviornment and allow the River to change it's bed as it has every 1000 years. Is there a middle ground? No small decision, but it has always been known that we would come to this point sooner rather than later.
61 - kittygogo
I would also like to know, what are the other inevitabilities and what is being done to protect from them. San Francisco is a given, but other than earthquaking proofing, what can be done? We would most likely have to tell people to move from the Marina district, built on landfill fron earthquake 1 (you can't evacuate in an earthquake), and please excuse me while I laugh for an hour. What else do we need to prepare for, hurricane in NY? Volcanoes in Washington (I wish DC).
It seems an impossible task to prepare, too many variables. but what can WE, as concerned citizens, do to assure that instead of a highway to nowhere is built in AK, how about we reappropriate funds to shore up necessary infrastrucuture and maybe an emergency/disaster kitty fund? Is there any way to stop this pork after it's already been approved. I wish I could do something to spend OUR money in a more responsible manner. (excuse the violins)
Does anyone else think that that Bush admin is eerily reminescent of the characters on the show Reno 911?
62 - DrPat
For years -- no, decades -- money to build up the levee system to keep pace with subsidence in the Mississippi Basin has been considered one of those "pork projects." Restoring the Gulf Coast wetlands: pork. Studying the effects of letting more water flow down the Atchafalaya: pork.
Using the plans you've developed (and the sense God gave you): priceless.
...By the way, if you live in San Francisco and don't know what you plan to do when the Big One hits, you too could be one of those wights signaling to helicopters to "Rescue Me."
63 - DrPat
In my opinion, rebuilding New Orleans would be a mistake. I say that as one who deeply regrets never having been there. (Family plans to go next summer will now forever be set aside.)
It's time to let the river go where physics and the flow of the water take it.
I don't for a moment believe, however, that the politics of the situation will allow it. We will rebuild the city, though it doesn't make sense, and it won't be easy, and it won't ever be the Big Easy again. This decision won't be made by engineers or city planners.
It will come from the emotions and survivor-guilt we all feel for not having been in the city when it died.
64 - Jeaux - UL Cajuns
Dr Pat,
How feasable is it to let the Mississippi change course? In doing so we would be flooding Morgan City under 10 feet of water. After the disater to strike New Orleans, the state would not allow this to happen to another city. While I agree with your assessment of the Atchafalaya Basin, the power that be over in Baton Rouge would be reluctant to agree on a plan where the Mighty Mississippi would bypass their city.
65 - DrPat
Flooding Morgan City like New Orleans? Bypassing Baton Rouge?
This channel-switch doesn't have to happen at Old River Control. That's simply the most likely place, considering the effort the Corps of Engineers needs to expend right now to keep the flow mostly going down the existing channel.
With the current system on the present-day Mississippi channel (and the lack of it on the Atchafalaya), letting the flow run at Old River Control, or losing control there, would result in flooding for Morgan City.
That's why I suggested that some of the billions of dollars currently being earmarked for rescue and recovery in New Orleans should be used instead to prepare in the Atchafalaya Basin for the inevitable channel-switch.
Read: It's gonna happen, folks! Do we want a repeat of New Orleans 2005 when it does?
But I doubt it will happen. And sometime in the future, when this disaster does finally stike, there will be a lot of finger-pointing and assigning of blame because we could have prepared for it.
Write it again: we could have prepared to withstand this economic (and potentially fatal) disaster, too -- but didn't.
66 - Steve Kessler
This is a wonderful blog. Thank you, Dr. Pat. A couple of years ago, I saw something on the Dscovery Channel or maybe elsewhere about the city of Amsterdam. Also under sea level and subject to severe North Sea storms, Amsterdam adopted, I think, a highly innovative approach to their problem. They accepted the fact of future major storms and flooding. They then created a series of pathways for floodwaters to be guided to agricultural land way outside of the city. It looks like the discussion of the natural course of the merging of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya should include some kind of alternative such as this.
Perhaps New Orleans could be filled with trillions of yards of soil to raise it to above sea level, but would that be better, now that an historic opportunity has been presented to us, to look at a solution for the next thousand years.
Think of Houston to Gulfport as a massive opportunity to redesign according to nature's dictates rather than fighting them. Of course this is a trillion dollar problem and needs to be thought about over several administrations, but it could create employment on the scale of the WPA or CCC and provide meaningful employment for hundreds of thousands who love and want to reclaim their beloved coast while building a business base to exceed what was there before.
67 - DrPat
Steve, at issue is not only the flooding, but also the twin demons of subsidence and river capture.
In its position below sea-level in the path of storms, New Orleans is like Amsterdam. However, in its position on the delta at the terminus of a sub-continent-draining river, New Orleans faces a problem Amsterdammers never imagined.
Yes, if we had the engineering capacity to load the delta with 15 feet of dirt and build on top of that, the immediate problem of the "bowl between the levees" would go away. Such a load, however, would simply cause faster subsidence, squishing unconsolidated sediments out from the side of the load like mud coming up through your toes as you step.
In addition, the problem of river capture is exacerbated by the difference in altitude between the river bed where it is (constrained in the Mississippi Channel by the constant maintainance by the Army Corp of Engineers), and where it wants to be, down the Atchafalaya River and out to the Gulf, forming a new delta.
River sediments in a "natural" river spill over the bank and deposit into the basin on either side. On the lower reaches of the Mississippi, one can assume, this almost, but not quite, matched the subsidence rate. (We know it is "not quite" because the river has switched channels before.)
In the constrained river, these sediments build the riverbed even higher. Along with subsidence, the "rising river" effect creates a made-to-order problem when you're trying to keep the river in check.
It seems inevitable that, due to the emotions and finger-pointing, we will opt to rebuild New Orleans. In that case, the city planners could do worse than to take a page from Amsterdam's design, and get ready for the next flood.
68 - Luschen
Great site, DrPat. If the Old River Control blows out, would it be at all possible to rechannel the flow back to the previous channel? I am quite familiar with the Mississippi as my wife is from Natchez, which is slowly getting eaten. But this would be a major disater and you can move a lot of dirt with several billion dollars. So what would be the main impossibility of moving the channel back?
69 - DrPat
There's a little thing that stands in the way of putting the river back into its orginal channel, once it escapes: The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
River capture procedes because the capturing riverbed is lower than the original bed. The kinetic energy potential -- the head -- of the original river is higher than the capturing river. And the power of water to carve its own channel, destroying whatever control structures had been erected, is awe-inspiring.
As in awe-full and awesome.
So the answer is probably, no. Even IF we were going to spend any of that rescue and relief money on it, chances are very good it would be beyond our ability to return the river flow to the original channel.
Alas, for Kipling's Sons of Martha:
70 - Lew Fite
Regarding the flood control and land reclamation in the Netherlands: The Dutch have a wonderful museum in Lelystad the Nieuw Land Polder Museum that explains the history and demonstrates the their methods. �The people of the Netherlands are known for their struggle against the sea. The way in which people fended for themselves, in spite of floods and disasters, how they slowly wrested the land from the sea, that can be seen, heard and experienced in the Nieuw Land Polder Museum.�
link
What struck me the most on my visit, was that the Dutch debated and deliberated for more than one hundred years before starting their project.
Reading resources: link
We must have a national debate about how our national resources will be used to make all our lives better, safer, and our economy stronger. Do we restore and preserve the Old French Quarter as a living museum only? Do we start thinking of the waters of the Mississippi as a natural resource and not only a mode of transportation?
Love your comment in #66 S.Kessler "... but it could create employment on the scale of the WPA or CCC and provide meaningful employment for hundreds of thousands who love and want to reclaim their beloved coast"
I don't believe repopulating the fish bowl of New Orleans is a smart use of resources for our children and the new age. We all have a stake in the decision because we all will be paying for it therefore we should have a say in what happens next.
71 - John Aiken
Dr. Pat,
Thank you so much for your answer (Comment 58) to my question about th epossibility of the Texas ports picking up the business (Comment 56).
So, more than just a possibility, it is already, at least to come small extent, already happening. hanks for the info and for the link.
Yours,
John
72 - John Aiken
All,
I love your comments. Very informative with a lot of good ideas.
On rebuilding New Orleans, there was a similar situation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Hurricane Camile, which really did major damage to the Gulf Coast economy.
What happened next was that the casino business was allowed to flourish. Totally changed the culture of the place, and, not for the better from the point of view of the local residents. I believe that the crime rate went up, the whole "nine yards" usually associated with the gambling lifesytle was there to stay.
A casino business man was on Fox news a couple of nights ago. His comment was
"Of course, we should rebuild it. We should turn it into another Las Vagas. New Orleans is known for its debauchery and for being a fun city [being a native, I took offense at that remark]. We have been trying to get casinos into New Orelans for years, but, the city governemnt has stopped us. Now they might not have a choice."
From my point of view, it is possible that this business man's remark might be "sad but true."
Yours,
John
73 - DrPat
Although casinos are off-topic, John, they're not far off. Harrah's web site, for example, notes that "Harrah's New Orleans, Grand Casino Biloxi and Grand Casino Gulfport are closed indefinitely.", but
Reuters had a harsher take on this story. Per Reuters,
74 - Linda
Does anyone know of a map that shows what will flood if the River Control Structure fails?
Thank you,
Linda
75 - Nancy
DrPat, my understanding is that when it was founded, NO was about 8 ft above sea level; it's now about 8 ft below sea level, due to settling, which in turn is due to drainage of water & oil etc. from deep sublayers; it's presumably going to continue to settle, which means that even if they do divert the river, it's still going to be below sea level. Additionally, whether due to global warming or witchcraft, seasonal storms & hurricanes are predicted to occur in future more frequently & violently than in the past. I would say this would make diverting the river sort of irrelevant to say the least, wouldn't it? They're STILL going to get flooded every time it rains, no matter where the river goes, as long as they're subsealevel. Comment?