Hastert Asks the tough question about New Orleans
Posted by Moonage on 01 Sep 2005 | Tagged as: Katrina
I, and a lot of other people, have been tossing this concept around. Representative Hastert just vocalized it. He then backtracked. But, the cat’s out of the bag. Should the New Orleans bowl be rebuilt? It’s several feet below sea level in a hurricane prone area. It makes no sense at all financially to invest billions and billions of dollars in rebuilding it.
Now, before the people of Louisianna get too terribly bent out of shape. The same question would have to be asked about all development in the hurricane alley of the deep, deep, south. Most of southern Florida is below sea level as well. In order to expand, they have filled in swamps. How permanent is that? How safe is that? No one knows. They thought they had a pretty good idea with the levees long ago.
Nashville would be flooded if one single dam broke. Sure, that dam is a good idea for more reasons than one, but it’s been patched up once and is due a $300 million fix right now.
Los Angeles is on a heck of a fault line. For that matter, so is St. Louis, Louisville, and Memphis.
Seattle is perilously close to a massive volcano that has blown it’s top recently. If the wind had blown the other way, could have been something almost as bad as New Orleans is now.
And, last but certainly not least, Washington DC is built on filled-in swampland. I would imagine that’s not terribly permanent or safe either.
Bottom line, there is no such place as "perfectly safe". All areas have their issues. But, it does stand to reason that we should minimize that peril even if the average person is not willing to do it themself. Designate the New Orleans bowl as a national monument. Bust the levees and let nature take it’s course. Build Newer Orleans around that bowl.
Or, if that doesn’t fly, how’s about filling that swampland in and raising it above sea level? It’s worked for DC and south Florida, I see no reason it can’t work in Newer Orleans.
1 Comment »
on 02 Sep 2005 at 1:22 am 1.Bryan Kerwick
said …
Seems like it would be easier to use the non-historic buildings as a landfill base to raise the city. The French Quarter is up much higher than downtown and downtown has to be completely rebuilt anyway. Why not use the rubble to raise the city a few feet higher? It would also make sense to make flood and wind insurance not available to areas that have these predictable problems to discourage building there. Try getting a bank loan for construction without insurance. Ain’t happening. If you want to take that risk so be it but don’t expect the taxpayers to subsidize your folly. It could be fixed by raising the elevation with the rubble but still isn’t a real good idea. People need to make these risk management decisions without being subsidised by the taxpayers. Buildings that do go up should have no basements and at least 1 or 2 story parking so the damages caused by flooding will be manageable. That along with raising the base would go a long way in minimizing the risks of this kind of devestation.