But, you may be right. Maybe the locks kept all of the bad stuff out. :smack:
Or maybe the silt in the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain is just nice, clean fairy dust, rose pollen and the residue from the last time Tammy Faye washed her face.
It’s a fucking lake. What’s on the bottom is moot. What came in is lake water. The canal break was by the lake, so lake water came in there, too.
(I can’t beleive I have to explain this)
The lake is still and placid compared to the churning Mississippi. In the absence of motion particulate matter precipitates out and the water is relatively clear. When it flows in, yes, some bottom stuff will get caught in the torrent, but nothing like what you were talking about.
It’s not like your other posts about Mississipi silt being deposited… was it two feet? over NOLA weren’t completely full of shit. They were.
It’s that you’re so incredibly stupid. You go on an on about Mississippi silt and what an expert you are and how terrible the stuff is (never mind that we drink water from the river) and you didn’t even know that the Mississippi levees held, and it was relatively silt free lake water that came in.
Or possibly muck.
However, Ponchartrain is a shallow lake, 5 meters or less, so you do have to worry some about muck being stirred up by 140 mph winds. If the lake bottom were laced with high levels of cadmium, or PCB’s, even an inch or two on the streets could pose a nasty problem. This site: Lake Pontchartrain Basin: Bottom Sediments and Related Environmental Resources goes into excruciating detail on the lake sediments. Not being a lake chemist/geologist I’m not qualified to assemble an overview, but it looks like with respect to PCB’s at least, (below 1ppb, see link), the muck is pretty clean.
I’d expect that if there were a chemical problem with the lakes bottom sediments, we’d have seen something in the news by now, but that’s hardly a certainty.
-A preview to tomorrow’s epistle.- ChIGRs - Scylla is infected.
Tomorrow I will list the options that Scylla came up with to traverse a 100 foot earthen dam with a 20 degree slope–an idea supplied by Una. She suggested ringing the city with simple earthen dams because they are (relatively) inexpensive (she suggested billions, rather than tens of billions, of dollars).
This is the idea Scylla latched onto:
And this is what she said would be needed to construct them:
That’s important for reasons you’ll see tomorrow.
Anyway, I just want to get the first one out of the way this evening because, as I will demonstrate, the very premise of just building a road up to and over these earthen dams is impossible within Una’s monetary constraints, as well as pretty damn dumb once you think about it.
We’ll have a lot more fun with the rest of Scylla’s silly scenarios tomorrow.
So, let’s build Scylla’s Road.
But first, a definition:
levee
n : a barrier constructed to contain the flow of water or to keep out the sea [syn: dam, dike, dyke]
(I wonder how many of you have got it already?)
A levee holds back water. That means a levee is next to water. In NO, there are levees in two places–alongside Lake Pontchartrain and alongside the Mississippi River.
(More of you are getting it.)
Now, lets say that, because the lake seems like an awfully large expanse of water to cross, let’s go the shorter way–across the river.
(Lights are going on all across the country)
So, we fill our dump trucks up and dump ‘em out and construct us a fine road right up to and over that darn ol’ levee. Then we stand at the top, heartily slapping each other on the back and knock back some Hurricanes. Mmmm, tasty.
Then we look down. Down the hill, toward the river. Aw, shit…we didn’t just build a road. WE BUILT A DAM!
That’s right. A big pile of earth that transects a river is called a dam.
The water is rising. Where’s it going to go?
It’s going to overflow the other bank of the river (Remember, we only encircled the city.)
Odd thing is, people live on the other bank. Poor bastards.
Quick! Let’s tear down our dam/road before those folks get really pissed!
Like a flash we deconstruct our road, the people on the other bank beathe alot easier (they’re thankful just to be able to breathe at all), and we consider our other options, after coming to this conclusion:
There will be no roads constructed across the Mississippi River.
Now, Scylla, I can hear you already, "But, but, we can build a bridge!
No, no you can’t. But I’ll explain that tomorrow.
Then I hear you whine, “There are other places in NO that aren’t next to water where we can build my road.”
Yes, there are, but no, you can’t. And I’ll explain that tomorrow as well.
Then, grasping at straws, Scylla gasps, “I know! We’ll build another Lake Pontchartrain Causeway! Or two! Maybe three!”
Remember Una’s monetary constraints? Well, you just ran up against 'em, and you hit 'em hard.
And they slapped you down like the silly little twit you are.
From this point it’s pretty easy to extrapolate what’s going to happen tomorrow to each and every of Scylla’s options. But, being the “gentleman I am”, as he suggests, I’d again like to again offer Scylla the opportunity to:
Apologize (and make me believe it)
Withdraw, retract his stupidity, and basically announce to the world that he has no idea of what he’s talking about, and
Scylla, all I can say in response is can you think of anything that might have occurred recently that might stir up the bottom of a big, wide lake just a little?
Can you explain to me why the imaginary deadly toxic silt which isn’t coming into the city from the levee that didn’t break is so deadly and toxic?
As for your latest post, you might want to look at a map. The main access is East/West crossing neither the lake nor the river
Sure. It got stirred up “just a little.” But there’s no comparing a lake stirred up by a storm to the Mississippi.
I didn’t say there would be no silt. There’ll be some. But, it won’t be your imaginary toxic silt, it’ll be the innocuous and friendly muck from the Squink Link.
And we’re not talking about feet of muck weighty enough to collapse buildings (I still don’t see how you get that. If the water is seven feet deep, and it deposits half of its volume of solids while the rest gets pumped out with the water then your hypothetical magically toxic Mississippi river water needs to be about 1/3 solids.) What we’re talking about is a layer of grime.
Would the following quote from the same article interest you?
Yes. Yes we are. Let me make it simple: Silt is made up of itty, bitty teensy rocks. They’re really teensy, but they’re still rocks. When they settle on something they become as heavy as one big rock. Get it?
Seven feet? Where did that come from? Hell, we’re talking 20 feet deep in places. And trust me, you don’t need alot of depth to deposit a lot of silt. You’ll see. You’ll be amazed.
Lastly, and for the last time this evening, let me ask you this:
When the water from those two levee breaks was rushing into NO, what do you think it was it running across, clean fill? It was running across the very stuff NO sits on: silt.
Okay, I’ll allow you that there was a layer of dirt on top, and even if you pretend that dirt is squeaky clean (it isn’t), that layer of top soil was gone in what I’d guess was the first few hours. The rest of the time that water was rushing over, you guessed it, dried silt.
And what does rushing water create when it runs across that stuff?
(I’ll answer for you because it’ll take too long for you to go outside and experiment with your beach bucket and garden hose.)
More silt. Suspended silt. (Cleaner maybe, but silt just the same.) The kind of silt that settles into stuff.
Now, don’t go thinking that you can say, “Aha! He said the silt is clean!”
I didn’t. Whether it came in from the Mississippi directly or via the lake, it’s still toxic.
Yo Rysdad, listen up. You spend an awful lot of effort calling people names, especially Scylla, and going into extreme detail on a small number of points, but you’re still missing the big picture. Obviously New Orleans is going to cost a hell of a lot of money to clean up. You seem to think it’s impossible, which is bullshit. At any rate, relocating the port facilities alone would cost a whole fucking lot more, when you consider that you have to build new rail lines, new freeways, new utility lines, new canals, new all kinds of shit. And guess what? When you have a bigass port, a bigass city is going to grow around it.
Go back and look at one of your own links. (I forget which one, you figure it out.) The French knew it was a shitty place to put a city, but they did it anyway. Why do you suppose they did that? Maybe because the benefits outweighed the risks, perhaps?
You certainly claim to know your silt physics, and you seem very certain of the scenario where the weight of silt collapses structures after the waters recede.
Surely, this must have happened many times. Do you have an example of silt induced collapse from flooding by a standing body of water like Lake Ponchartrain.
For that matter, do you have a cite for silt induced collapse anywhere?
Today we’re going to deal with the problems associated with some of Scylla’s suggestions regarding getting from Point A outside a city surrounded by a 100-foot high earthen dam that extends both ways out from the apex to a distance of 210 meters (as suggested by Una) to Point B inside that earthen dam.
In order to level this playing field, both Scylla and I must agree to some basic, unalterable ground rules. Those ground rules are to be considered *Chiseled In Granite Rules, *or Chgrs.
Chigr 1 - There is the previously described earthen dam (hereinafter referred to as a levee, berm, or Una’s dike as the feeling moves me) encircling the city. It exists as previously described by Una and can’t be altered. It is built on top of the pre-existing levees as described by Una. Tunnels through the levee are not permitted as previously disallowed by Una.
Subclause A - You may not violate the financial constraints previously determined by Una.
Subclause B - You may not deny the existence of Una’s dike.
Chigr 2 - Truckers hate thrill rides.
Chigr 3 - By encircling the city with a berm, we are saying, by inference, that there is something of value inside that berm that we wish to protect. Therefore, we are not allowed to build something that, by the simple fact of its being built, would destroy the very thing we are trying to protect.
Chigr 4 - One may not create any kind of Rube Goldberg structure that violates any of the previous Chigrs, nor are you permitted to build anything that exceeds technology as we know it today, nor are you permitted to violate the Laws of Physics, nor are you permitted to create something that is, inherently, worthless.
Since Una is the engineer, she has the final call as to whether a Chigr has been violated.
If a Chigr is violated, you get a Chigr bite, represented thusly: (1A)()(1) The first (1A) indicates which Chigr has been violated, in this example, Chigr 1, Subclause A. The () indicates how many chigger bites you get–in this case, just one. The final (1) is a running total of accumulated bites.
Now, below are the suggestions supplied by Scylla:
Suggestion D seems to be the same thing as the structure he heard about in the rumor, so I’ll treat it that way. That is, unless, his “skyway” is some kind of unsupported highway in the air. If that’s what it is, then all I can say is go ahead and
“Use the force, puke!”
Let’s begin. We’ll take them in order.
Suggestion A - Construct a road, etc.
In the preview for this chapter, we have already determined that there will be no roads crossing either the Mississippi River nor Lake Pontchartrain. Scylla, bless his heart, came storming through and suggested I look at a map, so I did. Amazingly enough, he was right. There is East-West access to the city!
At least, there used to be. Now, Una’s dike is sitting on it. (1B)(*)(1)
Undeterred, Scylla himself suggested a 5 degree road be built thereby getting around the impossibility of truckers driving down a 20 degree downslope on a dirt road. (Smart man! He avoided Chigr 2) He went on to reason that, by making the road four times longer (out from 210 meters to 840 meters - more than half a mile!) the road would have an acceptable downgrade.
But, by extending the road an additional 3/8ths+ of a mile, he plowed through a school, two fortune teller shops, and an elderly day care center. (3)(*)(2)
Note: So far we’ve only been talking about what would happen inside Una’s dike. We’ve already forsaken those poor folks outside the dike to whatever their fate may be when the water rises. Even so, to get to the downslope part of the road, there would have to be an upslope part of the road, and that happens to run right through their neighborhood–at least the supporting part of the road that lifts the upslope to the top of the levee. You can’t just say that you can use existing roads to get there because, by if you build an upslope, you have to support it somehow, and that requires a wider base than the existing road. Wider base = additional land required on each side.
This also doesn’t take into account how many roads you’d need to keep a city the size of NO supplied. So, Scylla, for each additional road you add, award yourself another bite.
You say five roads would be sufficient. Well, I think that’s an impossibly small number, but I’m feeling generous, so here you go: (3)(*****)(7)
Suggestion B - Switchbacks
First of all, a switchback can’t exist in space. It has to rest on an acceptable surface otherwise it buckles and snaps.
Una’s dike is not an acceptable surface on which to place a switchback since it is, on the surface, dirt and clay–neither of which are acceptable grading material.
And since you would need, in effect, a slanted road up in one direction, a turnaround area wide enough to allow two tractor/trailer rigs to pass in the middle, and another slanted road up in the other direction AND you would need these on both sides of the berm…, AND you’d need five of them,
You just accumulated the following: (1)(* x 30)(37)
I’m feeling generous in the fact that, by building a road alongside the berm you would be violating the financial restraints clause of Chigr 1 as well as the fact that, and by requiring a turnaround place you would necessarily have to widen the berm itself thereby violating Chigr 3, and accumulating additional bites.
Suggestion C - Construct a Cloverleaf
Scylla, if you haven’t died from blood loss yet, you’re about to.
OK, let’s say that Scylla has recognized the inevitable and is willing to accept the 7 bites he previously got by suggesting an East-West road. Now, that road leads up to a cloverleaf at the top of Una’s dike. It wouldn’t make sense to put it either inside or outside the berm, and I don’t think he’d want to build it along the side of the berm thereby violating Chigr 2, so he’s decided to place it at the top.
Uh oh, there’s not enough room for a cloverleaf at the top. The berm would have to be much, much wider.
So he makes the berm wider. (1)()(38), 3()(39)
That had to sting a little. Anyway, now Scylla begins to contemplate the physical characteristics of a cloverleaf…
Let’s use the earlier example of getting from Point A to Point B and put a cloverleaf in between them.
First of all, part of the cloverleaf would have to be elevated in order to allow for passage underneath.
Una’s dike wasn’t built to support that. (1)(*)(40)
Even if it was, let see what a cloverleaf actually does.
Let’s suppose Trucker Jim is coming from the west and wants to get inside to Point B to his east. He approaches the cloverleaf and takes the first right. As he completes the first leaf he realizes that he is now headed due north. What lies to the north? The ridge along the top of Una’s dike. (We didn’t widen the entire levee, just where the cloverleaf is.) Not wanting to take a thrill ride, he immediately takes the next exit to his right. Now he’s headed right back in the direction he came from.
That wasn’t any help. (4)(*)(41)
See the problem here? The first leaf that Jim takes leads him in a 270 degree arc and heads him north. In order for something resembling a cloverleaf to work, the off ramp would have to be a complete 360 degree downward spiral. Anything less than that, and Jim doesn’t get to where he wants to go.
Biting the bullet, Scylla builds a structure with a 360-degree curlicue. (Let’s say it’s two lanes, one in each direction. If it was only a one-way road, then Scylla would have to build two of these to allow for traffic both ways. We’re also leaning real gard on Chgr 4 here.)
Now, I’m kind of at a loss here to describe the number of bites he’s about to get.
I think we can safely say that we can apply this: (1A)(*)(42)
And this: (1)(*)(43) - (Una’s dike may not be modified)
And since, every leaf of the proposed clover leaf is worthless, and you’d need five of the worthless things for every road we’ve allowed in and out, the total for those comes to:
(4)(* x 5 x 4)(63)
Two out of every four leafs would send Jim for a thrill ride:
That means (2)(* x 2 x 5)(73)
So, Scylla, building a cloverleaf doesn’t make any sense at all unless you want to change directions by 90 degrees–and what good would that do for the inhabitants of your encircled city?
I think we can eliminate cloverleafs.
Suggestion D - Skyways (or bridges, as I prefer to call them)
Now, these can’t be just your average bridges. These have to be great, big, ballsy bastards capable of spitting in the eye of a Cat 5 hurricane.
How many of these bridges would you like to build?
Let’s stick with five. (1A)(*****)(78)
In addition, bridges need footings, both inside and outside. Let’s continue to ignore the outside,
but there’s still a cost inside (3)(*****)(83).
That’s enough about bridges.
Suggestion D - Doing something else any idiot can think of.
Haven’t you thought of enough already?
Grand total of itchy, annoying Chgr bites: 83.
Do you see the conundrum? You can’t build the levee first and then build the means for egress later because it would cost too much, but if you build the egress first then it would cost too much to build the levee later.
In fact, if the levee is simply thrown up now, it would mean that:
a) Any road on flat land would be blocked, and
b) Any bridge whose roadway enters the city at a height of less than 100 feet has to go. (Including lift bridges or drawbridges)
So, what are we saying, that it’s impossible? Well, yes, within the rules of the Chigr’s, it is.
But it’s not impossible in the real world. We just have to change the rules. We have to allow for the fact that, if a bigger, higher levee is built all the way around the city, then we’re going to have to:
a) Sacrifice something of value, AND
b) Pay a whole hell of a lot for it.
Somewhere the law of diminishing returns will begin to apply.
Any appeals should be directed to Una, and any civil engineer should certainly feel free to offer his or her critique of the above.
When I started working on Chapter 3, I was all het up to deliver on my earlier statements. Then, as I got into it, it kind of started being not so fun anymore.
Now, I can still do what I said I could do, but I don’t really feel like doing it.
So, I’m not going to do it unless Scylla asks me to.
You’re saying that Alligator Bayou extends 30 miles to the east?
Alligator Bayou that I see is bottomland, and is right down by the river, at the river’s east edge, in between US 61 and the river. The building site I’m talking about is considerably to the east of that. “Miles” to the east.
Try centering the Mapquest map on Freeland instead of St. Francisville. In the middle of the triangle defined by St. Francisville, Jackson, and Linsdsay, with Freeland in the middle…it’s got contour lines on my Delorme Gazetteer.
You’re saying that all that in there is part of Alligator Bayou?
I found a Terraserver topo map of Freeland: it has contour lines.
If it is a bit swampy, if it has contour, it can be drained, and we certainly know how to build a city on drained swampland.
And the levees worked just fine in holding back the Mississippi’s annual floods from NOLA up until the time a Cat 4 hurricane hit; why are levees to hold back the Miss suddenly not a viable solution?
And further away from the coast, Haginville wouldn’t be vulnerable to hurricane storm surges, so the levees wouldn’t be in danger from that.
St. Louis has levees that hold back the Mississippi’s annual floods just fine.
Request to Scylla: Don’t ask. Or, ask in such a way that leaves Rysdad with the possibility of a briefer response.
Rysdad: You’re posts are mildly diverting and somewhat informative, but they aren’t as entertaining as you think they are. You come off as a bit of blow-hard.
Some Substance:
I can imagine situations where an area is declared a Kill Zone and made off limits to future development. IIRC, certain areas on the banks of the Mississippi were set aside for flood control and nature following the great flood of the 1990s.
But I’d want to see some direct measurement to back that up. By professionals. Said professionals would take the costs of all hypothetical projects into account at least implicitly, including the costs of magically airlifting the refineries and ports of New Orleans to a specific alternative location.[1] To me, it is conceivable that New Orleans is currently covered in unacceptably toxic muck so that neither the Una plan or the $14 billion scaled-up variant is judged sufficient. My WAG is that this isn’t the case. But time --and serious analysis-- will tell.
Methinks the rhetoric here is disproportionate to the existing factual base. (It wouldn’t be the first time. :dubious: )
I’m wondering if you have a cite for silt collapse from a standing body of water, or silt collapse period.
I have no idea what these Chgr points are, and since it appears to be something you made up, I don’t care to know.
The argument that it’s impossible or impractical to cross berms is just stupid beyond comprehension and I’m not really interested in debating your logic which has every appearance of being as equally flawed and made up as your silt dissertations. I figure if they can put elevated highways, bridges, and cloverleafs all over a dirtbag burg like I live in they can probably do it in NO. Since they did do it there, and since they do such things everywhere there are roads, the falsity of your position is inherently self evident.
While I think UNA is an intelligent babe, and I don’t have problems with anything that she’s posted, I don’t think she qualifies as the arbiter of all that is just and good.
Finally, if you want to quit, that’s cool. Email me and I’ll tell you where to send the $20,000 check.
No, I’m saying the place looks like a huge swamp of the type prone to seasonal flooding.
Excellent, I would be very upset if you proposed to destroy alligator bayou and commit heinous acts of destruction on a pristine and fragile ecosystem of depth and beauty.
What about the great Metropolis of Hamilton that lies in that area? And, you’d be building right next to Slaughter.
Do you really want to live next door to the Slaughterers?
::shrug:: Yeah, I guess it looks pretty dry. Where’s your river access though. I thought the whole idea was that the city has to be next to the rive.
Sheesh if we’re going to drain a fragile wetland and build levees and then build a whole city from scratch, why not just save the effort, save Alligator Bayou and just make the levees around NOLA stronger?
I think Levees are great. I think they’re fine. But, it seems to me the whole point of moving the city was to avoid levees (which according to Rysdad seem impossible to build.)
I will also point out that the whole area is swampland from the Mississippi, and contains Rysdad’s deadly poison toxic silt rendering it uninhabitable for all eternity and probably a biohazard as well.
I’m sorry. I am a blow hard when my dander is up. It’s much further down now, and I’m going to try to make the last chapter at least as mildly entertaining as the previous parts have been as well as making it a little thought provoking. I will try to make it [sub]almost[/sub] GD acceptable.
I’m also not going to make it a me vs. Scylla thing anymore, but I feel that I owe it to anyone who’s wasted one tenth the time reading this thread as I have put into researching, cut-and-pasting, linking, finding, losing, refinding and writing all the stuff.
Besides, if I don’t purge some of the massive volume of newfound Louisiana knowledge from my brain it’s going to explode.
No, not offhand I don’t, but I’ve seen it (or at least the aftermath of it). What happens is that the silt begins to weigh the floor down, and the floor begins to sag in the middle. That makes more silt slide down to collect in the middle. More sag, more silt, etc., and then it collapses.