If NOLA is rebuilt, something like you suggest will almost have to be done. Levees are not permanent solutions for a low-lying city. NOLA has been gambling on levees successfully for a long time, but it finally lost.
However, backfilling the basin with dirt is not a permanent solution either. One reason that the city is lower than sea level is that the literal massive weight of the city compresses the alluvium on which it already sits. The Mississippi Delta is nothing but deposited river silt hundreds and hundreds of meters thick. There is no bedrock on which to build. The addition of dirt to fill the bowl will work for a few decades…but ultimately, it’s just more weight on the river silt. It’ll sink just as surely as NOLA has been sinking all along.
It will be a staggering engineering problem to figure out how to beat nature. Basically, the only permanent solution I can think of is to somehow anchor the city to bedrock hundreds of meters down…which I imagine would be prohibitively expensive.
Bullshit. If one is insured, they are probably pretty well off. Only someone dirt poor with an opportunity to start fresh elsewhere would NOT want to come back. How many people with strong ties to the city do you see here supporting your idea? Every single person on television has the attitude of rebuilding it better than before.
“Do you know that it would be easier and cheaper just to maintain a river channel farther north than rebuild an entire city every 30 years or so?”
Uh, remind me, when was the last time we rebuilt this city?
Oh, ok, if Miller says something is stupid, then it must be stupid.
Bzzzzzzrrrt. Wrong.
Can’t you understand that the capability to build cities already exists? Do you see the foolishness of rebuilding something in a highly threatened area as opposed to the nonsensical areas like Yellowstone (which Scylla calls Yosemite)?
You rail and rant, but you lack form and substance. You might, however, be a better representative of the species in the sense that your head is firmly embedded in the substrate rather than looking around for alternatives with open eyes like I’m trying to do.
You say that my ideas defy debate. Is it because you’re afraid to try?
G’head. Give it a shot. Come up with a better argument other than “because of its historical significance,” “because people want to live there”, "because of emotional/familial/whatever ties to the area,"or “because that’s the way we’ve always done it.”
Hint: None of those ideas qualify as justification to rebuild a death trap.
And think about this, too: Much of it is already gone. I don’t believe a house that is under water up to the rafters can be made secure and livable again.
“But, but, but…how can they just leave their jobs and move,” you say.
What jobs? The city exists on tourism. The city I said. Sure, there are manufacturing and processing facilities, but the employees of those facilities don’t need an entire city to still live in, commute to/from, and provide for their families. And, I question whether those employees lived in the city itself rather than in a nice suburb anyway.
The part of the city that supported the city itself in uninhabitable. Maybe for a long, long time.
Does a glimmer begin to shine?
And, lastly to Scylla, who I see was too gutless to even respond to any point I made, go suck Miller’s dick you coward. You two dimwits deserve each other.
Wasn’t Mexico City built on a lake? I think your right it will take a lot of brain power, but damn we are building nanotubes and all sorts of futuristic shit. I think someone could figure something out, and allow New Orleans to be the city above the sea… level.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the Greater NO area is 100 sq. miles. Let’s say to raise it you need to bring the average height up 10 ft. One mile is 5,280 ft. on a side so…
You need 5,280 X 5,280 X 10 x 100 square feet of solid fill. Not just any fill, mind you, but a solid fill that won’t settle or erode. We abandon all the infrastructure, rodes, power lines, etc, move the buildings, dump in the fill, wait for it to settle, tamp it down, put down the builidings (which we’ve been storing where?) rebuild the infrastructure…
You’re not really thinking very clearly about the scale of this thing you propose.
Contrary to what the moron says there are many other cities founded below sea level or on reclaimed land. Really, NOLA itself is not the issue. It’s one of the oldest cities in the country. It was hit with an extremely rare set of circumstances that spelled disaster. As far as vulnerability to hurricanes go, NOLA is pretty safe comparatively speaking. Florida, the Gulf Coast, The Barrier Islands in the Carolinas, Galveston, the Flkorida Keys, are all vulnerable and get hit much more often or hard.
It’s simply a disaster. It’s nobody’s fault, and just about anywhere else you care to name has its specific vulnerabilities.
Well my view softened, but not completely gone. I do think we need to start figuring on if you want to live in New Orleans, we either do it by fixing the problem, or forgetting the city. If I was to build a home on a riverbed in the summer drought that every year becomes a river again with the fall showers, spring showers, I don’t think FEMA should step in to help everytime my house gets destroyed . I would expect them to make me move off the riverbed or divert the river around my home, or possibly hauling in dirt and making my home on a mini island. Of course thats a bad analogy but its the best I can come up with. Bottom line: It has to be fixed before we allow them to rebuild.
Though for future reference, I will feel no pity if those who are able but choose not too evacuate when told to do so. And those bastards that didn’t evacuate and could who kept children with them that tragically lost there lives because you “stood up to the storm like a stud”
May you suffer fire ants eating your genitals.
Wow, way to entirely misunderstand his entire fucking argument, jackass. When Yellowstone goes up, it’s not just going to make the park uninhabitable. It’s going to take out the better part of the continent. And it could happen any day. Better pack the fuck back to Europe, dude. North America is a death trap, and only an idiot would try to build a city here.
No, it’s because this is the pit, and your “alternative” has already been handily demolished in three different threads in other forums. I’m just here for kicks, and because you so desperatly deserve kicking.
Don’t need to. You’ve got plenty of perfectly good reasons right there.
Does being so entirely gutless bother you at all?
And you got your contracting liscense where, exactly?
Didn’t you already get the snot slapped out of you on this one? Didn’t make much of an impression, I guess.
No I am most certainly not saying save the buildings, raze all but the historic buildings. The historic buildings can be raised and dirt put underneath. Everything else, well start from scratch. I didn’t think it would be easy, or cheap.
I don’t think you understand about the scale of this proposal, the Egyptians built mighty things without the tech we have today, the Chinese built that Great Wall without the tech we have today. Many large scale things have been done before, and no reason to say this cannot be done here.
Don’t have the guts to use my name, oh spineless one? It’s Rysdad, you puke.
And of those multitudinous cities that you claim lie under sea level, how many are in a hurricane belt?
Name one, pussy.
And the “there will be disasters everywhere” argument is as empty as your head. Of course there will be, but the chances of them happening in most other places is calculably less, and in all liklihood won’t consume an entire city. (Some places in California come to mind., though. But we’re speaking of New Orleans here.)
See the difference yet, coward?
The most common reason I’ve heard for wanting to stay and rebuild is the romantic tie to the land/culture. No doubt, it’s a strong tie. Is it enough to risk everything I have, including my family?
Of course not. There’s no logical basis for debate there. Case closed.
If it was me, and I lived there, and I had the opportunity to leave for good, I’d have to forsake romanticism for practicality.
Gad. My first pitting, and Rysdad has slapped all the bitch worth slapping before I’m even aware. You could have given me a head’s up, Scylla, at the very least, you gormless, skulking turd.
On the whole, extremely disappointing. About the only complaint with even a speck of substance was sort-of pointing out I could have been more specific about the Earth’s surface and atomosphere, in case a poor soul thought “global warming” somehow referred to a flareup deep in its interior. Well, well, my bad, my bad.
As for the rest…pathetic. Just…sad. Do I shit or go bowling? I think I’ll shit and call it a night. Maybe I’ll respond later, but to what? This almost creationist battle-cry about oh, the humanity and our collective American will to fight the elements or some fucking thing. And I get my kicks playing Trail of Tears with the Cayjohhns. Right.
OK, you win, I suck. I just can’t get worked up about this vacuous piece of shite you call a pitting. You don’t even manage specious with the mumbo-jumbo about sample-sizes and whatnot. What can I say? This just blows. Nighty night, all.
Dirt, gravel, nanotubes, futuristic cloned dirt, I could honestly care less. There is something out there that can be used. I apologize for just saying “dirt” but obviously my mind was in the ground.
Good rant and appropriate topic Scylla. Don’t get too upset. Nobody with any real power would suggest that New Orleans shouldn’t be rebuilt in the same location so there is no need to worry that it would really happen. Many of the people spouting off this idiotic shit don’t know anything about New Orleans except maybe what a Hand Grenade tastes like. The Army Corps of Engineers has studied this problem for years and does have some potential fixes. They will cost billions of additional dollars but that is trivial compared to the cost of relocating the city.
As a Tulane grad (you too Scylla??) , I know the city fairly well. Most of the people here are making judgements off of news clips without any real understanding of the situation.
I don’t think that either the rich or poor would abandon New Orleans in large numbers because there is no comparable place or city to go too. You have to realize that New Orleans is as culturally unique and diverse as many whole countries. The rich people would not leave because they have the means to stay. Poor people would not leave because the New Orleans poor population does not always make rational economic decsions. Again, the poor have their own subculture that is irreplacable.
To some generic idiot above not worth differentiating from the others who said that there are lots of historic cities so New Orleans is nothing special: New Orleans IS unique historically and culturally. Some people always say “there is nothing quite like it”. No, there is nothing like it at all anywhere else in the world.
Is that expected to happen, again and again, in the next hundred years, shit-for-brains?
Show me once. Anything other than “it would be too expensive.” That’s isn’t demolishing, that’s denying, and typical of you.
Then you’e saying that your best reasons are fallacies? Figures.
At least I have the guts to offer alternatives. You offer jack shit. I suppose it’s the best you can do.
Same place you did. I have, however, seen numerous reports regarding homes that were flooded in the Red River Valley and Iowa in the last few years. Have you? Did you comprehend any of them?
Show me where. Just one logical argument. Anywhere.
Then by all means, stick your dick in Scylla’s mouth. Maybe you’ll both be quiet for a while and let more logical thought progress.
Good God…raze, then raise the entire city? Rebuild the infrastructure from scratch? Because the Egyptians built some pyramids? Surely there’s still a few engineers besides myself left on here…right?
There is a simpler, albeit still daunting way to save the city.
Leave it where it is, and rebuild what’s damaged in-place. Then extend and rebuild the levees, encircling the city. It’s a hell of a lot easier to make a levee 100 meters thicker and 20 meters higher than to raise 100 square miles of city. It still would be an incredibly huge task, but at least doable. Add an extra 20 meters of height on, and no storm surge, not even a direct Cat 5 hurricane one, could breach it. Put the same size levee between the lake and the city as well. Make it thick enough, and it won’t be eroded or swept over by wind-blown waves.
It’s a task that could be measured in billions, not tens of billions. And it’s fairly simple - earthwork dams of similar mass are made all around the world. It’s a medium-term solution - a large increase in sea levels would require further raising of the levees - but that’s a problem 100 years in the future, not now.
Thank you Una I don’t know what to say about some of the people in here except “God bless their little hearts”. No apologies necessary folks. We’ll just call it a game and next time we can go against you on something you know about.
Who said anything about razing? Mother Nature has already begun that, and, what’s more, it’s free.
I proposed starting to build, now, someplace safe and more “livable” upstream. We need more petroleum proceesing capability anyway.
And Egyptians? Who cares about them? We’re building cities now. Look around. It’s happening all the time See: urban sprawl.
100 years? One Hundred Years!!! You expect that to be the useful life of the levees? I guess then it would be time to rebuild the city somewhere else.
One other thing…that levee you speak of wouldn’t have vertical walls. It would have to be sloped. I wonder how widely? How many neighborhoods would have to be razed just in order to make room for the new levee walls? Where do you meet up with diminishing returns? Also, make sure the pumping capacity is extraordinary, or else you’ll simply be creating Lake Pontchartrain South when the Cat 5 you mention hits.
But let’s say that the NEW New Orleans is leveled, as you say, in one hundred years or so–what of the poor people’s culture that Shagnastry is so worried about then–could that be shipped via Fed Ex when the NEW New Orleans is built, or would they all be either a) completely wiped out, or b) miraculously not poor anymore?
As to the argument that “there is no place like New Orleans…”
Well, that’s rather obvious, isn’t it? But then again, there’s no place like Omaha, either. Or Grand Rapids. Or Pocatello.
So what?
If a bigger, stronger levee it must be, then so be it. But it ain’t the smart way to do it.