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I read John McPhee’s The Control of Nature a while back. In that book, McPhee describes the structures built to prevent the capture of the Mississippi’s flow by the Atchafalaya river. As I recall, it’s speculated that a good walloping from a hurricane could defeat these dams. Has there been any recent discussion of this now that Ivan may be heading that way?
A really interesting description of New Orleans’ drainage situation is found in The Control of Nature by John McPhee. The basic story is as Johnny LA said:
Instead of staying (and dumping all its silt) in one course, a river like the Mississippi wants to meander, changing its mouth every 50 - 100 years or so. A vast (and vastly expensive) system of pumps, dikes, levees, etc. has prevented this from happening (though it will certainly come to pass in the next 200 years - and perhaps much sooner).
The only way to keep the status quo is to keep increasing the height of the levees that contain the river, as it brings down more silt and the surrounding land slowly sinks. So the river is now well above the level of the city and the potential for catastrophe is obvious.
You probably don’t want to be in New Orleans when a major hurricane hits.
That’s the trouble with preview - when the SDMB is slow, you get scooped by Pork Rind.
Yeah but you posted actual content. I just jammed in a lot of links. That’s the source of my speed.
Do those pumps work during a power outage? If they have back-up generators, how many hours’ fuel do they have?
And it sounds as the authorities don’t have much of a contingency plan for this. Is it a matter of political philosophy, lack of money, or what? This question is due to evidence of minimal shelters (bring your own water?!) and no one laying on evacuation transportation (no busses or trains available to take people to a safer zone).
Ivan has over 100 miles radius (double for diameter) and is moving at 9 mph, so that’s about 20 hours of storm for the widest dimension of the storm to pass over one area.
Geeze louise, I’d want to be visiting Aunt Minnie in some other state about now. We have earthquakes, they aren’t nuthin.
Don’t know if you know the answer to these:
Where are these pumps pumping from? Just taking the stuff out of the storm drains and putting it…where?
Also, how do y’all handle the sewage that will creep up? Everyone just ignore it, or is there a run on pine sol?
How’d the less-modern people deal with this sort of stuff? Like the original settlers. I recall from a tour I took when I was there, the biggest fear was actually fire or disease. Were there Indian tribes that lived in the area prior to that?
The Netherlands have been working on the same issue since the 13th century. The name itself means “the low countries”-IIRC ~40% of the land is below sea level. A system of dams, dikes and canals have been used to drain the land to render it usable, an area exceeding a half million acres.
After a 1953 mega-storm, the Oosterschelde barrier project was undertaken: a two mile long movable seawall. The History channel segment on it was one of the more fascinating programs I’ve seen.
Up into the river.
They lived with the floods and the river’s meandering. The indians didn’t have a fixed city to defend, so they decided not to build levees.