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Jesse Walker|9.9.05 @ 11:35AM|#
I've been waiting to see who would be the first pundit to use
the phrase "the legendary sunken city of New Orleans."
Hasn't happened yet, but Jack's "American Atlantis" comes
close.
ed|9.9.05 @ 11:38AM|#
Common sense has become a refugee in this debate.
Am I allowed to say "refugee"?
|9.9.05 @ 11:39AM|#
It's also been over
headlines as well.
To quote some anti-development activists in Columbia, SC in the
past "It's a floodplain, stupid!".
Libertarian disclaimer: I don't care if you rebuild there or not.
Just don't come crying to me for rebuilding money the next
time.
|9.9.05 @ 11:43AM|#
Allowing much of the flooded are to revert to wetlands will
actually reduce the chance of flooding in higher and marginal
locations.
Maybe create a new West New Orleans on the other side of the
river.
|9.9.05 @ 11:51AM|#
I agree completely Ironchef. There will be people that rebuild
there, but they better do so with complete knowledge of what could
happen. Just like most buildings in California are building to
withstand very strong earthquakes and have insurance if the Big One
does hit.
The only reason federal money should be spent in rebuilding levees
would be what construction upriver from Louisana have done to the
Mississippi. (Reduced sentiment flow, less flood plains, etc.) To
me, local government can't be responsible for what's going on with
the river in Illinois or Missouri.
|9.9.05 @ 11:52AM|#
Mr. Nice Guy was telling me yesterday that, according to one
report, Trent Lott's home was destroyed but he's going to
rebuild.
I don't know Lott's situation, but I'm guessing he has the assets
to buy land in an area less disaster prone. Then again, if he
builds it out of the same material used to reinforce his hair, I
have no doubt that the house could withstand a direct hit by a
category 7 storm (do such storms even exist?).
|9.9.05 @ 11:53AM|#
There are such things as stilts and floating houses and houseboats. Actually, houses on stilts are fairly common along parts of the Gulf Coast. Darn useful in a flood.
|9.9.05 @ 12:00PM|#
thoreau,
I have heard that in the case a giant meteor they are planning on
sending Trent Lott head first directly at it in in order to
deflect.
|9.9.05 @ 12:02PM|#
...but Michael Brown's other disaster preparation has not held up so well, so I would take it with a grain of salt.
|9.9.05 @ 12:03PM|#
That's just silly. You'd want to send Senator Lott at towards
the meteor at an acute angle, so as to change its trajectory.
Firing Senator Lott hair first directly into the meteor would
simply cause it to shatter into multiple pieces, each more racist
than the original meteor.
|9.9.05 @ 12:18PM|#
thoreau, with Lott's money and what I think will be the low cost of the land, he'll probably rebuild a plantation there.
|9.9.05 @ 12:20PM|#
I was only half-serious at first about stilts and such, but now
that I think about it...why did such construction never occur to
anyone in New Orleans? Loads of other people in hurricane-prone
areas thought about elevating their homes, and they're not even
below sea level. Granted, building up adds to the cost of a home,
but doesn't it seem strange that nobody in this especially
vulnerable city ever took this simple but effective measure?
I don't really have a point (I'm not calling NO people stupid or
anything); it just strikes me as bizarre.
|9.9.05 @ 12:23PM|#
The caption will read "Area Resident, identified only as Jennifer, demonstrates the use of her improvised water filtration system."
|9.9.05 @ 12:25PM|#
JMoore,
Most of New Orleans is quite old. Taking an existing building,
jacking it up, removing the foundation, and installing a deck and
stilts is a huge expense.
Jeff P.|9.9.05 @ 12:29PM|#
Let the Japanese beta-test one of them fancy floating suburbs they've been deploying. If it works, we keep it. NOLA can become a series of floating platforms strung together, like The Raft from Snowcrash or the sea culture from Meiville's The Scar.
|9.9.05 @ 12:33PM|#
joe
yes, very true. But NOBODY? Ever? There had to be some new
construction.
If they do rebuild, I do hope they consider safer construction. I'm
serious...think Venice.
|9.9.05 @ 12:33PM|#
Just remove the government mandated price controls for flood insurance, and see who actually wants to build or live there. If Harrah's wants to shell out for a 40 foot levee wall, let them. I suspect that they will do the sensible thing and move to higher ground. Hopefully the residents would follow.
Shannon Love|9.9.05 @ 12:34PM|#
I can see how the rebuilding of NO will occur.
Politically connected developers will swoop in and buy up uninsured
properties for pennies on the dollar. Then they will get fat
"development" grants and cheap loans by convincing the general
public that the money is going to the small property owners who
want to rebuild. The developers build on the public dime, sell for
a big profit and then wait for the next disaster to cash in
again.
|9.9.05 @ 12:38PM|#
We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we're going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we're going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch. GW Bush, Sept. 2
|9.9.05 @ 12:38PM|#
Jeff P.
The Dutch are doing the floating house thing, too. They've been
dealing with flooding and levees (well, dykes) for centuries. Maybe
the New NOLA should look to the other mecca of decadence for
inspiration.
|9.9.05 @ 12:43PM|#
Jennifer
They can be. I think it depends on the quality of stilts. Anyway,
as we've seen, NOLA's biggest worry is water, not wind.
|9.9.05 @ 12:51PM|#
Gotta wonder how many people so long trapped in the New Orleans cycle of poverty are really going to want to head back to that. I notice on the news here this morning in Phoenix that some local firms are hiring hurricane victims who've been brought out here. Granted it was just a few so far but I don't find it hard to imagine that 50,000 of these people wouldn't be all that much for the southern half of the US to absorb into their economies.
|9.9.05 @ 12:53PM|#
None of the demographic statistics quoted in the linked article are at all unusual for any typical American city that has been largely abandoned by the white middle class. By his logic, I guess Shafer would be in favor of levelling Detroit, Newark, Buffalo and dozens of other cities, too. But that's OK; they're just ghettos.
|9.9.05 @ 12:54PM|#
tonedeaf:
like it was before? Hey, yeah, excellent idea...just build it like
it was before! And how is that "good news". If I smash your car
with a bat, and then you have to go get it fixed, and afterwards,
it looked "like it did before", is that "good news" for you? Just
too stupid for words, he is.
|9.9.05 @ 12:55PM|#
In the Florida Keys Houses are built on stilts. It accomplishes
two things:
1) Elevates the house above the high water. Most of the Keys are at
less than 5ft above sea level.
2) Presents less surface area to the force of the surge, thus
making the structure less vulnerable.
The second was somewhat defeated when residents saw all that "waste
space" under the house and closed it in. This was the mitigated
when the code was revised to say the materials had to be
"breakaway" and no living quarters would be permitted. Then Texas
(which does the same thing on the coast) had a storm in the early
80s and they found that the "breakawy" material became torpedoes
that knocked over the next house.
And, Jennifer, re wind. It is relatively easy to build a structure
to resist wind loads, even though they are not that well understood
even now. However most hurricane damage and casualties are from
water, and even less is known by engineers about the way moving
water behaves.
|9.9.05 @ 12:58PM|#
"By his logic, I guess Shafer would be in favor of levelling
Detroit, Newark, Buffalo and dozens of other cities,
too.
Rhywun,
You're misrepresenting Shafer's position---quite terribly.
It's as if you don't understand the difference between
"levelling a city" and "deciding not to pump hundreds
of billions of dollars back into a crime-ridden sinkhole after it's
been all but demolished by a natural disaster, with no guarantee
that the same thing won't happen again".
Do you?
|9.9.05 @ 1:07PM|#
After a tsunami hit the island of Hawaii in 1960 and destroyed downtown Hilo, including a school, residents established a buffer zone between the ocean and the city. A developer unfamiliar with the local history would salivate at the opportunity to develop all the open space. Mother Nature ultimately wins. And I say this as someone who lives at the beach in L.A.
|9.9.05 @ 1:12PM|#
The Trent Lott jokes on this thread are hilarious.
I read the other day (I'm too lazy to google) that Bush was trying
to personalize the trajedy by explaining how poor ol' Trent lost
his house. Bush then launches into a bizarre rant about how great
it will be when Lott's house is finally rebuilt and how much he
(Bush) is looking forward to sitting on Lott's fucking porch.
It's stuff like this, and Babs Bush's tone-deaf comments, that make
my heart smile.
|9.9.05 @ 1:12PM|#
I don't care what the demographic and economic profile of the
city is. If the city is way below sea level and situated near a
lake as well as the delta where a major river empties into the
ocean, it's probably not a good idea to subsidize the rebuilding of
low-lying areas after they're destroyed by water.
And before somebody says that it's awfully interesting that the
areas in question mostly have a certain demographic profile, keep
in mind that I've said the same thing when rich guys with
cliff-side houses get their homes rebuilt by the feds. (See John
Stossel's excellent Reason article from last year.) I said the same
thing in the 1990's when flooding along the Midwestern parts of the
Mississippi River destroyed areas with a somewhat different
demograhic profile.
I'm not calling for the wholesale abandonment of NO. And if
somebody is bound and determined to rebuild in a flood-prone area
on his own dime, well, that fool and his money will be parted come
the next flood. I'm just saying that it would be a bad idea to
subsidize rebuilding in flood-prone areas.
And I am deliberately making consequentialist arguments rather than
purist libertarian arguments here, because the choir already
agrees. It's the rest of the country that needs persuading.
|9.9.05 @ 1:18PM|#
Right on, thoreau.
And if any new construction is subsidized (and we know it will be),
it should all be on stilts.
(I'm really getting hooked on stilts today. I've just learned that
some poor bastards in Bangladesh have been living on stilts for
generations. If one of the poorest countries in the world can do
it, so can NOLA.)
|9.9.05 @ 1:20PM|#
with no guarantee that the same thing won't happen
again
The same thing WON'T happen again, if the various entities who were
responsible for this predicament by leaving New Orleans more
vulnerable to storms were to take their responsibilities seriously
this time around. I don't see how the "crime-ridden sinkhole"
argument is relevant to this discussion.
M1EK|9.9.05 @ 1:22PM|#
All y'all who are sure New Orleans won't be rebuilt need to read
the paper by Friedman at stratfor. Short version: there has to be a
city there, or we can't get our farm goods to market.
And as to "why didn't they build on stilts" - GMAFB. It's been a
long time since houses were built assuming the first owners would
be there longer than 5 years or so. The original homes in the area
were in the French Quarter, which, coincidentally, was the high
ground that didn't actually flood. Imagine that.
|9.9.05 @ 1:27PM|#
M1EK-
Of course there will be a city there. I don't claim detailed
knowledge of the topography, but I don't think it's unreasonable to
hope that the lowest-lying points will be avoided during
reconstruction.
|9.9.05 @ 1:33PM|#
FWIW - a lot of the people who've been evacuated here to Houston
are pronouncing themselves pleasantly stunned by the city and its
amenities, which makes sense when you compare it to NOLA, and
they're saying that they do indeed want to stay here and take a
chance on a new life. I don't think there's any way to overstate
how bad the generations-long cycle of poverty in NOLA was, how bad
the projects were, how hopeless and hopelessly permanent the
circumstances of the poor folks was. Lots of evacuees in other
parts of the country - even in Utah, which was not a familiar place
to many of them - have said the same thing. What's there to go back
to? Projects, poverty, hurricanes and the chance that next time
you'll be left to die again? I listened to a young mother of two on
the radio today - she was in Section 8 housing in NOLA and she's
been given Section 8 housing here in Houston, and she was in tears
because the apartment seemed like a "condo" compared to her
apartment in NOLA. Even the subsidized housing was
substandard.
Businesses have been deserting for years, and now there's really no
reason to take a financial gamble on the city.
And it's just very likely that people whose lives have been
disrupted and uprooted will, once they recover some sense of
stability, want to stay where they will.
My guess? The city will be much smaller when all is said and done,
and it might turn into some kind of boutique city - the FQ, uptown,
Garden District, the old and original parts staying, other places
more or less abandoned. No, that doesn't make a good future for the
low income folks - in NOLA - but they didn't have a good future
there before the storm...NOLA's financial existence depended on
tourism and that didn't provide enough jobs to make the economy
anything close to strong, which is one of the reasons the cycle of
poverty was so endless.
|9.9.05 @ 1:35PM|#
Ooooh, Shafer discovers the GNOCDC and now he's an expert.
Fucking Yankees.
Conveniently he ignores the rich, white and flooded 'hoods of West
End and Lakeview. Who cares about Ponchartrain Park? It was
developed just to keep the darkies out of white country clubs,
after all. And the Irish Channel, full of old, beautiful shotguns
on nice flood-free high ground, is on the trailing edge of
gentrification. There's still plenty of poor and black there.
Shafer's never been to Indian practice. Is he channeling Byrd, "If
we rebuild, then the niggers will come back."?
joe: The nearest westbank is already built out. The growth over the
last decade is primarily in St. Tammany. You could build a
wonderful hi-speed rail link for the north shore to all the jobs in
the CBD, Metarie, and along the river. How much could that possibly
cost?
Nearly everything built there before 1940 is on the equivalent of
stilts. The levees turn a surge into a flood, mitigating the rush
of water. River floods aren't of the same character either. Any of
y'all know what a "raised basement" is?
|9.9.05 @ 1:37PM|#
M1EK
I think the bank which accepts the house as collateral assumes it
will be there for more than 5 years.
And the answer to the question "why didn't they?" is either
"because they didn't think to" or "they never had before" or both.
I was just indicating that it seemed rather odd no one ever thought
of the idea. Just odd. I hope it will be a lesson learned.
|9.9.05 @ 1:39PM|#
During the Mississippi River flooding in the early 90s (was in
92 maybe?) weren't entire towns completely abandoned? Granted they
were small and I suspect middle-of-nowhere communities, but it
isn't that unheard of to completely abandon an area that Mother
Nature has deemed unsuitable for human inhabitants.
I could make a Roanoke analogy, but I'm not feeling witty
enough.
|9.9.05 @ 1:40PM|#
Dynamist
good point about the raised basement...forgot about those...it's
been a long time since I was in the old place
M1EK|9.9.05 @ 1:41PM|#
"I think the bank which accepts the house as collateral assumes
it will be there for more than 5 years."
You'd be surprised. Not in the market for the last twenty years or
so, they haven't. And "there for 5 years" is different from "there
for 100 years", which is how houses used to be built. (I'm in a
1923 model myself).
M1EK|9.9.05 @ 1:43PM|#
thoreau,
Problem is that the high ground in New Orleans wasn't 'big enough'
to support the population which supposedly needed to be there to
support the shipping and oil activities which need to be
there.
As pointed out in other blogs I've read, if the essential port/oil
employees have to drive an hour to get a haircut or buy groceries
because none of the 'support' economy came back to NO, the economy
will suffer a lot, too, but it won't be as obvious.
|9.9.05 @ 1:59PM|#
"Most of New Orleans is quite old. Taking an existing building,
jacking it up, removing the foundation, and installing a deck and
stilts is a huge expense."
True, but it's exactly what was done to the entire city of
Galveston after the 1900 hurricane. Actually, they went a step
further and dredged sand from the Gulf to fill in under the houses
(and churches, offices, etc). They raised the city about ten feet
as I recall. Pictures of the process are fascinating.
|9.9.05 @ 2:16PM|#
Like it was before? Hey, yeah, excellent idea...just build
it like it was before! And how is that "good news". If I smash your
car with a bat, and then you have to go get it fixed, and
afterwards, it looked "like it did before", is that "good news" for
you? Just too stupid for words, he is.
Huh? You did see how he was directly quoting the President, didn't
you? Why the vitriol? Unless you agree with the statement for some
reason and I just don't grasp your use of irony.
|9.9.05 @ 2:28PM|#
True, but it's exactly what was done to the entire city of
Galveston
Chicago, too.
http://www.gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/city_streets_how_chicago_raised_itself_out_of_the_mud_and_astonished_the_world/
Then the place burnt to a crisp.
And I'm still here. Never underestimate the ingenuity and stupidity
of humans.
|9.9.05 @ 2:30PM|#
You have to understand the layout of New Orleans. You have the refineries, port, and tourist areas that are on high ground. They largely survived. The rest of the city is spread out in the bowl behind the original cresent the city was built on. The rest of New Orleans, outside the tourist areas and the rich areas of the Garden district is one un-Godly poor ghetto. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, to house large numbers of poor people in a below sea-level bowl in a hurrican prone region and spend millions on levies to do so. Further, upper-class twits like Anne Rice can sit in their Garden District mansions and wax philospohical all of the "character" New Orleans has all they want, but for average or poor people living in New Orleans sucks. The government and police services are terrible, the crime rate is astronomical and the infrastructure is totally run down. That is why most of the people who could have long since moved well out of the city to the burbs. My guess is that most of the people displaced by the storm are going to look around Dallas or Houston or wherever they are now and say "this is lot better than New Orleans" and never return. Most of the poor areas which are way below sea-level will never and should never be rebuilt.
|9.9.05 @ 2:31PM|#
Dynamist (if that is your real name),
I wonder just how "built up" the west bank of the river is. Sprawly
suburbs with strict zoning preventing infill development, tall
buildings, and mixed use?
Here's reconstruction plan - designate infill zones in appropriate
locations in the highland areas around New Orleans, limit the
towns' ability to enforce restrictive zoning, and give the
displaced vouchers.
I'd say that Police Chief who had his cops force people back across
the bridge should get a couple hundred units of Single Room
Occupancy housing in his back yard.
|9.9.05 @ 2:33PM|#
thoreau: I said the same thing in the 1990's when flooding
along the Midwestern parts of the Mississippi River destroyed areas
with a somewhat different demograhic profile.
ATR: During the Mississippi River flooding in the early 90s
(was in 92 maybe?) weren't entire towns completely
abandoned?
Many flooded towns were in fact abandoned.
There were also some meaningful reforms made in the Federal Flood
Insurance program. Up until that time ther had been no limit to the
number of times one could collect. Now there is a two loss limit.
The second time you get paid off and I believe the feds will buy
out the rest of your interest if you want to move. In some cases
you have no choice, they won't let you rebuild even if you are
willing to self-insure*.
*In view of the fact that Uncle Sugar finds himself on the hook for
a lot of uninsured properties thats not a bad policy from a
consequentialist viewpoint (one with which I generally have little
trouble).
It is also harder to get new flood insurance policies written.
Flyover Country|9.9.05 @ 2:34PM|#
If they can dredge to create islands, wouldn't be possible to
dredge and raise the lowest parts of the city?
http://www.concretemonthly.com/monthly/art.php/1591
|9.9.05 @ 2:42PM|#
Flyover Country,
I think the problem is that the river comes and deposits silt and
gradually raises itself. At the same time, any levees or structures
you build on the silt gradually compact the silt and sink.
Basically, anything you build in New Orleans is fighting a loosing
battle agaisnt the river. The levees were built to withstand a
catagory 3 hurricane but they are saying now that they couldn't
have withstood a catagory 2, not because they were improperly
built, but because the river had risen and they had sunk in the
time since they were built. My guess is any kind of dredge and fill
and build up would suffer the same fate.
|9.9.05 @ 2:46PM|#
Flyover Country,
Unfortunately because of the underlying soil and many other problem
the ground will probably settle over one meter in the next century.
It's sunk roughly 2-3"* every decade up till now. Adding more fill
on top might only make it worse.
There are of course many geotechnical remedies to such problems,
but in the case of NO I doubt they'd meet any cost benefit
analysis.
In any case, to fill you'd have to demolish whats there (highly
likely for many structure anyway, of course).
*partly because of changing the floodplain which had several inches
of new silt deposited each year. Now that silt goes out into the
Gulf where according to some it creates all kinds of new problems
by upsetting the nutrient cycles.
I notice Johhas replied while I wrote this. Yeah, what he said
too.
|9.9.05 @ 3:04PM|#
Isaac and John,
Thanks for the info.
Just heard on the radio that my US rep. Sensenbrenner voted against
the aid package for New Orleans because if you're not allowed to
build on a flood plain in Wisconsin, you shouldn't be allowed to
build on a flood plain in Louisiana. I don't have a comment on his
comments. Just wondering what others may think.
|9.9.05 @ 3:49PM|#
I see where he's coming from. If the swamp ever reclaims
Washington, I'm definitely gonna be for letting that cesspool rot
(Did I mention it has a worse crime rate than N.O.?)
hink people think that rebuilding means using government money to
prop up the old shacks that reside in that city. I feel that
rebuilding is more an issue of repairing public utilities (which
were horribly outdated) and actually making more than a half assed
attempt at fixing the levies. The truth is the port needs to be
rebuilt because the infrastructure for transport is there. What
redevelops around the port is a matter of economics, but the idiocy
surrounding the arguments to simply pack up everyone and high tail
it out is moronic at best.
R C Dean|9.9.05 @ 4:13PM|#
Problem is that the high ground in New Orleans wasn't 'big
enough' to support the population which supposedly needed to be
there to support the shipping and oil activities which need to be
there.
What, people can't commute?
|9.9.05 @ 4:15PM|#
If you were poor in New Orleans, you'll be poor in Dallas or Houston, or any other city in the country. This was a welfare town, populated by people of give-me-stuff-for-nothing mentality. It makes no sense to pour billions into rebuilding when the population will destroy it anyway, if not the storms.
Shannon Love|9.9.05 @ 4:55PM|#
A strong argument against the large-scale rebuilding of NO is
that it is a physical and economic trap.
Physically, the city will always be vulnerable and forever fighting
a losing battle against the river and sea. Hurricane activity will
be elevated for the next 10 to 15 years. It will take five years at
a minimum to raise the levees to resist a direct hit from a Cat 4
or higher. Even if the work is done there is no guarantee it will
actually work. A freak event, like a barge knocking a hole in a
levee, could reflood the whole town again no matter how much we
spend on levees.
Economically, the city has nothing going for it but the port and
tourism. Tourism produces only low skill, low paying service jobs.
Port jobs pay better but there aren't enough to support the current
population by a long shot.
New Orleans needs to shrink to something to a city that is both
physically and economically sustainable.
|9.9.05 @ 4:57PM|#
"If you were poor in New Orleans, you'll be poor in Dallas or
Houston, or any other city in the country. This was a welfare town,
populated by people of give-me-stuff-for-nothing mentality. It
makes no sense to pour billions into rebuilding when the population
will destroy it anyway, if not the storms."
And if you are a whiny libertarian with NO rebuilt, you'll be a
whiny libertarian if it isn't. I shouldn't respond to this, but
with thousands dead, I'm glad someone is looking after my tax
dollars. I'm glad your just passing through. How about passing
through this country and go somewhere that didn't shell out tons of
money to get you an education, job, and roads you drive on,
etc.
|9.9.05 @ 6:04PM|#
joe: Highland areas around New Orleans? Hahahaha. Now pull the
other one. Did you even look at a terrain map before you made your
"enlightened" development prescription? The westbank is drained
swamp and floodplain, just like where these geniuses don't want to
rebuild upon.
Y'all are slipping back into confusing the river levees with the
lake levees. When the wetland rebuilding gets underway, it
simultaneously takes pressure off the river levees (providing
diversionary flow). The lake levees could stand to be higher, and
somebody will figure out that floodgates at the ends of outfall
canals are worth looking into. Raising pumping stations are likely
in the cards, and if you're a gambler, look for a crosstown levee,
probably taking advantage of existing rail embankments. I expect
more arguments about MR-GO, and many improvements to locks and
bridges along the industrial canal (IHNC).
You're gonna discover that many of the "old shacks" are
structurally better off than the new slab-on-grade crap that filled
New Orleans East, tony Lakeview and the suburbs.
For those having more fun telling people half-assed reasons why the
city should be abandoned, you're forgetting the Formosan termites
that will eat whatever you build even if there's never another
storm. The stinging caterpillars are real, but the Africanized bees
are overhyped.
It's like watching a bunch of blindfolded engineers trying to
rebuild an elephant. Keep after it y'all. Thanks for your
donations.
|9.9.05 @ 6:12PM|#
Oh, yeah, dredge and fill works fine, if there's money to pay for it. Lakeshore, a new (1920s) fill project, is one of the highest areas of town, and although it's on the lake beside the 17th breach, it's dry. Same with the lakefront airport. There are current plans to develop a new neighborhood with an airport in the lake. All it takes is money.
|9.11.05 @ 3:19AM|#
Raising pumping stations are likely in the cards,
This confuses me. Why not have a hydro-powered pumping system on a
closed loop? The city is on a river, after all. And if the power
goes out, the pumps won't.
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