9 Weeks to Pump Out New Orleans?

Cr0w T. Trollbot asks: "It looks like New Orleans is going through something very close to the worst case scenario right now. This somewhat prescient study, written well before the hurricane, describes some of the challenges (engineering and otherwise) facing New Orleans. 'In this hypothetical storm scenario, it is estimated that it would take nine weeks to pump the water out of the city, and only then could assessments begin to determine what buildings were habitable or salvageable. Sewer, water, and the extensive forced drainage pumping systems would be damaged. National authorities would be scrambling to build tent cities to house the hundreds of thousands of refugees unable to return to their homes and without other relocation options.' The hypothetical is looking awful close to reality right now. What can be done about draining and rebuilding New Orleans in light of the massive flooding, and what can be done to prevent and/or lessen such disasters in the future?"

Comments

Water City

[fembots]

I know this sounds crazy, but given its bowl shape terrain, instead of pumping out the water and rebuild, why don't they rebuild over the water?

Otherwise, try asking Dutch how they have been living with large parts of Netherlands below sea level.

Re:Water City

[Waffle Iron]

Even more importantly, they let Galveston become a cute little tourist town, and they moved all the important stuff like the seaport inland to Houston. (Before the storm, Galveston had been one of the most important cities in Texas.) That makes things go much more smoothly when they have to completely empty Galveston Island every few years due to a Hurricane warning.

IMO, they ought to do the same here. Build ultra-stout levees around (or raise by 25 feet) the French Quarter and a few other attractions, and rebuild the rest of the city farther inland.

Re:Water City

[Trailwalker]

The New Orleans problem is somewhat man made. The lower Mississippi has changed course many times. The Atchafalaya river has often been the outlet for the Mississippi. If a change of course were to reoccur now, New Orleans would loose much of its commercial value.

The Corps of Engineers has for many decades built dams and levees to prevent the lower Mississippi from changing its course. Among other effects, this has resulted in the river bed raising because of siltation. This required more levees to contain the river in its present embankments.

It has become a question of time until the efforts at forcing the Mississippi into the present channel end in disaster.

Hurricane Katrina is just one more factor in what is an unstable riverine enviornment.

Re:Water City

[RGRistroph]

I don't think that place in Libya/Egypt that is below sea level is as big as the Mediterrean. It's more like as big as the Great Salt Lake or the Aral Sea.

I once tried to figure out how far sea water had to fall before you could get enough energy out of it to purify it. Is it possible that a canal to the depression, ending in a high dam, might make enough energy to run the water through a purification station before it goes down ? If so, we could have a man-made Great Lake of fresh water in the middle of the Sahara. That would be cool.

Re:Water City

[Ernesto5]

Thus, without the Sahara flooding solution, I would suggest the "unthinkable" to many Southern Republican politicians: Write off New Orleans. New Orleans is pretty much gone. We need to start thinking about a New New Orleans/refugee camp inland. Water will "find away" and with all the excess in Lake Pontchatrain and the Mississippi and the lack of wetlands (oh, the irony), the water will seep in and "equilibrate" with bathtub that is New Orleans. Pumping out the water there now is not cost effective. Call what happened in New Orleans for what it is: an ecological disaster in the making. Excessive industrial and residential development and erecting levees destroy wetlands that naturally buffer against post-hurricane flooding were the fault of the people in Louisiana. This maybe a stretch on my part, but I would say the unusually frequent hurricane season could be attributed to global warming and violent hurricanes like this will be the annual norm if certain government(s) do not take global warming seriously. But yeah, I'd have to say we may have to write off New Orleans. It's too sad to see all the history, culture, music, and good food (gumbo!) disappear, but Nature cannot be fooled.

Re:Water City

[DavidTC]

Even if the Mississippi was flooding through New Orleans on a regular basis, that wouldn't magically put silt under buildings.

There is absolutely no way to stop the buildings from sinking barring some sort of thrusters attached to the sides of the building pulling them up, or digging foundations that are a few hundred feet deep.

What we could is a Rome solution. When the city sinks a story, we throw dirt down and build all the roads a floor higher. ;)

In fact, I rather hope they build on top of the rubble instead of clearing it away.

Re:Water City

[DavidTC]

The city didn't get hit with a hurricane. It barely missed them. But it passed them safely by.

Then the system of levies and pumps couldn't handle the amount of water and two levies overflowed and broke, flooding the city.

Any other city would be drying out and restoring power about now. New Orleans is stuck underwater, and will be for the forseeable future, until they fix the dikes and pump the water out.

However, you are correct in that the dead we know of now are because of the hurricane. Something like 30 people alone died in a building that blew over, and you obviously can't blame that on the flooding. Many of the dead we know about we learned about before the flooding.

However, we don't know how many people drown until the city gets back to functioning. There could be thousands of people who got trapped in their houses and drowned.

And a lot of people are going to die because of lack of drinking water and power.

Re:Water City

[Skagit]

Rebuilding it any other way than how it was is going to be very difficult. The worst problem I think is that New Orleans and a segment of the population at large is going to demand that the fundamental character of the city remain unchanged. NO wants it to remain because it makes money, with Mardi Gras and Superbowls and the like. People at large like it because it has these things. Plus, some of it, such as the historic register buildings, can't be changed, ene if they are built in the worst possible location.

Not only can we not changed the fundamental character of the city, by custom and law, we won't have funds to do it. FEMA and insurance aren't designed, by and large, to upgrade after a disaster, they are designed to return the status quo. If newer methods and technologies, like better impermeable earth cores and geotextiles in the levees are incorporated, that's a fringe benefit. The money won't be there to put in deep foundations (though they might be required in new building codes) and bigger levees. There certainly won't be enough money to create a change from a below-sea-level city to an above-sea-level city. We'll get back almost exactly what we have.

The only thing I think we can get done in this aftermath is to restore NO to its pre-storm state (and hope the bath scrubbed out some of the nastier stains) and augment the existing flood control methods as allowed within the existing funds. We aren't going to get a New Venice, We're going to get New Orleans v1.01.

If true improvements are to come, they'll be from the ACoE and their funds, but those upgrades are going to be tacked on after the restoration. Before the storm, the Old River Control System and Atchafalaya system were on the list first, but since this happened, NO will get the focus. The ORCS is the real lynch pin, because if that fails, the Mighty Muddy Mississippi goes through the Big Easy, easily. It'll make Katrina look as harmful as a girl with beads on a Bourbon Street Balcony.

If you're interested in some of the workings of the local Army Corps of Engineers and the Atchafalaya and Mississippi interaction, look up John McPhee's book The Control Of Nature.

Re:Water City

[ccarson]

Apparently, the Earth magnetic field has decreased by 10% in the last 10 years. I'm an electrical engineerand during my studies in sub-atomic physics, I learned that a particles velocity can be effected by magnetic fields. I keep hearing about the increased activity of our Sun and I believe it's possible that more of the Sun's radiation is penetrating the Earth's magnetic field due to it being weaker. If more radiation hits the Earth and the Sun is spewing out more heat, shouldn't that also increase the overall temperature of the Earth and can global warming be attributed to this? I've been bouncing this idea in my head for a while now and I can't see why this MAY not be true.

I wonder...

[Rick Zeman]

...how many foreign countries are sending aid to the US now?

Re:I wonder...

[phatwuss]

Much to Mullah Robertson's dismay, the infidel Hugo Chavez has pledged aid in the form of food and fuel. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050829/pl_afp/usweat hervenezuelaoil

Re:I wonder...

[williamyf]

I am a venezuelan.

As per rules and regulations of foreign policy. The Aid will not be delivered until it is requested.

When we had our desaster here (Vargas 1999), Mr. Chavez was ofered aid from the USA, and he declined it because his administration feared that there would be spyes infiltrated in the relief personel.

I guess Mr. Bush will go by the same token. The only difference being that the USA is in a much better position to reject the aid than venezuela was in its time.

Think of it as just another outburst in an already agitaded foreign policy between the two countries.

If you all did not notice, I do not like Mr. Chavez, or Mr. Bush, albeit, for different reasons in each case.

Suerte a todos y feliz dia!

Re:I wonder...

[RexRhino]

Don't get caught up in the propoganda.

While Chavez is making some token attempts to help people, if real significant portion of oil revenues were being used to help the poor they could garantee every person in Venezuela western style medical care, diet, and education. There are serious questions about were all that money is going.

The main reason why people outside Venezuela love him so much is not because he is some kind of people's hero, it is because they like his anti-American rhetoric. It gives people in countries married to the U.S. economicly and politically a vicarious thrill to have Chavez stand up to the U.S. when their own leaders will not. Chavez could be running death squads all over the country (and some have even made the allegation), and I don't think anyone would take issue with it as long as he kept up the anti-American rhetoric.

Re:The future....

[SpaceLifeForm]

You forgot that the 'soil' is constantly sinking. It is just silt from the Mississipi River that must be replenished. The levees prevent that re-silting which could maintain the elevation. New Orleans will eventually either disappear or have to be maintained in a different manner.

In the long run, it probably would be best to abandon the city entirely, but that won't happen, so, all the taxpayers in the U.S. will have to pay for it even if they don't live there.

Re:How about moving off the flood plain?

[spisska]

Or more to the point, does it bother anyone that our tax dollars will be used to pay for people who do have insurance, because the insurance companies will run to the government to bail them out when that $20 billion bill comes due?

It's not helping the folks who have no insurance that bothers me. It's helping out comapnies whose business is selling risk, but who end up short on cash when their policies have to be paid out.

Re:How about moving off the flood plain?

[wytcld]

Flood insurance is provided by the federal government. You still have to buy it, but private insurers won't touch it. So if the feds stopped providing it large sections of, for instance, the Florida coast would cease to be attractive to development - you can't get a mortgage on something you can't get flood insurance on if it's anywhere that can flood at all.

So, yes, the government should stop providing flood insurance. Except then there would be millions of people in houses suddenly without much value since they can't sell them for much since the new owners couldn't get mortgages. And the banks holding the current mortgages wouldn't be too happy either. And Florida would be in a terrible way, which would be a hell of a repayment for the favor its government did for W back in 2000.

America "chernobyl". Just walk away

[DigiShaman]

I say we just abandon New Orleans if the damage is too extensive to rebuild. Basically, call it Americas "chernobyl" and move on. Ya, there are fond memories in that city...but sometimes it's best to not fight nature. Just leave it be. But up a memorial, rebuild refineries in other areas...but slowly, just walk away from it.

I doubt this will happen, but it would be better in the long run then supporting a city BELOW see level.

My little voice about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me put in here my (little) experience about floodings.

I live in Venice, well in the hinterland of it. As you may know, it's a city build "on" the water. Or, better said, on a group of islands (107, exactly) in a laguna, directly connected by three connections to the mediterranean sea.
The area suffers from geological bradyseism (sinking) of few centimeters per year.
It's an irreversible process, simply leading to a worse situation as time goes by.

The city suffers an average of 50 floodings per year, with peak heigth of the water of more than a meter in the lower zones.
"Just" 40 years ago, the count of floodings per year was less than a dozen.
Lots are the analysis, conferences and general discussion on which should be best ways to limit the effects of such situation.
Well, the most common answer is: there's no solution.
It is just possible to extend the agony, not to dry up the city.

So, I agree with the cynical comment red so far: if you consider it worth, go and rebuild some kilometers faraway.
Sad but true.

Back to New Orleans - which is not Venice indeed - surely it will be possible to clean the city, polish it up and recall it to normality, but nothing assures you another similar (or even worse) flooding won't occur again, vanishing every effort.

Good luck to whose are still there.

Re:cities on floodplains?

[olympus_coder]

Actually, that is exactly what happens (and I have been through several floods). FEMA bails you out ONCE and only ONCE.

If your house is a total loss, they generally won't allow you to rebuild there. They settle and turn your land into a park. There is a hole neighborhood across the river from my parents (my parent's house doesn't flood) that is now a park.

I have friend's who homes (in Houston) were CONDIMIED because, after essesive development around their aera, there was not enough drainage and so everytime it rain their neighborhood would flood (it didn't do this until the last 10 years). The land and homes were purchased using emminent domain, and then buldozed.

why did all the pumps shut down?

[SuperBanana]

Don't live in a city that is 8 feet below sea level. Flooding WILL occur.

...and if you do, build your pumping stations so that they can work submerged and without grid power, so that next time, they don't ALL FAIL. It's not like we don't have the technology- submarines, for example.

How much can it cost to build a solid foundation, and put a big diesel engine with a big fuel tank either in a sealed container with a snorkle, or put the engine bits up top a high tower (with substantial reinforcement)? This ain't rocket science.

Also, why don't the levees have anything but dirt in 'em? Why can't they have periodic concrete segments or something to stop breaks from spreading and to use as a base for emergency repairs?

Re:Keep the national guard at home

[Anonymous Coward]

The first thing to remember is that while 65% of the current Louisiana National Guard are in country, the total number of troops in the National Guard have been shrinking over the last few years due to a few years of recruitment shortages.

The second thing to remember is that numbers alone aren't the whole story. One has to consider that those soldiers trained in the kinds of specialties that are going to be needed over the next month, such as transportation, medical support, military police and aviation are more likely to be in demand in Iraq and therefore are more likely to be on their second and third rotation over seas.

The final part comes in the form of equipment. The National Guard and Reserves have always been subject to hand-me-downs from the active duty units. When something big happens and large numbers of AR/NG units are deployed, they often do so with equipment gathered from non-deployed AR/NG units in order to be at full strength. So large amounts of AR/NG equipment that could be used in this emergency are going to be sitting in the desert right now and won't be getting back any time soon.

In the end, I'd put the actual effectiveness in terms of soldiers and equipment of the current Louisiana National Guard at around 30-40% of what they were prior to Iraq.

Re:How about blaming Louisiana?

[koreth]

Natural disasters happen everywhere. Earthquakes, for example. Only in California, you say? Of the largest quakes in US history, California barely makes the top 10. (Missouri and Alaska are much worse places to be, quake-wise.) Volcanoes erupt. Rivers overflow and dump flood waters into cities.

Speaking as a Californian, I am happy my taxes are paying to help out the folks in Louisiana and Mississippi. And should disaster strike where I live -- which it will, given enough time -- they'll help me out as well, and we'll all end up better off.

Now, that said, I'd hope that the rebuilding effort takes this disaster into account and that whatever replaces the devastated areas will be built such that it comes closer to withstanding another big hurricane. (Obviously it's impossible to build a city that'll survive unscathed if the storm is big enough.)

The federal government spends billions on a lot of stupid things I feel are a total waste of my money. This isn't one of them.

Re:Keep the national guard at home

[DMUTPeregrine]

And why the HELL can a war outside the US affect the STATE'S national guard? Those are supposed to be for the state's defense, not wars in other countries!

Good thing they had that Superdome!!!

[Brian_Ellenberger]

I'm one of those people who complain about 100+ million dollar sports teams who force taxpayers to build stadiums for them from taxdollars, but there would be 10000+ people who would be SOL without the Superdome. I'm sure people would have scoffed at the idea of funding the dome because "it might come in handy in a natural disaster" but it has definitely saved alot of lives.

Let the Bush Bashing Begin

[Alien54]

It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.

-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004

Let the Bush bashing begin, at least, according to some.

Funding for work on New Orleans' flood prevention system slowed to a trickle in 2003, and many people (long before Monday) claimed that was due to the Iraq war. Did GW bet that he wouldn't need the money for New Orleans levees, and decided to shift it to the war instead?

Looks like a bad bet.......

Wonder if Congress will look into this?

Re:Not a global warming issue.

[SashaMan]

Au contraire. A good study from MIT about how hurricane wind speeds are 50% stronger in the past 3 decades, partially due to global warming (although I realize there is a 50% chance this study is false):

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/hurricanes.html

Re:And yet nothing was done...

[vinlud]

What else was the government supposed to do to save the stragglers from their own stupidity?

Provide proper transportation and shelter? Most people staying in the city had no cars and were too poor to pay for hotels (which increased their prices for more profit). It is entirely logical they had no other option than to stay in the city. Don't call them idiots, not every American has the possibilities you apparantly have..

Re:How about blaming Louisiana?

[birge]

First off, federal disaster aid gets spread around. It does not all go to hurricanes. That should be enough of a counter, but for the sake of argument I'm going to pretend what you base your point on is true.

What it gets spent on is irrelevent. That it doesn't really get spread around is the issue. It's basically a money transfer from good places to live to bad places to live.

Assuming that what you want happens, and federal aid for disaster relief becomes a thing of the past, what are the effects? You seem to assert that people will simply not wish to live with the risk, so they'll move. That might apply to a relatively small number of people with the means to move, but what about everyone else, the people lacking not only the means/education/whatever to pick up and move, but also most in need of aid after a disaster?

I think I didn't explain myself very well. I didn't mean to suggest individuals pay the risk alone. That's impossible, and not how things work. I was trying to suggest that the people in the area pool their risk. In other words, on the state and county level. I don't think it's a radical idea to suggest that the people of Florida should pay for Florida's risk.

Anyway, these are just some crazy left wing ideas. You know, that big things might have effects.

You know the world's coming to an end when a liberal is pointing out the notion of unintended consequences! :-) (But I guess you know the world's still in it's place when it's with regard to the unintented consequences of killing a huge government transfer program.)

Anyway, who said I was right wing? I just knew people around here would think my idea was. Remember when being left wing was about being fair to the working class and not wasting money that could be spent on UNavoidable problems? Do you forget in all of your vicarious generosity that the tax money for these huge federal transfer programs comes from the middle class? Do you realize that to a certain extent there are poor people in Virginia paying taxes to rebuild the property of rich business owners in New Orleans?

I know the mental image you have is of a rich guy paying for the clean up, but there just aren't enough of them around to pay for EVERYTHING. Most of our tax money still comes from average joes like me, and quite few below average joes who really can't afford it. A tax that you don't benefit from is ALWAYS a regressive tax since a poor person can less afford to lose a dollar than a rich person can afford to lose a thousand. So if saving the working class some tax money by having a more intelligent location of our population isn't really left wing, I don't know if there are any good wings left to be had.

But you're absolutely right: I have no idea if this can be done without unpredictable consequences. But can't that be said about any change? I guess I'm just more progressive than you.

Re:Oh please!

[mrchaotica]

African hunting and gathering tribes survive by working 3 to 4 hours a day. The rest of the time they sit around chatting, or dance around their campfires. They're not subsidized in any way whatsoever; they don't even trade with their neighbors, except for unnecessary luxuries. So if you're working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, you're obviously a big, fat chump!

(I'm not making this up, by the way -- they said it verbatim on today's episode of Going Tribal on the Discovery Channel.)

Raise the entire city (cf. Chicago)

[pomo monster]

Okay, New Orleans was built at sea level, only to subside under the weight of the built environment. Why, then, didn't anyone take action to raise the city back up before the inevitable occurred? The idea isn't as crazy as it sounds. Chicago did exactly that between 1850 and 1880--raise its street level by up to 14 feet with vaulted roads and sidewalks, and jack up all of its buildings, inch by inch, to match. A building's occupants often weren't even aware it was being raised until they left work in the evening.

So how come wasn't this done in New Orleans? Lack of funds? Engineering problems? Structural instability?

looting vs. finding

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out these pictures:

"Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store in New Orleans, Louisiana."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050830/ph otos_tc_afp/050830194101_mzffh1jl_photo1

"A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday. (AP/Dave Martin)"

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050830/19 13/w083049ajpg

So when it's a young black man it's called looting, but when it's a white woman it's called 'finding'?

Venezuela

[Artemis3]

What williamyf conveniently ignored, was the fact that Chavez, in 1999 actually accepted USA aid, machinery and engineers; but USA also insisted in deploying US Marines, something unacceptable for us.

Our offer to the United States is sincere. I don't know what George W. Bush will do, or not, but its not an offer to the USA central government, its an offer for the people, the organizations helping people, local governments, religious groups, etc.

This type of aid has been offered to the countries in the Caribbean who had been suffering the past hurricanes. We have helped with supplies and rebuilding in Jamaica, Cuba, Grenada, Haiti, etc. We also sent people to Sri Lanka and India after the tsunami, along with monetary donations.

Let me return you the favor: if you ever come to Venezuela, look me up and i would gladly show you around, so you can see the truth by yourself.

Let me clarify that we in Venezuela have no problem with the people of the United States. What we have issues with, is with the current administration, because they have actively worked against our country. It is not a personal matter either, if Bush stopped attempting to force his vision of what a country should be, and started respecting our sovereignty, i'm sure normal relationships with the administration would be restored. As it is right now, they don't even accept talking with our ambassador in Washington D.C., despite permanent attempts and support from Democrats and Republicans in the US congress.

If you are interested in knowing more about Venezuela, let me suggest these links:

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/
http://www.vheadline.com/

Re:Why are all the looters black?

[Peregr1n]

Indeed... have you seen this?
(Summary: News clipping showing a black man pulling food through the water, captioned 'A young man wades through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store...'; and another clipping showing two white people pulling food through the water, captioned 'Two residents wade through chest deep flood water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store...')

It's time to do the right thing - bury it

[Electric Eye]

New Orleans was built by morons who thought they could outwit Mother Nature. The city's time finally came due. Why should my tax dollars, and the tax dollars of every citizen in this country, go towards rebuilding a city that shouldn't have been built? It's going to literally take trillions (not billions) of dollars to rebuild the city. And what happens when another major hurricane strikes? We do this all over again?? We've already done enough damage by building flood levies along the Miss. River and choked off VALUABLE wetlands that not only could have lessened the damage of this hurricane but also keep the Gulf of Mexico healthy. We've allowed silt from the Miss to pour into the Gulf, choking off valuable wildlife and natural resources instead of letting it replenish the wetlands. It's time to reverse that damage. The city should remain permanently evacuated, the remains of buildings and infrastructure torn down, the levy system removed and let nature take its course.

I'm sure there's enormous political pressure to rebuild this city, but like many places that learned their lesson after the great tsunami, there are just certain places that should NOT be rebuilt. And that includes the coastlines from Texas to Florida and beyond. It's time we stopped supporting frivolous and dangerous development. We have to pay each time a Florida beach is wiped out by a strom. Why? Because special interests demand it. It's time this maddness ends.