Rebuilding New Orleans With Science

EccentricAnomaly writes "The New York Times has a discussion of flood control methods in use in Holland, England, and Bangladesh that could be used in the rebuilding of New Orleans. Of particular interest is the $8 billion Delta Works built by the Netherlands in response to the North Sea flood of 1953, which almost destroyed the city of Rotterdam, but for a heroic captain who plugged a breach in a dike with his ship." From the article: "While scientists hail the power of technology to thwart destructive forces, they note that flood control is a job for nature at least as much as for engineers. Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development."

Comments

Learn from nature

[fembots]

Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development.

Is it time to learn from the nature and build some artificial barrier islands, rather than further changing the face of the earth?

Re:Learn from nature

[AKAImBatman]

Did you read the next sentence?

Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development.

That kind of destroys the entire point of a break island. :-)

Re:Learn from nature

[MisterMurphy]

With the formatting in Parent, I can't tell whether it is a response to the article or a complete quote. Regardless, I don't see how constructing an artificial island is any different from constructing a levee, at least in the sense of "changing the face of the eart".

Re:Learn from nature

[VJ42]

Is it time to learn from the nature and build some artificial barrier islands, rather than further changing the face of the earth?

Firstly how is building artificial islands not "hanging the face of the earth", secondly, learning from us here in Europe isn't a bad thing, building flood gates and better costal defence like those in london and the Netherlands is worth it in the long run. From TFA:
"[the Netherlands] erected a futuristic system of coastal defenses that is admired around the world today as one of the best barriers against the sea's fury - one that could withstand the kind of storm that happens only once in 10,000 years."

it cost them $8bn, but it's lased over 50 years and counting, and they havn't suffered any New Orleans type situation. Pay the money now to invest in the future of your country. Generations will thank you for it

Re:Learn from nature

[Rei]

The best protection the New Orleans area used to have against storm surges was its wetlands *and* its barrier islands. As the city has expanded, not only has it increased the volume and depth of its below-sea-level "bowl", but it has at the same time cut down its buffer zone of places that the water can safely flood into in the immediate area. Thus, not only do you have a larger area to protect, but more buildup of the surge as it hits the coast near you. Around New Orleans, a single square mile of wetlands restoration would have reduced the storm surge by about a foot.

Of course, the bowl problem itself is a side effect of development; almost all cities sink, but building on delta land you sink much faster. The river would normally lay the area over with sediment, but it's diverted ,dumping the sediment out into the gulf instead. Deposited in deeper water, it doesn't replace the eroding barrier islands as well, thus allowing the surge to approach unhindered.

Wetlands and delta conservation has long been a favorite target of dittoheads and other conservative groups, who have viewed it as a liberal waste of money and barrier to economic development. I wonder if they'll start to change their tune after this.

Re:Learn from nature

[Red Flayer]

"Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development. "

Levees and floodgates, as used in the US, do not generally mitigate the damage caused by storm surges -- they are used to block flooding from inland sources like rivers.

"...some artificial barrier islands, rather than further changing the face of the earth"

Artificial barrier islands = changing the face of the earth

Barrier islands migrate into the land over time. They are really just giant versions of the sand ripples you'll see at the edge of almost any (near still) body of water. If we really want our coastlines to operate in a natural fashion, we've got to allow barrier islands to form, move to land, and respawn.

The real problem with NOLA is that the Mississippi River delta is not allowed to regenerate itself by silt deposition. Most conservationists would argue that less flood control is necessary, not more.

Re:Learn from nature

[WillAffleckUW]

Wetlands and delta conservation has long been a favorite target of dittoheads and other conservative groups, who have viewed it as a liberal waste of money and barrier to economic development. I wonder if they'll start to change their tune after this.

I'm going to bet the answer is no, they won't learn.

Sigh.

Re:Learn from nature

[lowrydr310]

Perhaps this new slashdot code they're talking about will allow us to edit little mistakes like that after we've made them. Of course, there's always the preview button which works for me.

Re:Learn from nature

[hanshotfirst]

The storm surge wasn't the problem - the breach in the Lake Ponchatrain levee was the problem. The brunt of the surge missed, then the floods came a day later when the Lake filled up.

I do agree with your points on erosion in general (and I am one of those evil red-state conservatives), but wetlands wouldn't likely have made a difference in this situation - Levee maintenance might have.

Re:Learn from nature

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Wetlands and delta conservation has long been a favorite target of dittoheads and other conservative groups, who have viewed it as a liberal waste of money and barrier to economic development. I wonder if they'll start to change their tune after this.
 
The National Flood Insurance Program is responsible for the explosion in development along the nation's coasts, as no other insurer in their right mind will offer coastal coverage. (you can thank LBJ and the dem controlled congress for that one)

Re:Learn from nature

[mysterystevenson]

Learning from nature is something I agree with 100%. Water tends to return to old pathways after having been re-routed time and time again. This has to due with the path of least resistence and the nature of gravity. One failure in the man made alteration is all it takes.

      It would also be wise to learn from NASA in it's systems designs and applications of triple redundancy in every system involved. Failures occurred here in several areas and there was not sufficient redundancy built into the plan to handle anything.

          There will now be toxic matter in the soil and drainage systems / structures, etcetera of the city, with potential of poisonous releases with every rain, unless massive areas of the landform are sealed with heavy barriers such as concrete to prevent water intrusion below. This may cause the need thereafter to raise many areas of the city above sea level with multiple partitioning of the city.The costs would be enormous.

      Right now we are pumping tremendous amounts of poison out of the city and while much of the Gulf Coast depends on fishing , this may end soon, if we create a far worse disaster, by our unthoughtfull nonconsideration of nature now. Let us hope the Gulf of Mexico does not become a poisonous Dead Zone of Toxic fumes that will spread over Florida, Mississippi, Louisianna, Texas, and Alabama, whereas we used to get healthfull oxygen from the Gulf.

Re:Learn from nature

[lgw]

There was actually a plan for storm surge control put together for the defense of New Orleans in the 70s (when the current levee system was planned), based on what works in Europe. It was shot down because of environmental concerns.

A similar plan was proposed this year. The New York Times hated it. Here's the quote:

Anyone who cares about responsible budgeting and the health of America's rivers and wetlands should pay attention to a bill now before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. The bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and other water-related projects - this at a time when President Bush is asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other important domestic programs. Among these projects is a $2.7 billion boondoggle on the Mississippi River that has twice flunked inspection by the National Academy of Sciences.

The Government Accountability Office and other watchdogs accuse the corps of routinely inflating the economic benefits of its projects. And environmentalists blame it for turning free-flowing rivers into lifeless canals and destroying millions of acres of wetlands - usually in the name of flood control and navigation but mostly to satisfy Congress's appetite for pork.

This is a bad piece of legislation.

Hard to tell whether it was genuineely a bad plan, or the NYT hated it simply because it was Bush's proposal, but we are at least considering the ideas used in Europe.

Re:Learn from nature

[Rei]

Lake Pontchartrain didn't "fill up". The storm surge overran it, and without wetlands to flood into, the water piled up to six feet over its normal level. The levee didn't just break - it overtopped.

Re:Learn from nature

[pete6677]

I say let people build there, but they're on their own if the place gets destroyed. No taxpayer assisted insurance, and it's likely that no private insurer will cover them. Somehow I think that pretty view won't be worth it anymore.

Re:Learn from nature

[lgw]

Actually, levee maintenance was fine, according to the Army Corps of Engineers and others. The Lake Ponchatrain levee was complete and well maintained, exactly as specified in the 1970s plan. It failed exactly as it was expected to!

City/State management chose to build a levee that was only designed for a category 3 hurricane. Sure enough, a category 4 hurricane broke the levee. This danger was understood when the levee was built, and considered an acceptable tradeoff for cost savings.

We seem to have a real problem building infrastructure in this country when it's not needed on an everyday basis. Does any major city have roads capable of evacuating it's populace in a hurry? Remember the recent East Coast blackout - has any building of redundant capacity begun? Will any other city that decided protection from some hurricanes, but not others, was "good enough" change their minds? I doubt it - such programs are regularly denounced as pork. We just don't appreciate infrastructure, to the point where many people actually believe that roads cause traffic!

Re:Learn from nature

[shmlco]

"Pay the money now to invest in the future of your country. Generations will thank you for it."

Sorry, but the cities would rather spend their money on new football stadiums... which can double as refugee camps in times of need!

Re:Learn from nature

[nietsch]

apart from the rethoric and aversion against BabyBush, they have some point about the environmental aspects of big floodgates. The delta works in the netherlands have turned one sea-arm into a freshwater lake. The westerschelde floodgates were supposed to leave the water behind it free-flowing. It's realtively small obstruction to the flow of water and sand had drastic influence on the sandplates behind it.

Because the current is now less, the channels and gullies between the sandplates are too big. As a result the plases are losing sand to fill these big channels. on some places the maintainers have started to supply extra sand to valuable sandplates.

Once you start to do that, you are no longer maintaining a nature reserve but you have just become a garderener with a big & unusually wet garden.

But on the other hand, if you want to keep the current environment, you will have to accept the occasional flood. But with those levees around the rivers that was not happening much either.

Re:Learn from nature

[Mr. Slippery]

Actually, levee maintenance was fine, according to the Army Corps of Engineers and others.

No. Levee maintenance and flood control for the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project was about $250 million dollars behind, due to the war in Iraq. Specifically, the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project was funded by the Bush administration at levels far below those requested by the Army Corp of Engineers.

We just don't appreciate infrastructure, to the point where many people actually believe that roads cause traffic!

Well, they do. Poorly planned infrastructure leads to development in ways that stress that infrastructure; our road-building boom of the past few decades created a car culture that leads to more driving, thus more traffic congestion, thus more demand for roads.

Re:Learn from nature

[Rei]

Actually, FreeRepublic and other sites are misreporting the date on the article ("The Untouchable Corps", with that text, as "April 13, 2005", and heavily alter the text. The actual article was from August 19th, 2002. You can read it without paying here. If you don't believe me that they've changed it, check the New York Times for that text you cited. Congrats - you're propagating a newly created urban legend designed by right-wing groups to pretend that Bush really *was* on top, and it was the evil liberal's fault!

It wasn't "Bush's Proposal", it was a Corps proposal. The article was actually critical of Bush ("He fired (and has yet to replace) Mike Parker, the agency's civilian chief, mainly because Mr. Parker asked for too much money."). The article wasn't critical about the money, but about the environmental impact of the chosen designs. The article didn't even discuss actions on the Mississippi River or flood prevention - their big faulting of the corps was on the subject of Delaware dredging.

Re:Learn from nature

[twiddlingbits]

You can't in any certainty say the money went for Homeland Security or the War in Iraq. There were a lot of other areas that went up in the budget, as well as a LOT of Pork (as usual). Why don't you scream at the pork guys like Robert Byrd take to West Va and Stevens takes to Alaska. If we'd get rid of pork and get real welfare reform we can take care of a lot of other issues. Those are just as likely of a culprit for the shortfall. Unless you can point me to a source that says they took money from A to pay for B it's so much speculation. The budget shorfall in FY06 was projected at $50M, that's nowhere near the cost of the War in Iraq, not even close. I'm would have thought $50M could have been found somewhere. Here is the COE Descrption of SELA. Purpose The Southeast Louisiana Project provides for engineering, design, and construction of projects for flood control and improvements to rainfall drainage systems in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany Parishes. Background Between 1978 and 1998, Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Tammany Parishes experienced numerous rainfall flooding events. Flooding originates from excessive rainfall and outdated urban drainage facilities. The Federal Emergency Management Agency paid claims totaling over $814 million for this period. Devastating record flooding due to torrential rainfalls in southeast Louisiana occurred May 8 through May 10, 1995. In May 1995, 6-hour rainfall amounts, averaging 12 inches, caused extensive flooding throughout the area. Seven lives were lost and over 35,000 homes were flooded along with thousands of businesses and public facilities. There was significant street and highway damage. Estimated flood damages, reported for the May event, total about $1 billion for the three parishes. As a result of the extensive flooding in May 1995, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana (SELA) Project with enactment of Section 108 of the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1996 and Section 533 of the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 1996, as amended, to provide for flood control and improvements to rainfall drainage systems in Jefferson, Orleans, and St. Tammany Parishes, Louisiana in accordance with the following reconnaissance reports of the New Orleans District Engineer: Jefferson and Orleans Parishes, Louisiana, Urban Flood Control and Water Quality Management, July 1992; Tangipahoa, Techefuncte, and Tickfaw Rivers, Louisiana, June 1991; St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, July 1996; and Schneider Canal, Slidell, Louisiana, Hurricane Protection, May 1990. Technical reports were prepared in April 1996 and May 1996 to identify the initial work to be implemented under the SELA project authority. These technical reports, which were approved in October 1996, were the basis of the Project Cooperation Agreements (PCAs) for Jefferson and Orleans Parishes that were executed on January 16, 1997 and January 23, 1997. Authority The project was authorized by the Fiscal 1996 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act (Sec 108), and the Water Resources Development Act of 1996 (Sec 533). Scope The project includes channel and pump station improvements in the three parishes. The channel and pumping station improvements in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes support the parishes' master drainage plans and generally provide flood protection on a level associated with a ten-year rainfall event, while also reducing damages for larger events. St. Tammany Parish plans would provide flood protection for various rainfall events. In Orleans Parish, approved plans involve improving five major drainage lines, adding pumping capacity to two pump stations, and adding a new pump station. Proposed plans include improving 13 canals, adding pump capacity to two existing pump stations, and adding two new pump stations. Progress to Date In Orleans Parish, nine contracts have been awarded, seven are complete, two are underway, and one remains to be awarded. Most of the remaining contracts had been scheduled for award in fiscal year 2003; however, funding limitations have prevented moving forward with those contracts. Overall, the currently scheduled work in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes is about 70 percent complete and should be finished in 2008, if funding can keep pace.

Re:Learn from nature

[lgw]

Fine, but today's politics aside, the point is we aren't ignoring successful European engineering, we're just smacking into political obstacles in getting such plans approved. As is the case with any big civil engineering project, the engineering concerns do not dominate the funding decisions.

Re:Learn from nature

[twiddlingbits]

This should be modded WAY down. There is NO DATA to support you theory of "Dead Zones". Most Dead Zones are due to Algae blooms fueled by Nitrate runoff. The water in the city is going to be very polluted and nasty with germs and disease but this isn't a drop in the bucket compared to the volume of water dumped into the Gulf by the Mississippi River every day. I wouldn't be surpried to see some localized effects around Lake Ponchatrain and at the mouth of the Mississippi but no "sky is falling" catastrophe. There have been no major oil spills or chemical spills and when some water gets pumped down and treatment plants are back on line the water pumped out will be better than what is already IN the Lake. Your "oxygen from the Gulf" is also so much BS.

Re:Learn from nature

[lgw]

Specifically, the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project was funded by the Bush administration at levels far below those requested by the Army Corp of Engineers.

Specifically the Lake Ponchatrain Levee was finished some time ago, and 2005 funding was irrelevent.

Sure the Commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers says funding levels were fine, but what does he know? He's just some engineer, uneducated in the overriding requirement to hate Smirchimply McHitlerBurton and all of his actions.

GEN. STROCK: The other question is, in general is the civil works budget of the Army Corps of Engineers suffering because of the war in Iraq? Not in my opinion. And the reason I say that is that if you look at the funding levels of the corps from pre-war days of 2001 and 2002, it has been a fairly steady level. We are spending a lot of money and the Corps of Engineers is involved in the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're able to balance that with our human resources and it is not directly affecting our budget. ...

Q Two questions. Wasn't that study to look at upgrading the levees delayed for funding reasons?

GEN. STROCK: You know, I talked to the study manager about that now, and again, it's a tough thing to talk about. He feels that he has had an adequate level of funding to move that study ahead. The nature of the work we do in both the studies and the engineering, some of it is not a question of throwing money at it, there is just analysis that must be done, coordination that must occur. And so I would prefer to let the people at the level really talk about that from their perspective. But it's my understanding that that was not a significant issue in this. And even if that study had been finished three years ago, it would not have made a difference in this event.

our road-building boom of the past few decades created a car culture that leads to more driving, thus more traffic congestion, thus more demand for roads.

Our desire for freedom created a car culture. The ability to travel where you like is a significant element of freedom. The road building boom may have enabled this desire for freedom, but it didn't create it.

People want to drive because they want to get to their destination. Building more roads always reduces traffic congestion. People with an irrational hatred of cars and/or freedom will of course hate roads for what they represent.

Re:Learn from nature

[Rei]

First off, please format properly, and use links whenever possible.

A lot of pork ... Robert Byrd

West Virginia's annual "pork" is about 6 billion dollars per year (assuming that 60% of federal expenditures on WV are "pork", since they pay $1 in taxes for every $1.6 they get in federal spending). The short time we've been in Iraq so far has accrued 192B$ in direct costs (and this doesn't count things like the economic recession from the uncertainty leading up to it, the effects of the oil shortage afterwards, the economic loss of the removal of so many reserves, etc). This also doesn't count the rapid DOD growth, which is not included; we now spend half of the world's total military spending.

welfare reform

All programs together, state and federal, are about 20B$ a year, a little over half of that (11B$) on children (between TANF, CCDF, and SSBG). Sorry, not even close.

I always am amused by people who blame "pork" and especially "welfare" for our government woes.

nowhere close to the cost of the war in Iraq

Oh, so is your plan to take the entire cost of the war in Iraq out of a single budget item? That'd require eliminating a large branch of the government. Meanwhile, back in the real world, you have to take some out of everything. War costs hard choices, especially when you *cut* taxes during a war (an almost unheard of act).

Re:Learn from nature

[uncqual]

Where is the "No Paragraphs (-1)" mod when you need it :) I'll bet there's all sorts of info in the post - but it's just too hard to read :( (Although I noted "pork" mentioned - brings to mind the "Big Dig")

Re:Learn from nature

[Anonymous Coward]

As you cast the first stone...

You two probably never have written a check to an environmental conservation group, now have you?

And no, we consersatives won't learn, because there is nothing to learn in this particular case. Because we don't believe you should have built there or, rather, in the manner that it was (mainly, a woefully underprotected region), in the first place.

A liberal dominated and controlled area, with a huge tourism trade bringing in billions a year, that is mismanaged, overpopulated, and overdeveloped, with a known-for-decades fault that was worsening. That fault leads to an utter disaster that was forseeable.

So, what's a liberal to do? Blame it all on the conservatives for LACK OF FUNDING OF *ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONISM*, NOT THE UNDERENGINEERED AND UNDERFUNDED LEVY SYSTEM.

Typical.

Now, I'm not saying delta conservation and wetlands were not unrelated to the horror. But it certainly was tangential to the direct problem that caused the problems in New Orleans--the LEVY BROKE and LACK OF EVACUATION options for the poor before the hurricane hit. One of which is what the /. story as about in the first place--better levy solutions.

What do you do? Go off on conservatives and environmental issues. Great.

You'd have a better argument, such as that which the NY Times article runs around, denouncing the lack of adequate funding for good protection surrounding New Orleans, than lack of funding of environmental protectionism. And I'd agree with you wholeheartedly there, just as I believe the FEMA director is an idiot. I'd also agree that, as studies were done beforehand, that evacuation should have been made more necessary (cat4 hurricane bearing down, levies only rated really to cat3, bells should have rung in folks' brains that this ain't a good place to be).

New Orleans flooded mainly (not because of inadequate wetland protection) because it had a cat3 wall up against an indirect hit by a cat4 hurricane. The lack of wetlands compounded the problem, but the area would still have flooded even with good wetlands but no levies BECAUSE OF THE ECONOMIC GROWTH AND NATURAL DEVELOPMENT THAT OCCURS AROUND CITIES. Levies are and will be the last line of defense in New Orleans forever.

btw, conservatives used to think states should have more rights and the federal level of power was too slow, too intrusive to local issues that the local populace could better decide, and too big to realize solutions for each and all of the 50 states. Now, we conservatives have abandoned that thanks to the liberal rise in power at the federal level, and took a page out of your playbook (and you hate us for it, but that's what you did to us for 8 years prior).

If we have had our way, more state rights and power, less federal involvement, Louisiana could have made the decision themselves to protect their city better instead of waiting on the Army Core of Engineers to get federal funding, including buying up wetlands and passing laws preventing development of wetlands and the delta region.

But, nah, you liberals need someone to blame for a failure that impacted your "kind" the most. But you can't blame yourselves, as that'd hurt your own interests and you'd have to accept blame. So, blame the feds, all the more convenient that the conservatives are in power, eh?

You sound like Mr. West--blame an inadequate response on some racially motivatation, all the while the hurricane was bearing down you were throwing a massive party, where one of your violent guests was shot, and instead of watching concerned as I and the new orgs were the direction of the hurricane, you attended the MTV awards ceremony to get some exposure to make some more loot and to accept a trophy of a ASTRONAUT ON THE MOON despite probably thinking space funding should be better applied to social issues. He was in better position than most of us to fly down bottled water in the region. What'd he do? He sang and mouthed off and blamed the white man.

Exactly what we expect you liberals to do. Brilliant! Thank you.

Re:Learn from nature

[ScentCone]

We seem to have a real problem building infrastructure in this country when it's not needed on an everyday basis

Hell, even when it is needed on an everyday basis. Living in the DC area, I can tell you that people who have to sit in an hour of traffic each morning to commute 12 miles into town are not at all optimistic that those same roads would be anything other than a (probably murderous) parking lot in the event of disaster.

It's like living paycheck to paycheck - no room for disaster. The discipline and politically unpopular solutions (more roads, less development) are nearly impossible to put through when everything's fealing "normal."

Re:Learn from nature

[Gyga]

I remember reading an artical resently about an island with trash(http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/09/well _believe_it.php), the US has lots of trash we should try that.

Re:Learn from nature

[coopex]

>Our desire for freedom created a car culture.

That would certainly explain why we're bitches to foreign oil and pumping massive amount of CO2 into the air without any clear ideas of what will happen besides weather gets more extreme. The car culture was created by the white flight from cities and creation of suburbs where people want big lots and big suvs to hide their small minds and dicks.

Re:Learn from nature

[utnow]

a heroic captain who plugged a dyke with his ship... ahh... I love /. :D

Re:Learn from nature

[LazyBoy]

City/State management chose to build a levee that was only designed for a category 3 hurricane. Sure enough, a category 4 hurricane broke the levee.

A catagory 4 hurricane hit Biloxi. The winds that hit New Orleans were roughly catagory 2.

Re:Learn from nature

[Mr. Slippery]

the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project was funded by the Bush administration at levels far below those requested by the Army Corp of Engineers.

Specifically the Lake Ponchatrain Levee was finished some time ago, and 2005 funding was irrelevent.

I said the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project, which was "designed to protect residents between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River levee from surges in Lake Pontchartrain", i.e. exactly this occurance. It wasn't done:

Work in the Chalmette area includes an additional levee lift and miscellaneous floodwall cappings. Work in Orleans Parish is about 90% complete, with the major remaining construction being the parallel protection along London Avenue and Orleans Avenue canals. That work is scheduled to be completed by 2009. The remaining work in Jefferson Parish consists of at least two more lakefront levee enlargements and construction of a floodproofed bridge at Hammond Highway over the 17th Street Canal. That work is scheduled to be completed by 2010. The work in St. Charles Parish is only about 60% complete, and there is not yet a closed system. A closed system could be achieved by 2005 if Federal and non-Federal funding levels can support that effort. Overall project completion is scheduled for 2015.

Our desire for freedom created a car culture. The ability to travel where you like is a significant element of freedom.

It's amazing the irrational response you get from many Americans where you mention that a car culture may have some negative effects. Bam - suddenly I'm a freedom hater.

Our car culture was created by a huge federal road-building plan, which directly reduced freedom for many people via eminent domain, as well as indirectly for all of us via increased taxation. It's supported by brutal and stupid foreign policy which works in favor of cheap oil over freedom.

Building more roads always reduces traffic congestion.

No, it doesn't. Build more roads to the exurbs and people move out there, lengthening their daily commute and filling them up.

Re:Learn from nature

[Mr. Slippery]

Sure the Commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers says funding levels were fine, but what does he know?

In any engineering project, you never ask top management how things are going, you ask the guys on the ground. June 8, 2004 Times-Picayune:

What's new, said Morehiser [Mervin Morehiser, who manages the "Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity" levee project for the Army Corps of Engineers] and Naomi [Al Naomi, the corps' senior project manager], is that the agency has run out of money for the next round of lifts. Naomi said this is the first time a lack of money has stopped major corps work on the levees since the project began in 1967.

..."But I can tell you that we would be better off if the levees were raised, . . . and I think it's important and only fair that those people who live behind the levee know the status of these projects."

..."This project isn't expected to end for another 13 to 15 years," Morehiser said. "They aren't really finished levees at this point. We don't even turn them over to their local sponsors until we consider them stable, which is years from now."

The Bush administration's proposed fiscal 2005 budget includes only $3.9 million for the east bank hurricane project. Congress likely will increase that amount, although last year it bumped up the administration's $3 million proposal only to $5.5 million.

"I needed $11 million this year, and I got $5.5 million," Naomi said. "I need $22.5 million next year to do everything that needs doing, and the first $4.5 million of that will go to pay four contractors who couldn't get paid this year."

...The challenge now, said emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri in Jefferson Parish and Terry Tullier in New Orleans, is for southeast Louisiana somehow to persuade those who control federal spending that protection from major storms and flooding are matters of homeland security.

"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," Maestri said. "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."

Re:Learn from nature

[unitron]

" A levee or dike shouldn't collapse if the water stands at it's top. It should flood over."

As I understand it, the floodwalls did flood over and then once there was water on both sides it washed out the floodwall foundations and that's why they gave way.

Re:Learn from nature

[sdirrim]

*ahem* - http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10& srcht=s&query=%22shovel+%2417+billion%22&srchst=ny t&hdlquery=&bylquery=&daterange=full&mon1=01&day1= 01&year1=1981&mon2=09&day2=06&year2=2005&submit.x= 16&submit.y=14 Although, you were right about that it was "designed by right-wing groups to pretend that Bush really *was* on top, and it was the evil liberal's fault!" There is a lot of that nowadays, especially from Fox

Re:Learn from nature

[Breakfast Pants]

So you begin your post by admitting you haven't read the article? Most of us at least pretend; it is common courtesy.

Re:Learn from nature

[Ender_Wiggin]

Private insurers will cover them, like Fire Island, NY for example, but obviously will charge higher amounts.

Re:Learn from nature

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is Lousiana adopting the European methods?

Does Europe experience Category 4 or 5 hurricanes?

Is much of Europe resting on a flood plain?

I DONT THINK SO!

What works for them will not necessarily work for Louisiana. But hey, if it costs a lot of money, it sure must be right!!!!

Re:Learn from nature

[Jafar00]

How do you suggest getting $8bn out of G W Bush for a bunch of dykes when he slashed the funding for the original levees so he could go off and impose his "freedom and democracy" on countries half way across the world who don't want it?

Re:Learn from nature

[Anonymous Coward]

And peope wonder why I have a disdain for the rich.

there is a huge segment of executives that really are the "stupid rich" they buy realestate for insane prices on a barrier island or in a 3rd world island like Balese and then wonder why when a storm goes by their home is destroyed and then make the rest of us pay for their home rebuilding with insurance. or in the case of Balese wonder why they get murdered in the night and robbed by the locals.

Corperate culture has created a large population of very rich people ($100K+ salaries) that have more money than they know what to do with so they buy very stupid things.

and then when nature comes by and kicks them in the arse, the rest of us are expected to bail them out. Look at the news shots of the marinas. what idiot left his 2 million dollar yacht in the marina when everyone knew a week ahead of time that the storm was going to hit. Personally, I think insurance companies should be allowed to reject claims from people living in stupid places or are too stupid to take basic precautions to protect their property. Yes getting your expensive boat out of the way is your responsibility.

The corperate rich are the stupidest people on this planet. only the rich that have 1/2 a brain and built their fortune themselves deserve the money.

Re:Learn from nature

[VdG]

We seem to have a real problem building infrastructure in this country when it's not needed on an everyday basis.

I don't think it's just your country: it's people in general. For these rare events it's very difficult for people to accept that it might happen to them and that it really is necessary to inconvenience themselves by spending vast sums of money and possibly changing the way they live. People still build on the slopes of active volcanoes, after all: what's a bit of water to worry about?

If you're lucky, you get a small disaster to drive the point home. If you're unlucky you get something rather more cataclysmic, as in this case.

Re:Learn from nature

[Bloke down the pub]

Once you start to do that, you are no longer maintaining a nature reserve but you have just become a garderener with a big & unusually wet garden.

An unusually wet, low garden. Well said, clog-wearing buddy!

Re:Learn from nature

[exhilaration]

There is no private flood insurance in the United States. When your insurance company offers your flood insurance, they're actually offering you the taxpayer-backed National Flood Insurance Program, which is what the parent is referring to.

Re:Learn from nature

[lgw]

The "white flight" turns out to be a myth. During the time when cars were a new idea, there was massive white immigration *into* cities. While the car enabled the suburbs, that was a small effect comapred to Americas massive shift from an agrarian country to an industrial country. Millions of people left the farms and moved to the cities because that's where the jobs were.

If you're just talking post-WWII (which is when oil started to matter), the cultural evidence is very clear. Americans loved cars because it allowed a life away from one's home and one's place of work. The car alowed teenagers to escpe from prying eyes and make out - and there is no more powerful cultural force than horny teenagers!

Re:Learn from nature

[lgw]

The winds have little to do with the levees. It's the amount of rain dumped in a hurry. Cat 4-5 hurricanes are BIG, and dump a ton of rain over a vast area. New Orleans is vulnerable to large hurricanes striking across a broad area of gulf coast, because it drains so much of the surrounding area.

Re:Learn from nature

[lgw]

Dude, you *are* a freedom hater, but I don't say that because of your posts *today*. You want to impose your values on other people, no doubt in the *name* of freedom. I hate hippies so very, very much.

Re:Learn from nature

[Mr. Slippery]

Dude, you *are* a freedom hater, but I don't say that because of your posts *today*. You want to impose your values on other people...

Interesting accusation. What have I said that leads you to this belief?

I hate hippies so very, very much.

They burried the hippie in Golden Gate park in 1967. You can relax.

Re:Learn from nature

[twiddlingbits]

"The short time we've been in Iraq so far has accrued 192B$ in direct costs (and this doesn't count things like the economic recession from the uncertainty leading up to it, the effects of the oil shortage afterwards, the economic loss of the removal of so many reserves, etc). This also doesn't count the rapid DOD growth, which is not included; we now spend half of the world's total military spending."

Bullshit-- The "recession" was there when Clinton was in office and 9/11 made it worse, that had NOTHING to do with the War. The economy is quite good or haven't you noticed it (assumes you live in the USA).

Oil Shortage? So the shortage from Katrina and instability in places like Nigeria and the threats from Venezuala and the fact the rest of the Persian Gulf is pumping at the max already is a result of the War? How about the fact that CHINA grew 6% last year, and that takes energy (oil).

Economic Loss from Reservist? Don't you know BY LAW these guys have to be given their jobs back? The unemployment rate is 4.9% and the economy is growing, totally contrary to your "gloom and doom"

DOD growth has been occuring but it is part of a cycle, the last 10-12 yrs the DOD SHRANK. So that shortfall in weapons systems has to be made up if we want to continue as the sole superpower.

I doubt we spend 50% of the defense budget of the world as noboy knows how much the Chinese spend and that is a BIG number.

Umm..GWB DID cut taxes during a war and the economhy is doing well, more than paying for the war.

Like I said the $50M they needed in NO could have been found somewhere out of SOME budget. I need to dig a little deeper but I bet they were other COE projects that got full funds, why, I dont know perhaps they were considered higher priority?

As for spending..go see http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1944&sequence =0
Which shows total Social Program spending in the USA in 2004 of 191B not counting Meidcare of 176B and Medicaid of $265B. The Defense Spending which includes the War was 486B. Social programs outspend DOD by over $100B. Regardless of what other want to say, the war costs are NOT off the books, they have to be paid and the numbers from the CBO show the full costs allocated to the DOD. In the FY06 Budget a supplemental "plus-up" of $75B is allocated to the DOD for the War on Terror (Iraq & Afghanistan will get 90% of this money).

Re:Learn from nature

[lgw]

Interesting accusation. What have I said that leads you to this belief?

You often are quite over-the-top in evangelizing your values, even tolerance and accepance of diversity, to the point where you show a lack of tolerance and acceptance of cultures that don't support these values. It's a common trap these days, especially amoung slashdotters who confuse the expression of strong emotion with persuasive communication. There's a *big* difference between saying "people who value X annoy me" and "people who value X are unintelligent and barely human".

Values are subjective. Arguing against certain values by belittling people who hold them is simple bigotry - you deny freedom when you impose values. It's also remarkably non-pursuasive. Yet the slashdot-left crowd does it quite frequently (part of that is simple teenage strutting, I'm sure). Patience with those who hold different beliefs than you is a requirement for freedom.

You don't seem to understand that people who disagree with your conclusions can be just as intelligent, rational, and responsible as you are, just working from different assumptions or seeking to achieve different goals.

Not that I'm a shining example of tolerance for conflicting beliefs, but I *know* I'm an asshole, that's my duty as a right-winger!

Re:Learn from nature

[Rei]

the recession was there

Apparently you need to look at a graph of the markets. Ignoring that what you claim is wrong (the recession began in March according to the Republican-dominated CBO), we see the following pattern: Bush takes office. The economy starts a slow decline (a good thing! It was overheated). 9-11 strikes. The economy plummets. The economy recovers somewhat. Bush starts the buildup to the Iraq war. The economy plummets further. The Iraq war is launched. The economy starts to recover. The Iraq war stagnates. The economy fluctuates, but mostly stagnates.

Check it out sometime - that's the recent history of our economy, no matter what you check (Dow & Nasdaq, unemployment, consumer confidence, etc). They all fall into the same curve.

shortage from Katrina

There was no shortage from Katrina - there was a distruption from Katrina, which is already being compensated for. Katrina took down about ten gulf rigs, which while significant for the companies that owned them, is not a significant dent in the world market.

Nigeria ... Venezuela .. Persian Gulf ... China

Little has changed, production-wise, in those countries. Nigeria and Venezuela have gone down a little, and the Persian Gulf is up outside of Iraq and handle world growth (especially, as you mentioned, China). Iraq is still exporting well below even its OFF levels.

Don't you know BY LAW these guys have to be given their jobs back?

Don't you know BY PHYSICS that they can't be in two places at once? When they're not conducting their job on the homefront, that's an economic loss, whether or not they "get their job back" afterwards.

DOD growth has been occuring but it is part of a cycle

No, it is part of a pattern: a Republican takes office, it grows; a democrat takes office, it shrinks. Only, the growth and shrinkage alone (let alone total budget) are more than any "pork" you could classify, and far more than "welfare".

shortfall in weapons

Hello, we spend *Half Of The World's Total Military Spending*. We spend something like 30 times as much as the "Axis of Evil" countries plus Libya, Cuba, Venezuela, and Sudan spend combined. What the heck kind of "shortfall in weapons" is that?

I doubt we spend 50% of the defense budget

You doubt wrong (it's not exactly half, but close enough - 466B$ vs 500B$.) Note that they use US estimates of Chinese military spending, not their official budget. Yet they use the US official DoD budget, not the actual expenses (i.e., they don't include Iraq, nuclear weapons (DoE), veterans benefits, etc). I.e., they're being more than generous to making the US look like it spends a smaller % than it actually does.

the economy is doing well

Hahahahaa!!!!!! Oh, that's a great one! Meanwhile, six years later, the Dow is below where it was in 1999. A great economy equals the worst overall presidential economic record since Hoover? That's priceless.

more than paying for the war

The nation has a *huge* deficit; it had essentially no deficit when he entered office. All of that Iraq spending is going straight into deficit.

could have been found somewhere out of SOME budget

192 billion dollars takes painful cuts across the board to swallow up. Apparently you don't know what "across the board" means. Yes, you can deal a deathblow to one program instead of a cut in order to spare a different program any cut, but that would not fly. The fact is, huge cuts had to be made to spending (and even *still* we have a huge deficit), and when you have to make huge cuts to spending, things like the COE suffer.

Social Program spending

"Social Program" != Welfare. Welfare is specifically TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families). Medicare and Medicaid *combined* ou

Re:Learn from nature

[sean.peters]

Sure the Commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers [defenselink.mil] says funding levels were fine, but what does he know? He's just some engineer, uneducated in the overriding requirement to hate Smirchimply McHitlerBurton and all of his actions.

And you really think an active duty Army general is going to publicly criticize the commander-in-chief regarding his budgetary decisions, particularly in a politically charged scenario like the Katrina aftermath? The answer, by the way, is no: he's going to get onboard with the party line like a good soldier, regardless of what he really thinks. And if he didn't, he'd be fired.

Sean

Re:Learn from nature

[twiddlingbits]

You still have not explained anything. Just speculation. Much of our National Debt is there from a LONG time ago, some current DEFICITS could be attributed to increased costs of the "war". IMNSHO, it's better to spend several hundred billion dollars to fight the Terrorists in Iraq than have another 9/11 happen. What was the impact of 9/11? I'll bet you it was more than 192B!!! If you go back and look at 1999, you are seeing the end of the dot com bubble. I have done VERY well in the market since 1999. The idea is BUY LOW and SELL HIGH regardless of who is in office. I see through you smoke, you just want to lay the blame for everything on a Republican adminstration without doing any root cause to show it was "your hero" Clinton who passed up 3 chances to capture Osama, gutted the Military, increased taxes, increased Social spending and drove the economy to a recession. I won't bother to correct the other mistakes as I have productive work to do earning a living creating value.

Re:Learn from nature

[Mr. Slippery]

What have I said that leads you to this belief?

You often are quite over-the-top in evangelizing your values, even tolerance and accepance of diversity, to the point where you show a lack of tolerance and acceptance of cultures that don't support these values.

Let me make it clear: while I have no tolerance for bigotry, I equally have no tolerance for repression. That's while you'll find people like me supporting the rights of hate groups to free speech, even as we decry their message in the strongest terms.

Or are you suggesting that merely because I speak out against racism, sexism, homophobia, and other irrational forms of prejudice, that I am against freedom? If that's your argument then you clearly misunderstand the word.

Saying "You're wrong" - even saying, "You're wrong and you're an idiot" - is not opposing freedom. Saying "You're wrong and therefore should be forced to shut up," or "You're wrong and therefore should be forced to live in a manner that I approve of," that would be opposing freedom.

You don't seem to understand that people who disagree with your conclusions can be just as intelligent, rational, and responsible as you are, just working from different assumptions or seeking to achieve different goals.

That depends on the conclusions. If we disagree about, say, the relative balance of federal versus state power, fine, though our arguments may get heated we can both be rational people of goodwill coming to different conclusions.

Sometimes there are simply basic facts that one side has wrong, like your assertations in this thread about traffic and about the completion of flood control construction around Lake Pontchartrain. Doesn't mean you're irrational, just misinformed.

And sometimes one side has fallen into a logical fallacy. That might be said, in some strict sense, to be "irrational", i.e., not in accordance with the rules of reason, but the person may still be intelligent and well-meaning.

But if we disagree about a question like whether slavery is acceptable, no, one side is clearly defective; and it is no abridgement of freedom to state strongly that slavery is a bad thing, and that its defenders have not just bad facts or bad reasoning, but bad values that should be condemned. (Though again, I would even defend the right of a pro-slavery idiot to speak. But if he starts trying to enslave people, I make no apologies for my advice to shoot his ass.)

Re:Learn from nature

[lgw]

You miss my entire point. Saying "you're wrong, and you're clearly irrational, irresponsible, or immoral because you disagree with me" is the problem. Your lack of tolerance for bigotry extends (to judge by your /. posts) to treating half the nation as less than (mature, responsible) humans, because they clearly hold different values than you.

If you ever accept the fact that someone who opposes homosexual marraige, or who drives a SUV, or who thinks Bush is doing what's right for this nation, might just be a moral, responsible, rational person, just with a different set of values than you, than you might stop being an intolerant bigot yourself (again, going by your posts, which might not be your best side). You might also have a chance to pursuade these people that you're right, which is sort of useful in a democracy.

Not targeted so much at you specifically, but I suspect you fit this mold: Look at how well you think Bush did before his re-election. Did he get re-elected because half of America are evil greedy idiots, or because the left so alienated the right that they were unable to actually pursuade the uncertain voters to switch sides? During the Veitnam war, anti-war protesters did things that they knew would hurt their own cause, because the protest was about condemning those evil greedy war supporters to feel good about yourself, not about actually stopping the war. Morality didn't enter into it. Now there are anti-war protestors at military hospitals, and the left has returned to the same pattern - the goal is clearly to dispense vitriol, not to achieve some moral goal.

How is this different from racism again? It looks exactly like racism to me. The supportive comments especialy. When you act like those from a different culture are less than you, you have become what you hate.

Re:Learn from nature

[Mr. Slippery]

Saying "you're wrong, and you're clearly irrational, irresponsible, or immoral because you disagree with me" is the problem.

There are people who disagree with me who are rational and responsible; a few are even ethical to boot. There are people who agree with me about some issues who are irrational, irresponsible, or unethical.

If someone is engaged in a logical fallacy, I may correctly describe their argument or belief as "irrational", though I try to avoid using the word to describe the person. Logical fallacies are as objective as errors in arithmetic; if someone is basing their disagreement with me on a logical fallacy, it's no more intolerant of me to call the on it than to call someone for numbers that don't add up.

Your lack of tolerance for bigotry extends (to judge by your /. posts) to treating half the nation as less than (mature, responsible) humans, because they clearly hold different values than you.

Your accusations remain vague. Please provide an example of something I've said that makes me a "freedom hater", or withdrawl the accusation.

If you ever accept the fact that someone who opposes homosexual marraige, or who drives a SUV, or who thinks Bush is doing what's right for this nation, might just be a moral, responsible, rational person, just with a different set of values than you, than you might stop being an intolerant bigot yourself

People who oppose equal protection under the law for homosexuals, or for any minority group, are bigots, suffering from either fundamental flaws in ethical values or in reasoning, and I'll make absolutely no apology for saying so.

Yes, that means I'm saying that a depressingly large percentage of Americans are suffering from irrational beliefs or flawed ethics. Historically that's nothing new, it was true when our nation condoned slavery, when it condoned genocide, when it condoned segregration, when it condoned criminalization of socialist politics. Indeed, one need only look at the continuing controversy about teaching accurate biology to see that a large percentage of Americans are willing to let irrational thought patterns dominate political decisions. (Mind you, I have nothing against irrational thought patterns in their proper place. Biology class, or politics, just ain't it.)

Driving an SUV as a commuter vechicle or voting for Bush are more issues of mere ignorance - dangerous and deadly ignorance, in the later case.

Did [Bush] get re-elected because half of America are evil greedy idiots, or because the left so alienated the right that they were unable to actually pursuade the uncertain voters to switch sides?

Bush got re-elected because the GOP played 9/11 like the Reichstag fire, and the Democrats offered a lousy candidate. (Just to be clear about the Reichstag fire comparision - I'm not, as some fringe groups have done, accusing 9/11 of being some sort of inside job. Just comparing the political use of a disaster. There's no doubt that the GOP has played better politics over the past twenty years or so.)

Quite apart from Kerry's personal failings, Americans simply don't elect Senators to the Presidency - since the 1913 ratification of Amendment XVII fundamentally changed the nature of the Senate, only Harding and Kennedy have moved from there to the Presidency.

Harding was an exceptional case because 1920 1920 was the first Presidental election since Amendment XIX gave the vote to all American women, and Harding was a supporter. There's a great way to get votes!

Kennedy rode PT-109 to the White House, and still barely beat Nixon. (Some claim he may have won only by electoral fraud.)

Americans like to elect Governors, Vice-Presidents, and war heroes.

How is

Re:Learn from nature

[lgw]

Not to belabour the point but ...

Your accusations remain vague. Please provide an example of something I've said that makes me a "freedom hater", or withdrawl the accusation.

Let's start with.

>> If you ever accept the fact that someone who opposes homosexual marraige ...

People who oppose equal protection under the law for homosexuals, or for any minority group, are bigots, suffering from either fundamental flaws in ethical values or in reasoning, and I'll make absolutely no apology for saying so.

See, this is precisely what I'm on about. Opposing marraige becomes opposing equal protection under the law becomes evil or stupid. You can't seem to accept that reasoning like this exits. Gary Becker is no idiot (at least, the Nobel Committee didn't think so), and his very well reasoned argument simply proceeds from basic assumptions and values that I doubt you share (I find them a bit of a reach, myself). Note that his first point is that many conservatives oppose the word "marriage" while supporting equal protection under the law. (You might find Posner's comments surprising as well, for a conservative take from a federal circuit court judge, who is also neither stupid nor evil). Plenty of good, caring, smart people oppose homosexual marraige - shocking, isn't it?

You are fine with people who are factually mistaken, or show fallacies in reasoning, but when someone is from a different culture, for example one that accepts as an axiom that homosexuality is "just wrong", there is no tolerance to be found - straight to "evil". This is exactly how a bigot thinks. Can you even claim that "some of my best friends are Bush supporters"? Would you let your daughter marry an SUV-driving evangelical Christian?

Yes, that means I'm saying that a depressingly large percentage of Americans are suffering from irrational beliefs or flawed ethics.

OK, from an intolerant paleo-conservative point of veiw, dividing the world into "right-thinking people" and "heathens and godless communists" is at least consistant. But how do you do this while embracing diversity? You seem to be an ardent supporter of the freedom to hold beliefs that you agree with.

Driving an SUV as a commuter vechicle or voting for Bush are more issues of mere ignorance - dangerous and deadly ignorance, in the later case

Because a different cultural perspective must be incorrect? Do people have the right to drive whatever car they choose, or to decide that the private sector can better manage most things, or to decide that economics aren't a zero sum game and impose a system where growth is more important than fairness, or to decide that foriegn policy decisions like invading Iraq are great? Or does that freedom end where a democracy would choose laws you find ignorant? You certainly give the impression of supporting the latter. I don't see you admitting that good, caring, smart, well-informed people disagree with you on these issues, but Hell, you might surprise me.

Re:Learn from nature

[Mr. Slippery]

You can't seem to accept that reasoning like this exits.

Obviously people make such arguments. That doesn't change their fallacious nature. Marriage is not bound by child-rearing; the idea that gay couples don't have stable relations therefore shouldn't be able to marry is a self-fulfulling prophecy in addition to being prejudice of the worst sort; and saying "You two people can get married while you two have to draw up a bunch of contracts" is bogus "seperate-but-equal" reasoning.

Plenty of good, caring, smart people oppose homosexual marraige - shocking, isn't it?

Sorry, no. If someone is not willing to grant equal legal and ethical protection to all citizens, there are lacking in one or more of the qualities of knowledge, compassion, or reason. There is simply no legitimate excuse for it.

A century and a half ago, plenty of people who were regarded by their contemporaries as good honest citizens defended and participated in slavery. From today's more informed perspective we understand them to be at best naive and at worst evil. A century and a half from now, I am hopeful we will understand todays homophobes the same way.

You are fine with people who are factually mistaken, or show fallacies in reasoning, but when someone is from a different culture, for example one that accepts as an axiom that homosexuality is "just wrong", there is no tolerance to be found - straight to "evil".

Looking back over this thread, I do not seem to have used the word "evil", until just now in describing slavery. I do hope you'll agree with me on that one? (Untill you want to take this discussion into the realm of Zen, where the difference between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind...I can be down with that.)

Seriously, though, being from another culture is not some "get out of criticism free card". What about an axiom that interracial dating is "just wrong"? Am I supposed to not speak out against racism simply because some people were raised with it? If I see someone from a nation where "female circumcision" is a normal practice trying to force it on his daughter, am I supposed to shut up and let her be mutilated? If I meet a slave trader from Sudan, should I just say, "well, that's just his culture" and let it go?

Can you even claim that "some of my best friends are Bush supporters"? Would you let your daughter marry an SUV-driving evangelical Christian?

I live in a pretty blue state, and most Bush supporters around here have repented by now. :-)

My brother voted for W. My grandfather was a racist. I love 'em both; but I still told my grandfather off when he made racist statements, and I told my brother I was disappointed that he was enough of a sucker to fall for Bush's line of bullshit about security.

If I had a daughter, I'd have no power to "let" or "not let" her choose, she'd be free to marry whoever she wanted. If I thought her boyfriend was a jerk, I'd tell her; if he was a jerk in my presence, I'd tell him.

Do people have the right to drive whatever car they choose...

Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose; your right to make chunks of metal move around swiftly ends at my safety; and your right to put smoke in the air, including automobile exhaust, ends at my lungs.

The exact parameters of regulation are something that honest men of goodwill can disagree about. I'd say the best way to cure SUV drivers might be to price gasoline at its true price, include external costs, of about $5 a gallon, and end the tax breaks for SUV owners, instead increasing their taxes for the extra road wear. (Oh, and close the federal emissions loophole, and enforce existing laws about

Re:Learn from nature

[Anonymous Coward]

capable of evacuating it's populace

"its".

Re:Learn from nature

[Tune]

Somehow you seem to think that there is an intrinsic danger in living sub-sea level area's. As though flooding is intrincically an unmeasurably higher danger than those in areas with eartquakes, forrest fires, or than being hit by a meteor. As though it's a danger that can't be circumvented by proper management, like building dams & canals and maintaining those.

Actually, living sub sea level has proven to be pretty safe in other countries, but it doesn't work if people would rather have their tax wasted on less life-threatening dangers, like a war in Iraq.

--
There's a fine line between courage and foolishness - Too bad it's not a fence

after I submitted this...

[EccentricAnomaly]

I noticed another NYT story on lost cities, which would be interesting to the 'abandon New Orleans' camp:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/science/06lost.h tml

Re:after I submitted this...

[ackthpt]

I noticed another NYT story on lost cities, which would be interesting to the 'abandon New Orleans' camp:

Somewhere out there there's an article about Iran offering 20 million barrels of petroleum to help out the energy hungry americans. Remember when Saddam Hussein offered assistance to the US after 9/11?

Oh, and Bob Denver has died. Gilligan has finally been delivered.

Re:after I submitted this...

[MSBob]

Yeah, but we'd be better off to start looking into Easter Island and why they got wiped off the face of the planet. We're following their footsteps so close ly it's not funny.

Re:after I submitted this...

[interiot]

For what it's worth, 50 years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers had to do quite a bit of work to keep the Mississippi River flowing past New Orleans. If they would have let Mississippi move to the west, New Orleans would have dwindled economically, and shipping would have moved over to the new branch of the Mississippi. I don't know if New New Orleans would have been terribly much safer. It would still probably be stuck in a bayou, though it at least wouldn't have been stuck between the river and Lake Ponchartrain.

Re:after I submitted this...

[buckhead_buddy]

There was an interview on NPR's Fresh Air today with a former city planner of New Orleans. She raised your point that the Mississippi wants to move westward and join up with another river.

Your point of economic disaster for New Orleans was exactly reversed from their perspective. New Orleans would change economically but not die, but all of the industrial functions needed because it is at the mouth of the Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico would have to be rebuilt anew in some westward swamp where there is no city and this would be extremely costly. The new city would be no safer as it would still have all the location problems of New Orleans.

No idea what the best argument is, but (no matter what side you take) if we could rebuild New Orleans with "spin" we'd be sitting pretty right now. :-)

Re:after I submitted this...

[ackthpt]

For what it's worth, 50 years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers had to do quite a bit of work to keep the Mississippi River flowing past New Orleans.

Seriously, they built the city in a swamp. They recovered as much land as they could to do so, but you know nature is persistent. Another famous city build upon a swamp is St. Petersburg, Russia. Problem is the wooden pilings are rotting beneath the city.

Folly is truly the domain of mankind.

Re:after I submitted this...

[Moofie]

Uh, right, because "we" live on a small, isolated, rocky island with no natural resources. I can totally see the parallels.

Re:after I submitted this...

[MSBob]

Nope. We live on a small, isolated rocky planet with severely depleted natural resources. Can you totally see the parallels?

Re:after I submitted this...

[interiot]

Well, New New Orleans wouldn't be "bowl shaped", it would be... I don't know, ski-slope shaped. (half a bowl, since it wouldn't be up against the Lake). New New Orleans could still get flooded just as readily, but the 20 feet of water wouldn't stay stuck there, it would run off into the bayou on the other side, so it would be a situation where fewer people could die due to human negligence. Though, like they say, no matter how idiot-proof you try to make something, there's always a smarter idiot out there.

Re:after I submitted this...

[Moofie]

I'm still trying to figure out the "depleted natural resources" part, so, no, I can't.

The sky is not falling. Dependence on oil is indeed a sub-optimal long term solution, so other solutions are being developed.

Take a deep breath. Or, alternatively, commit suicide and help Mother Earth.

Re:after I submitted this...

[interiot]

Ahh, but the bayous would regularly flood from the other side, and New Orleans was built on the highest ground they could find to begin with. Ahh screw it, like you said, don't build a city in the bayou!

Re:after I submitted this...

[MSBob]

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461/

Re:after I submitted this...

[interiot]

Well, very large rivers are unavoidably going to have river deltas. And river deltas form into bayous once the path switches. And very large rivers are an economic draw due to the shipping lane. Therefore... mankind is unavoidably economically drawn toward building cities in bayous.

Though the Mississippi Delta is shrinking quickly due to artificial intervention. And apparently European Deltas are headed the same way? So, in the long run, mankind is destined to destroy river deltas so they can economically prosper at shipping ports without getting sprinkled with 20 feet of water from time to time?

Re:after I submitted this...

[Moofie]

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I'm going to bother with an hour lecture on this silly subject.

Remember the population bomb that was supposed to happen in India? It was quite the vogue idea in the late 60's. Have you noticed that it totally hasn't happened?

Natural systems are remarkably self-correcting.

Re:after I submitted this...

[Ender_Wiggin]

Saddam Hussein offered assistance to the US? Can you please show me a link, as google isn't showing anything. I heard Saddam Hussein was the only leader who didn't condemn the attack, and said something about America getting what it deserved.

I know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fill everything up with Jello Powder!

Re:I know...

[mikael]

Wasn't there some research project that discovered that you could mix together baking soda with wet concrete cement, force it underground and it would react with the groundwater to form a solid base?

Re:I know...

[bleckywelcky]

a heroic captain who plugged a breach in a dike with his ship

Giggity Giggity Giggity Allright!!

Doing what is right

[sdirrim]

We should take a lesson from this. Expanionism can be bad. Has anyone noticed the tred of increaingly powerful storms over the last 50 years? Global warming is one possible factor. I am not saying it caused Katrina, but warmer waters may have contibuted.

Re:Doing what is right

[caino59]

yea, and so did the typical, natural trend of the warming and cooling of the ocean currents...

Re:Doing what is right

[sdirrim]

Yes, of course. We call that the "hurricane season".

Re:Doing what is right

[TedTschopp]

While I understand what you are saying the logic of your statement is as follows:

1. I have observed X.
2. X can be caused by Y.
3. Z can be Bad.

X = Storms Increasing
Y = Global Warming
Z = Expansion.

To complete your logial statement you need to do the following: Tie Z into X a relationship with to Y. And provide support for each point.

But one point that should be reviewed is that experts have observed that storms in this region of the world go on 25 - 30 year cycles caused by a stabilzation of the gulf stream coming in from Africia. They are unwilling to make the second step and state a causal relationship between Global Warming and the normal storm cycle.

Re:Doing what is right

[Anonymous Coward]

We should take a lesson from this. Expanionism can be bad. Has anyone noticed the tred of increaingly powerful storms over the last 50 years? Global warming is one possible factor. I am not saying it caused Katrina, but warmer waters may have contibuted.

Of course warmer waters contributed. The question is "did we somehow make them warmer" and the answer is, "if we did, it was by an amout too small to measure."

"Trend" is much, much too strong a word to use in conjunction with weather over the past 50 years. "Noise" is a more accurate way to describe how observed weather has changed over the course of human history.

Poor planning is 100% responsible for the loss of life and property due to Hurricane Katrina. It wasn't some unforseeable accident, or America's come-uppance for not signing on to the Kyoto Economic Suicide Pact. It was the result of building a bunch of shit in a place where several hurricanes will strike within a single person's lifetime, and having no Plan B when they do.

Re:Doing what is right

[realityfighter]

No, he's right. There is a "cycle" of water surface temperatures that occurs over 50 years or so. Apparently it's called the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) and you can read a bit about it here. Of course, if we accept that the AMO can cause a cyclical rise and fall in the occurrence of hurricanes, we have to accept that global warming could also be a factor, since they affect the same variable in the formation of the storm.

Re:Doing what is right

[sdirrim]

Update: Expansion is mentioned in the article as why we have no more breaker islands, and there is a trend of increasingly powerful storms. Sorry if the rest made no sense.

Re:Doing what is right

[markass530]

your right, we should definetly be hoping for another ice age.

Re:Doing what is right

[Titus B. Otch]

Compare and Contrast:

Netherlands - 23 feet below sea level at it's lowest point.

New Orleans - 7 feet , but it's bordered by the mighty Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain on two sides.

* Hurricanes flood the entire lower Mississippi delta, spilling forth rapidly from other states into New Orleans >> (much much greater) than a steady upsurge from the Northsee, a two wave tsunami, or whatever...

Sol'n?

Spend mucho billions of dollars on remaking the New Orleans landscape into a dyke haven, taking several years? Or, spend several paultry million on better evacuation plans - through transportation infrastructure, awareness, etc.?

The hurricane will roll over and destroy any property anyhow, protected by dykes or otherwise. So, it's the people (not the property) which should be the focus here...

Re:Doing what is right

[RexRhino]

No, I haven't noticed the trend of increasingly powerful storms. There doesn't appear to be any clear evidence that is happening. I HAVE noticed the trend of increasingly large human populations, expanding to ever more areas of undeveloped land, and increasing the chances that a disaster will happen in a populated area.

Re:Doing what is right

[amightywind]

your right, we should definitely be hoping for another ice age.

Most of countries who bellow loudest about global warming (Canada, Scandanavia, Germany, France) would cease to exist in the next ice age. That's reason alone to fight global warming!

Re:Doing what is right

[m50d]

Kyoto Economic Suicide Pact.

Hmm, the analysis I read said that at most over the 50 years it would delay the US by 6 months, reaching in December 2050 the level of wealth you would have got in July of that year without Kyoto. Big difference.

Re:Doing what is right

[Cruciform]

Hurricane strength has followed a roughly 70 year cycle for hundreds of years.

This was recently covered in National Geographic. It's not a global warming issue.

Re:Doing what is right

[Moofie]

Wow, it's almost like there are lots of different ways to analyze the question, each with a different ideological axe to grind.

Re:Doing what is right

[Ucklak]

It amazes me how people will quickly jump on a bandwagon when it 'feels good'. Quick, let's ban all SUV's because that's what's causing it and we all know that it's good to hate big things that use petroleum.

It's a fricking hurricane during hurricane season. That's it. It ain't because the US didn't sign onto the Kyoto Protocol. This crap happens EVERY YEAR, June through October. EVERY DAMN YEAR.

Also, huricanes were worse prior to 1960, not recently. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml

If this happened in December - February, then maybe it's the humans fault but I don't think so. If anything, blame the tsumani in the Indian Ocean.
Cripes, that shifted land masses, changed our rotation speed, and we still don't have an idea what global impact that did.

Re:Doing what is right

[Anonymous Coward]

And the analysis I read said that Santa Claus is real.

Post a reference, or admit that you're just making stuff up.

Try this on for size: http://www.junkscience.com/

Re:Doing what is right

[dfenstrate]

Hmm, the analysis I read said that at most over the 50 years it would delay the US by 6 months, reaching in December 2050 the level of wealth you would have got in July of that year without Kyoto. Big difference.

The nice thing about predictions, especially long term, is that those making them can create results that support their agenda. The more complex the system being modeled, the shadier the reliability of any prediction is.

Just sayin'

Also, when congress voted 98-0 against the Kyoto treaty near the end of Clinton's term, it shows you that whatever the sitting president thinks of the kyoto treaty is irrelevant.

Re:Doing what is right

[AJWM]

It's all the fault of continental drift.

The Atlantic Ocean gets about a half-inch wider each year due to continental drift. Oh, half an inch doesn't sound like much, but multiply that by thousands of miles of coastline, and those tropical storms have a lot more surface area over which to build up strength than they did a few years ago.

And it's just going to keep on getting worse.

(Nobody really believes I'm serious do they? Oh wait, this is Slashdot...)

Re:Doing what is right

[hacksoncode]

The Great Depression almost certainly actually accelerated US economic growth over a 50 year period due to all of the infrastructure projects put in place in order to try to get through it alive.

So what, again, exactly, is your point?

Re:Doing what is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Good job providing a REFERENCE, asshat.

Re:Doing what is right

[BeanThere]

Also, when congress voted 98-0 against the Kyoto treaty near the end of Clinton's term, it shows you that whatever the sitting president thinks of the kyoto treaty is irrelevant.

Uh, yes, because the current administration that has been in power for years now has absolutely no power to change anything. Can you believe it, they are simply still completely controlled by democrats behind the scenes. They are powerless! Bound! They are trying really hard to fix the global warming problem, but it's just impossible, their hands are tied, they're powerless - the dems remain in control and they are just puppets! So terrible.

Re:Doing what is right

[dfenstrate]

Yeah. Did you know that if the senate voted 98-0 on that, both DEMOCRATS and REPUBLICANS, pretty much as a whole, rejected it outright? And the two Senators who were originally for it pussied out and abstained instead?

Do you really think that anyone, even the great evil genius Karl Rove, could turn the entire senate around just a few years later?

Not. Gonna. Happen.
Regardless. Of. President.

There are fundamental problems with the Kyoto treaty such that every single senator either thought:
1. This is the worst idea ever.
2. My consituents will crucify me, and worse yet, not re-elect me.

98-0. Out of 100. The only possible conclusion one could come to is that a political body voting in such a way would never pass the item rejected.

The president does not control congress. He gets his way sometimes, and sometimes he doesn't. You must have absolutely no understanding of American Politics or it's structure to think that anyone could ressurect Kyoto in the United States.

Re:Doing what is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Broken Window Fallacy...

Re:Doing what is right

[m50d]

So what, again, exactly, is your point?

My point is that the Kyoto treaty is nothing remotely resembling economic suicide. That's all.

Got To Go There

[lbmouse]

...a heroic captain who plugged a breach in a dike with his ship.
 
Sounds like the trashy novels my wife reads. Was his ship full of sea men?

Re:Got To Go There

[Anonymous Coward]

The story is really about Two Brothers

Re:Got To Go There

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Seems like an urban legend to me, but I could be wrong. What's the chances that a ship-shaped hole opened in the dike, and that the captain happened along with just the right shape of ship to plug it? It's also a bit like that old story about the little boy who put his finger in the lesbian, thereby somehow preventing a flood. I don't get it, but they say it happened.

Re:Got To Go There

[jimbolauski]

Most of the sea men were on the poop deck

Re:Got To Go There

[Gorath99]

It wasn't a ship-shaped hole. It was a 15 meter (50 feet) breach that could not be filled with sandbags, so a ship was commandeered and stranded length-wise next to the breach, thereby mostly plugging it. Sandbags completed the job.

Details can be found here. It's in Dutch, but there are lots of pictures.

Re:Got To Go There

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not an urban legend. The hole was 15meters wide and the ship was 18meters long. They moved the bow of the ship against the dike on one end of the hole and then they let the back of the ship turn against the dike at the other end of the hole, helped by the outflowing water. They reinforced the whole thing sandbags. This will work as long as the ship is longer than the hole is wide :-)

That story about that little boy on the other hand is a load of BS. but hey, its good for tourism.

Re:Got To Go There

[kryten_nl]

Here you go:
http://www.laagste.nl.nyud.net:8090/inc/rampnacht. php

Have fun with Babelfish, or just look at the pretty pictures...

Re:Got To Go There

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, no urban legend. Really did happen. Though not as simple as writen here. The ship didn't just happen to pass by. It was commandeered and specifically used to seal off a widening breach. By doing so it lessened the water flowing through the hole thereby preventing a bigger breach.

Re:Got To Go There

[sumbry]

Why is this so hard to believe? It actually really did happen, you can read counts of it in decades old encyclopedias and find more information about it on probably thousands of web sites and of course Wikipedia.

All it takes is about a 2 second glance at any aerial footage of the levy breaks in New Orleans and you could easily see how turning a ship sideways and sinking it would plug a breach. By turning your ship sideways so that it runs flush with the levy you basically have made a huge steel wall.

Re:Got To Go There

[Profane MuthaFucka]

AMAZING! I looked at the web page someone else posted. Very cool story, especially since it really happened.

Re:Got To Go There

[zippthorne]

Which is actually a really good solution to the "the levees are going to break" problem. We'd better forget about trying to build levees that won't break and focus on "unlikely to break but here's the plan if they do." Having a bunch of river barges available hasty repairs via quick sinking to plug a few holes would surely be cheaper than letting the entire city flood over several days while dropping thousands of thimblefulls of sand into the breach.

Re:Got To Go There

[GroovBird]

Also, he wasn't so heroic. If I read the article in the link you mentioned correctly, then at first he refused to have his ship used as a plug. The mayor had to come up and convince him, and he would eventually agree only if the ship would be "summoned", probably in order to get the government to pay for the damages.

Of course they will use science.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, that should be obvious to even the most dimwitted individual who holds an advanced degree in hyperbolic topology.

New technology

[RUFFyamahaRYDER]

People of New Orleans are not going to forget this and many of them are probably going to be terrified of this happening again. Many have already said they're never going back. For those that do, they will want some security.

I'm sure they will be looking at this technology, and maybe even come up with their own before it's all rebuilt. I see this being like rebuilding the World Trade Center buildings - where we will have many ways to fix the levee system or create a entirely new system.

Re:all they needed

[ackthpt]

was someone to stick their finger in the dyke...

I think they Dutch Boy found better pay selling paints and posing for Meiji Thrifty Acres...

Really, if you've seen the dykes they have in the netherlands it's a wonder a boat actually managed the job. Dutch engineering firms rule big jobs.

There's no point rebuilding...

[going_the_2Rpi_way]

Until you commit to proper management of the New Orleans area. The land under the whole area will continue to subside until this is addressed.

I've found this somewhere on the net, is it true?

[Janek Kozicki]

It's about how the government ignored the disaster in Orlean. Is it all true?

Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Condolences from Indonesia
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 10:07:30 -0400
From: Gene Gaines
To: Irwan Effendi

On Sunday, September 4, 2005, 9:49:03 AM, Irwan wrote:

> To the people of the United States

> We share your loss and grieve over the disaster in New Orleans.
> As it is still fresh in our memory what happened earlier in Aceh, we
> understand what kind of sadness and sorrow you are going through, therefore
> if there is anything we can do to help, please do not hesitate to let us
> know.
> We suggest that all of us must work to find preventive solutions so that in
> the future, tragedies such as these can be avoided.

> On behalf of Indonesian members

> Irwan Effendi - secretary

Irwan,

Thank you so much for your thoughts.

Much appreciated.

I have thought long and hard about my statement below, but these
things need to be said. Just as many people in the U.S. were
interested in what really happened in Aceh, Malaysia, Sri Lanka,
etc. with the tsunami, I believe many people in other countries
are interested in what is happening with our disaster along the
U.S. Gulf Coast. What is happening in New Orleans screams out to
exposed for all to see.

A personal note. I am now living near Washington DC, but was
born and spent much of my early life in New Orleans. My father
is buried in New Orleans. So many of my boyhood friends have old
family homes along the Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama coast
lines. All gone now.

Many people here will be working to assist the disaster victims.

But it must be stated that this hurricane caused two disasters.
Two disasters, very different, and must be dealt with in very
different ways. This is painful and embarrassing, but some facts
about the two disasters need to be said.

1) The hurricane missed New Orleans, passing just to the east,
with strength to inflict significant but not catastrophic
damage in the city. It was the breaks in the levees around
New Orleans that caused the great tragedy there. Could the
levee breaks and subsequent flooding have been prevented?
Yes. But soon after the present Bush administration took
power, ongoing work on the levees, already in progress, was
stopped by cutting the funding. Several new projects,
critical to maintaining the integrity of the levees, were
halted. Local officials, Louisiana elected officials to our
national Congress, all raised their voices in protest of
these cuts. In speech after speech and newspaper article
after article, strong voices were raised, warning that the
levee maintenance work was critical, and would open the city
to flooding by a hurricane if not done. The levee work was
not restarted. Why? Statements were made as to why the funds
were needed elsewhere: (a) the coming war in Iraq (big U.S.
firms can collect US$30,000 per month per employee, charge
US$1,000 a day to feed soldiers) and (b) tax cuts for the
most wealthy Americans.

I was born in Charity Hospital in New Orleans, an excellent
hospital staffed by two univer

Surviving the flood

[$RANDOMLUSER]

OK, I got the male and female pink unicorns on the boat. Tell those giraffe herders to hurry up! The water's rising!

Can we refuse?

[rtkluttz]

I wish there was a way to refuse to allow any of the tax dollars a person pays in to be used for something so stupid.

Why rebuild it. It WILL happen again. Spend the money to relocate the people and I would happily watch my tax money being spent.

Re:Can we refuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Also stop building quake-resistant buildings in LA, instead, evacuate the whole terminator-state to utah.

Re:Can we refuse?

[Leon da Costa]

Why rebuild it. It WILL happen again. Spend the money to relocate the people and I would happily watch my tax money being spent.

My God! We'd better start relocating all of The Netherlands, quickly!

Re:Can we refuse?

[OverlordQ]

The Netherlands doesn't have hurricanes

Re:Can we refuse?

[opiespank]

Why rebuild it?

How can you say that. New Orleans is not a town that can be forgotten. It is a working port town, on the Mississippi river and Gulf that is full of history. All kinds of US resources come though and to New Orleans.

Would you say the same thing if San Francisco, CA had been ravaged by a earthquake. Why build it back up, it WILL happen again. You build back to learn from your mistakes. In the case of New Orleans, too many resources come though and to that city to just forget about it.

Re:Can we refuse?

[adpowers]

Because most tax payers don't want to have to pay to pump out and rebuild a below sea level city every twenty years. Comparing this to SF is different. We can build buildings to withstand earthquakes. Also, the hurricanes hitting New Orleans will only become more forceful and commonplace. Earthquakes don't happen nearly as often nor cause as much damage.

You can leave parts of New Orleans in place, like the French Quarter and other parts that were on higher ground. However, the majority of inhabitants should move farther inland to higher ground to avoid the loss of life and property damage which happened this time. As someone in another thread mentioned, ports can be run with very few workers these days.

Re:Can we refuse?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I wish there was a way to refuse to allow any of the tax dollars a person pays in to be used for something so stupid.

That would be cool. Then we could get rid of the National Endowment of the Arts, National Endowment of the Humanities, Social Security who mostly wastes money (e.g. they spent $9 billion on administrative expenses alone in 2003,) Title IX, quit giving government funding to Amtrack (we have 747's for transcontinental travel now,) reduce our contributions to the UN since we give them upwards of 25% of their funding, and we give them about 80% of the rest of their non monetary resources, completely halt all government funding to PBS, and get rid of the no child left behind act.

These things would save upwards of a trillion or two dollars a year off of our country's bottom line.

Re:Can we refuse?

[burbilog]

Why rebuild it. It WILL happen again. Spend the money to relocate the people and I would happily watch my tax money being spent.

It will happen if you will CONTINUE BUILDING LEVEES LIKE THAT! I was shocked when I saw photos -- the walls were very thin, almost nonexistant. Good levee wall has to be at least 15 meters tall with highway atop it, able to carry heavy equipment in case of levee failure. And don't say "expensive", recently we saw some expensive events...

Re:Can we refuse?

[networkBoy]

"Would you say the same thing if San Francisco, CA had been ravaged by a earthquake."

Yes god willing. . . and LA too.
(from someone in central CA).
Yes I know it's trollish, but I am answering a question truthfully.
-nB

Re:Can we refuse?

[justforaday]

Also, the hurricanes hitting New Orleans will only become more forceful and commonplace.

Do you have anything to back up this statement?

Re:Can we refuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

don't move them here. I don't want looters in my backyard.

signed,

the rest of America.

Re:Can we refuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

$1 billion.. hmm.. about what the Pentagon has as available budget for each day of the year?!?

Re:Can we refuse?

[commodoresloat]

This is a ludicrous point of view. Why rebuild New York? The city will be attacked again by terrorists. New Orleans is a national treasure. The ports along the coast are vital to the US economy and will not be easily relocated. But beyond that it has been for a long time one of the world's great international cities. For cultural reasons alone it should not be abandoned. And investing in flood control is not that different from investing in earthquake and fire protection in California. Should we abandon Malibu the next time it burns?

Natural disasters happen. Urban civilization is always a balance between the needs of humans and the conditions of the environment. There is nothing "stupid" about considering ways to rebuild a city that will be more flood-resistant. New Orleans was an incredible city for centuries prior to the flood; there is no reason it shouldn't be again.

Re:Can we refuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds good to me. Too bad the majority of politicians are too spineless to do anything .01% that smart.

Re:Can we refuse?

[adpowers]

Well, here is a relevant research paper: Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years.

Re:Can we refuse?

[costas]

A view as to why.

Re:Can we refuse?

[bit trollent]

New Orleans is a national treasure, unlike any other city in the US. If we lose it, we lose some of the very limited culture this country has left.

I guess it would probably be cheaper to move everyone to another generic suburb with Walmart, a Chiles, a Gap, five Starbucks, amd a cookie cutter mall with faux stone exteriors. Generic suburbs like the one you likely live in are replaceable, expendable, and boring. That may be fine with you, and I don't mind them too much either.

There are, however people who want to live in a city with houndreds of years of history behind it, with a culture all its own. There are many others who wish to visit such a city and learn about a world different from there own. This history and culture is worth protecting. We shouldn't just pave over Burban street and say to hell with Mardigras. Lets celebrate Fat Tuesday at TGI Fridays.

New Orleans is worth presevering, and can be made resiliant against hurricanes and natural disasters. Jest because 100 year old levees couldn't hold back the waters in a Catagory 5 hurricane doesn't mean levees built today can't.

Re:Can we refuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Increasing temperatures will make hurricanes more energetic. This is speculative and unproven, but believed by most people.

Continued use of levees and floodwalls around Mississippi prevent it from flooding and depositing silt, resulting in the southern wetlands sinking. The Gulf is getting bigger and Louisiana is getting smaller. New Orleans is closer to the coast than it used to be, and keeps getting closer, every single year. This is well-known and objective.

Re:Can we refuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a sinking coast line and increasing sea levels..

Combine that with a heavy storm from the west and spring time.. not a hurricane, but I'll pound the coasts really, really hard!

Don't think we cannot get freak winds because they're simply not called a hurricane!

Re:Can we refuse?

[jafac]

In fact, Dennis (I take money from Al Qaeda-affiliated Turks) Hastert, who first famously said New Orleans should not be rebuilt, also suggested that LA and SF should likewise be abandoned if struck with disasterous earthquakes.

Re:Can we refuse?

[Titus B. Otch]

Oh, jeebus. You actually comparing that with hurricanes? Your "freak winds" are no more powerful than the intermittent ones between my legs. In fact, let me raise my leg...(frrRrrRRRTT!)...oops! There goes another one of your precious little dikes. (frrrRrRRTT!)...oops! and another...and another...and another...

There's no comparison - tornadoes, flooding, +150mph wind that'll rip your skin off, constant wave bounce on the scale of _several_ tsunamis, etc.

Here's your 2 cents right back at ya. Go buy yourself a clue...

Re:Can we refuse?

[pomo monster]

Keep the French Quarter but move everyone else upstream? You might as well cut off your legs in the hope you'll still be able to run the marathon. Even the most touristy neighborhood needs a lot of residents, caterers, groceries, distributors, and everything else "behind the scenes" to support it.

Much better would be to raise the city above sea level, invest in flood control, and let the delta rebuild itself naturally. If there's going to be a port in that location, there'll have to be a port city to sustain it.

Re:Can we refuse?

[pomo monster]

The comparison is this: It was just as difficult, or as easy, for the Dutch to engineer protection for their coasts sufficient to weather just about any storm they expect, as it will be for us to engineer protection for New Orleans, and the rest of the Gulf Coast, sufficient to weather a Category 5 hurricane. The problem hasn't been engineering per se, it's been (in both cases) that it took a major disaster to provide the political impetus for such a project.

Re:Can we refuse?

[justforaday]

...and let the delta rebuild itself naturally.

If we were to let the delta rebuild itself naturally, then we would need to let the Mississippi flow where it wants. This means that the entire alluvial plain would need to be vacated. I seriously doubt that's going to happen.

Re:Can we refuse?

[Titus B. Otch]

wrong. Try to build anything to withstand a CAT5 hurricane and we'll patent it and make a fortune. I've built houses along the Gulf Coast, and I know what goes into their construction. You can build whatever dikes you want to TRY and halt the water too, but 150+ mph winds will rip your little "theory" to shreds. Second, the funds have _always_ been there from the federal level, but State treasuries rob from it to balance their own budget much like they stick their hands into the Federal Transportation funds.

You ever been swept away in high water before? I have. It took my 5000 lb. chevy and tossed it about like a ragdoll (from fast moving currents, not slow oceanic swells you can siphon off somewhere). Now, imagine trying to divert the Misissippi swells, oceanic tsunami like poundings, torential rainpour, and tornados all present in Hurricanes (which _persist_ for hours) all at once! I wish you well, but the comparisons to Europe and SE Asia are laughable at best...

It's naive, no egocentric, to believe you can control the ferocity mother nature brings down with a Hurricane. The better solution is to evacuate. Period. Stop comparing apples to oranges when it comes to mother nature. Advice like yours and other naive /.'rs here will only lead to future deaths, assuming state/federal officials and countless staff members holding Doctorates in Meteorology are stupid enough to listen to /.'rs in the first place.

Fortunately, we can learn from this lesson and take better pre and post measures to evacuate those who were too poor (and/or left behind) that evacuation. The funds will better serve future life by managing what you can, not engineering to prevent what you cannot. Hell, even earthquake comparisons? Gimme a break. Even "earthquake" proof buildings which sway on their footings cannot withstand _sustained_ pounding. Would you suggest people stay in those buildings if they _knew_ beforehand the earthquake was coming? Hurricanes - no comparison...to anything. Show me one engineering feat which withstands the _constant_ tide of lava flow (of Vesuvius/Pompeii proportions) from erupting volcanoes...then we'll talk.

Re:Can we refuse?

[pomo monster]

Nothing lasts forever in the face of nature, but you can certainly delay the inevitable, and you can certainly make it less painful. Buildings may collapse and roofs may fly despite any human precautions, but the widespread flooding could have been prevented, as could have been the scale of human suffering. Training for evacuations, building stronger levees, proactively keeping streets and buildings raised above sea level--these are ongoing forms of insurance that can turn catastrophic devastation into manageable devastation. Californians insure against earthquakes and mudslides. The Northeast insures against terrorism and other potential disasters like snowstorms. The Gulf Coast happens to suffer from hurricanes, and I expect defending against them (as much as possible) will turn out to be as worth it for them as defending against earthquakes and blizzards is for Americans elsewhere.

Re:Can we refuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

And then there is the midwest that pays for the reconstruction but is anyone paying for Stoughton WI
http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=tct:2 005:08:30:488032:METRO
Damn why do I have to live In a state that gets $.86 for ever dollar in federal taxes
http://www.nemw.org/fundsrank.htm
But we know the feds have the Midwest's interests in mind when Disney World has a no fly zone but Chicago doesn't.

Re:Can we refuse?

[poofyhairguy82]

You can leave parts of New Orleans in place, like the French Quarter and other parts that were on higher ground. However, the majority of inhabitants should move farther inland to higher ground to avoid the loss of life and property damage which happened this time. As someone in another thread mentioned, ports can be run with very few workers these days.

Thats already been happening for years. All of my family there have moved to higher ground across the lake because they could afford to. You might not know it but what you are really saying is "However, the rich and wealthy of inhabitants should move farther inland to higher ground as they have been doing and the rest should stay in Houston or where ever they are now because all the higher ground costs a lot more to live on."

All that land that is flooded now, the land that is covered in water is poorer and older parts. The business district only has like a foot of water. Everyone knew those places had a bigger risk...they cost less for a reason. So if you force all the people to move to high ground (what is now expensive suburbs), how will they afford this new land? Of yeah, the government will take taxpayers money to do it. Great idea, I don't mind them spending Yankee money on my home town.

Re:Can we refuse?

[ArtStone]

The Government creates erosion control programs and flood control programs in the Midwest, and now there is not enough silt to keep the alluvial plain supplied with new material.

The Government starts a campaign to stop cigarette smoking and obesity breaks out - who could have seen that coming?

The "media" and politicians demand that the hole in the 17th Street canal levee be closed, but the aerial video shows water flowing out of the city through the breach.

And people want Government to solve problems?

Prophylactic measures

[LithiumX]

You could never get that kind of money allocated towards a protective non-millitary venture, not in the US.

At least, not until something happens. Now that we've had our distaster, and once we've counted the casualty list, I'm sure congress will be more willing to talk dollars.

Then again, it's easier to allocate massive funding to protect your entire country from flooding (ie Holland, etc), than it is to allocate it to protect one relatively poor area. And admit it, that is one of the poorest areas of this country, and without more electoral votes they don't stand a chance.

Re:Prophylactic measures

[mooingyak]

Don't be so sure they don't have the votes. I live in NY, but I have family that until recently (they fled ahead of time) lived pretty close to New Orleans.

So you've got residents and their families, and even a lot of people who don't live there and don't have relatives still feel sympathy for what's happened in the area. There's quite a bit of leverage to get things done.

Re:Prophylactic measures

[corngrower]

Protecting the city of New Orleans from flooding was the responsibility of the city and state, not the federal government. It's (the corps of engineers) responsibility was to maintain a shipping channel for barges on the Mississippi. And the levees were built for the shipping channel.

New Orleans failed its residents by not building their own levee system (or coordinating with the corps of engineering). The city's system should be built adequate to protect the city from flooding in the event of a major hurricane. New Orleans also failed its residents by not having in place an adequate plan for handling the emergency caused by flooding of the city. They needed to get more of their own residents involved when planning for this situation. They needed to be better prepared to handle a situation which was reasonably expected to occur at some time.

Congress wouldn't fund enhancments of the levees in New Orleans because these fund had been mishandled in the past. (i.e. corruption). They had good reason to believe that funds they might provide for such reasons would be ill used. Lack of technology was not why an adequate levee system was not in place. Funding was.

Re:Prophylactic measures

[ScrewMaster]

Yes, but you're forgetting one important aspect to this: it took out ten petroleum refineries. New Orleans is also a major petroleum import center. It may be a "poor" area, but given its importance to the economic well-being of the rest of the country I suspect there will be plenty of money coming in. I'm currently paying about $3.50 per gallon for gas, and the country is already short of refinery capacity: so it'll get fixed.

Bad as the disaster is, there is some good that will hopefully come of it. The Department of Homeland Security has been subsuming more and more previously independent government organizations under its all-encompassing mantra of "anti-terrorism". The more I read about the negative effects of this activity on FEMA the more I realized just how dangerous this monomaniacal focusing on terrorists has become. How many died when the towers fell, versus how many have died and will die (or were left homeless, sick and wounded) in this entirely avoidable disaster?

Re:Prophylactic measures

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical Bush/Congressional stupidity. Refuse to spend some money up front on prevention, and pour billions in a half assed way at a problem after it occurs and thousands die. Want to bet that Haliburton will be the primary contractor?

Re:Prophylactic measures

[Culture]

More accurately, to protect your enture county, when there is no option to live anywhere else, and to protect a small area of the country that is a lost cause when you have 99.9% of the rest of the country that is usable as-is.

Re:Prophylactic measures

[LithiumX]

You hear a number of people, both in the news and in forums like this one, who either imply or outright say that Naw'lins should be totally abandoned, or that it's a waste of money to rebuild it.

While I'm not sure it's a great idea to band together and fund the total reconstruction of an entire city, there are some cities that define us as a nation. If Philidelphia was destroyed, we'd be at a loss if it were not rebuilt. If San Francisco was seriously damaged in an earthquake, which it almost certaintly will be eventually, a defining characteristic of this country would be laid waste if it were simply abandoned just because it might happen again. If some previously unrecognized geological flaw meant that Chicago were flooded out, not rebuilding it would reek of cowardice.

New Orleans is a more significant part of our culture than most of our major cities. That alone is a significant reason to rebuild it. If it's biggest populations centers shifted to another (safer) part of town, so be it - the historical areas would still be right there. And regardless of any cultural significance, it is of economic importance as well. The Delta is a shipping center, an economic hub for a large chunk of the Gulf Coast.

As others have pointed out, history is filled with bustling metropoli that succumbed to their fate, leaving only ruins at best. But in each case, there is a sense of loss that goes with it... and often a question. Why did they just let them go (when they had the option, anyway)?

We live with danger in almost every major city. All of our major West Coast cities are sitting on a geological time bomb, but keep growing anyway. Florida is wracked by hurricanes like a meterological leper, but it keeps building up. Houston (where I live) is built on a swamp, and occasionally reverts to it when things go badly (AND it gets blasted by hurricanes).

If any of these cities got trashed... not destroyed, but thoroughly messed up as in the case of New Orleans, would you want to just let them go to seed, or would you rather give Mother Nature the middle finger and try to get it right next time?

Re:Prophylactic measures

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't that what the entire levee system along the Mississippi River is for?

Re:Prophylactic measures

[Culture]

Hey, I live in Houston too, and I want to point out one major difference here. When my levees need improved, my levee improvement taxes go up. I pay these every year as part of my property taxes. Why does the federal government pay for NOLA levees? If they have a problem, they need to fix it. Note this is titally outside of dissaster relief, which I see as a legitament federal responsibility.

Re:Prophylactic measures

[jcnnghm]

I could care less if it were the richest part of the United States. Rebuilding a city that is below sea level is beyond rediculous, and I for one, do not want to pay for it. It's time to start thinking about relocation.

Re:Prophylactic measures

[neves]

I have a solution for New Orleans problems. Make half the state vote for one party, and half vote for the other. They will become a swing state, get a lot of attention ($$$) from the politicians and everything will be OK!

Why spend all that $$?

[Red Flayer]

(1) I'm not so sure we want to be taking flood control advice from Bangladesh.

(2) I'm not sure that attempting to control nature is the best route here. Sure, there are significant historical and cultural aspects of NOLA that we don't want to lose, but wouldn't it be cheaper (and safer) to move them to a different location?

Flood plains, barrier islands, river paths: all of these are not static features. We have an abundance of land (as opposed to some of the examples cited). If we rebuild NOLA in the same location, aren't we just pissing into the wind?

Re:Why spend all that $$?

[Tx]

(1) I'm not so sure we want to be taking flood control advice from Bangladesh.

Based on what I've been seeing on CNN the last few days, I honestly can't see why not.

(2) I'm not sure that attempting to control nature is the best route here. Sure, there are significant historical and cultural aspects of NOLA that we don't want to lose, but wouldn't it be cheaper (and safer) to move them to a different location?

As the article mentions, half of Holland is below sea level - obviously they don't have the option of relocating, but they prove that adequate flood defences can be built. The cost really isn't that big, a tiny fraction of what Bush is spending in Iraq would provide adequate flood defences for the area. Seems to me like a perfectly reasonable way to spend money, compared to some things I could mention.

Re:Why spend all that $$?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about the cultural aspects of New Orleans? It is the US's largest port for a reason. Until teleportation becomes a viable technology or the Midwest becomes a desert there's going to be a city there. The fact that its culturally viabrant and has maintained much of historical character is just a bonus.

Re:Why spend all that $$?

[LnxAddct]

We surprisingly have a good handle over nature in New Orleans. If the levies had been maintained and updated fully starting circa 2000 and had not been cut in 2003 (due to Bush diverting money to the war) none of this would have happened. Most of the hurricane missed New Orleans, the only reason any of this happened is because the levies broke (some as old as 100 years). They had the design and plan in place to secure the levies against acts exactly like what had happened, it doesn't matter if the hurricane was a category 5, they had engineered for it but were halted before it finished. The levies were so old and weak that even a category 3 hurricane probably would have broken them, causing even more damage because noone would have evacuated if it was only category 3. I know when fighting nature, nature tends to win, but this is one battle that we prepared for and would have won. The core of the problem stems back to the big eared fellow 50% of my fellow americans unfortunately voted for.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Why spend all that $$?

[Red Flayer]

I'd rather not politicize this debate by discussing our big-eared friend...

. Cuts to levee-maintenance programs did not start with him, even if they've gotten worse. And yes, we have the technology and the resources to do better this time around.

However, why fight the current when we don't have to? We have a unique opportunity to allow part of the Mississippi delta to revert to a more natural state, while rebuilding in a manner that is cost-effective, and will likely lessen the suffering further hurricanes could cause.

Re:Why spend all that $$?

[Red Flayer]

"Until teleportation becomes a viable technology or the Midwest becomes a desert there's going to be a city there"

Not so.
The residential and downtown areas can be built in a better location. There is no reason, with modern transportation technology, that the port could not also be moved to a better location. Look at the Meadowlands in NJ -- river delta surrounding the Port of Newark/Elizabeth. Do we get Cat. Fives up here frequently? No, but the flooding isn't as bad, except for localized areas.

Besides, didn't they already move the port facilities once?

Re:Why spend all that $$?

[jcnnghm]

This is not true. Quite a few people in the Army Corp of Engineers have publicly stated that even if Bush had dramatically increased funding starting day 1, this disaster wouldn't have been avoided.

Re:Why spend all that $$?

[Da Fokka]

As the article mentions, half of Holland is below sea level - obviously they don't have the option of relocating, but they prove that adequate flood defences can be built. The cost really isn't that big, a tiny fraction of what Bush is spending in Iraq would provide adequate flood defences for the area. Seems to me like a perfectly reasonable way to spend money, compared to some things I could mention.

Right on! After the 1953 flooding of over 2000km2 of polders, planning of the Delta Works was started. Dikes (or levees) along hundreds of kilometers of shore were raised by as much as 5 meters. Several flood barriers were built, some of which can move in order to permit sea traffic to pass during normal conditions. The American Society of Civil engineers considers them one of the seven modern wonders of the world.

The delta works took over 40 years to complete and the costs were huge, but not more than the $100 billion one year of Iraqi war costs.

Re:Why spend all that $$?

[Red Flayer]

What is not true? That funding has been cut? That levee maintenance was inadequate?

Plenty of people in the ACE have a vested interest in saying what the current administration wants them to say.

I'm not saying that I know the truth or that what you say is incorrect -- we just don't know right now.

But the original post here and the subsequent conversation are not about fault or blame, they are about rebuilding.

Re:Why spend all that $$?

[leomekenkamp]

Actually, most of Holland is below sea level; Holland however is not a country, The Netherlands is the name of the country. Holland is only 2 provinces: Noord Holland and Zuid Holland (North & South Holland). The Netherlands is made up of 12 provinces: the two mentioned, Zeeland, Utrecht, Noord Brabant, Overijssel, Drenthe, Limburg, Friesland, Flevoland (entirely below sea-level), Groningen and Gelderland.

Calling someone from Friesland a Hollander may get you in the same troubles as calling a Scotsman English.

And about the costs: they were really big. One cannot simply compare costs raised by a country of about 10 million people (in 1950) to the costs of the Iraq war raised by the world's only remaining military superpower.

Having said that: the US government should come to realize that all the money spent trying to constantly manipulate the world is better spent on the US inhabitants.

Re:Why spend all that $$?

[Anonymous Coward]

>(1) I'm not so sure we want to be taking flood control advice from Bangladesh.

Why?

They handle floods like this every year, but yet you believe you would have nothing to learn from them?

From Wikipedia: "Bangladesh has not experienced catastrophic coastal flooding since 1995, but the country relies heavily on foreign support and technology to combat flooding. The United States has donated hurricane shelters to the country, and India provides the Bangladesh government with weather forecasting to give the country time to plan its response to hurricanes."

Absolutely Stupid to Rebuild

[Anonymous Coward]

It is absolutely, utterly, and totally stupid to rebuild New Orleans.

The only city that exist below sea level is Atlantis... :}

There are many reasons not to rebuild New Orleans, but a few that easily come to mind are:

1. It doesn't make sense. There is plenty of space for cities elsewhere (and plenty of other cities). If a port needs to be there, fine, but a city that size definitely does not.

2. It's very, very expensive. Why go to all the expense to rebuild and upgrade the dikes? It isn't worth it.

3. It's dangerous. Nature will find a way to destroy whatever dikes are put there, and if nature doesn't, the terrorists now have a blueprint for destruction in New Orleans.

Truck bomb + lake = dike breache = mass death and destruction.

4. The unique cultural aspects of New Orleans can just as easily be rebuilt somewhere else as there. Much of what was unique about New Orleans is completely gone anyway.

Just my $.02

Re:Absolutely Stupid to Rebuild

[wed128]

If we don't rebuild, Katrina wins!

Re:Absolutely Stupid to Rebuild

[Anonymous Coward]

Where will the people live?

Re:Absolutely Stupid to Rebuild

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude,

Katrina won.

Re:Absolutely Stupid to Rebuild

[Anonymous Coward]

typical dork from the US?

1) Many cities are below sealevel. Large parts of Holland are, for example.

2) people often live in areas that have floods, quakes, tornadoes, volcanoes, huricanes, tsunamies. Many of these places are time bombs. But people live there for a reason. You'd be surprised at how boring real save places are.

3) if terrorist want to get you, they get you anyway.

4)i seriously doubt that.

Re:Absolutely Stupid to Rebuild

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems well intentioned, but there are some serious flaws in the logic.

1. Where do you have a port without the city? Ports imply trade and commerce which imply people which imply city.

2. Don't say it isn't worth rebuilding the levees without an economic analysis. Many times the numbers are surprising.

3. Wrong scale. A truck bomb may bring down a building, but it won't move a lot of earth. Back in the 1927 flood, New Orleans tried breaching a levee with dynamite and initially failed.

4. This just doesn't make sense. How can you move unique aspects somewhere else? What unique aspects of New Orleans are already gone? (Other than the original French population.)

Re:Absolutely Stupid to Rebuild

[Anonymous Coward]

"The unique cultural aspects of New Orleans can just as easily be rebuilt somewhere else as there."

Have you ever seen how lame Mardi Gras elsewhere in America is?
I suppose you'd like to see a "CajunLand" section at Disney World?

"Much of what was unique about New Orleans is completely gone anyway."

Aw, sounds like somebody got mugged.

Jetskis for everybody!

[Thud457]

Like The Palms?

Hypocracy of the NYT

[amightywind]

It is interesting that the NYT is now dispensing advice on how to fix flood control problems in New Orleans when they have a long record of recommending against improvements. They will argue all sides of an issue if it suits their political agenda, but they have no credibility.

Re:Hypocracy of the NYT

[Anonymous Coward]

Definition of ironic: using a Fox News article to point out hypocracy.

Who knew NYT had so much power in Congress. Fox News is overflowing with credibility.

Re:Hypocracy of the NYT

[42Penguins]

I noticed that Fox didn't reference the NYT articles in question. Even so, they DID mention that at least one of the two articles was an EDITORIAL. You know, an opinion? It's entirely possible that the NYT has employed more than one reporter since 1993.
Just a thought.

Re:Hypocracy of the NYT

[Moofie]

Wait a tick. You just cited a Fox News story in a comment with the word "credibility"?

Are you being intentionally ironic?

Re:Hypocracy of the NYT

[HD Webdev]

It is interesting that the NYT is now dispensing advice on how to fix flood control problems in New Orleans when they have a long record [foxnews.com] of recommending against improvements. They will argue all sides of an issue if it suits their political agenda, but they have no credibility.

From the link:

"Sean Penn To the Rescue" "And finally, upon hearing the plight of New Orleans residents, actor and political activist Sean Penn (search) sprang into action, flying to the beleaguered city to help in the rescue effort. But it was Penn who wound up needing to be rescued after the boat he was piled in sprang a leak just seconds after launching. Penn and his entourage, including a personal photographer, were seen frantically bailing the water out of the shrinking vessel with a plastic cup."

Fox News is great. Sean Penn first acts like Superman and then gets stuck in a "Shrinking Vessel". Or, maybe Sean Penn was actually increasing in size and the Fox reporter got it all wrong?

Re:Hypocracy of the NYT

[More Trouble]

My god, moderators! Moderating as "Informative" a post citing Fox News, Special Report with Brit Hume "Political Grapevine" on the credibility of NYT? Please, beat yourself for 15 minutes with the clue-stick!

:w

Re:Hypocracy of the NYT

[forand]

So you want us to trust Fox News that it has got BOTH the facts and the context straight? I can't look at the NYT articles because they were not linked to, quoted, or otherwise referenced in the article you linked to, but it is possible that the NYT would be against flood control spending in general but not discuss New Orleans in particular. This might makes sense if you were talking about flood control to stop flooding in places like Marin County in California which does not need federal dollars to fix its problems with flooding, or any number of projects that are not related to flooding inhabitade areas.

Now to address your last statement: So you are saying that changing one's mind after getting new evidence is arguing both sides? Some people are able to admit they are wrong, perhaps that is what happend here. Regardless none of this can be checked because the Fox News article you linked to does not quote or reference its sources. Not to mention the fact that the Fox Article clearly states that it was an editorial. There are many editors at the NYT and I am sure they have had differing opinions over the years. Perhaps we don't all need to jump on the "bash the other side!" bandwagon.

Re:Hypocracy of the NYT

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's funny that Sean Penn is getting mocked for flying in to help, swimming through that disease ridden soup to save people's lives - and he is almost certainly saving lives. Until these assholes are willing to go down and do it themselves they need to shut up about it.

And what difference does it make if he has a photographer with him, assuming that's even factual? Is he running for office? Is it going to enhance his acting career? Or is he maybe just documenting an incredibly historic event as he goes into areas other reporters don't dare? Or you know what, maybe the photographer is just there to provide evidence that what he's saying is true, to counter the government propagandists (Foxnews) who will claim nobody died, no one is trapped, and there are hundreds of boats out searching.

Re:Hypocracy of the NYT

[Anonymous Coward]

In the world outside of the Fox bubble there is something known as Op-Ed. Its a bit like an editorial but is known for presenting individual viewpoints that can be different or even completely opposed to the editorial view. Now, the drawback of Op-eds is that a news orginazition like Fox coould not preserve the monoculture of Unbiased TruthTM that its devotees thrive on. Even worse the reader, may be forced to choose between two conflicting views or in the direst circumstances, come to his own opinion. It may be that this level of mental rigor is too much to deal with for the Fox masses, but to the adventurous soul small doses may instill curiosity and the ability to think for oneself and should any unfortunate left leaning feelings be aroused the Fox teat is always there to nurse you back your unspinning island of tranquility

Re:Hypocracy of the NYT

[vertinox]

They will argue all sides of an issue if it suits their political agenda, but they have no credibility.

I'll take someone who will argue both sides of an issue than one that does not.

Re:Hypocracy of the NYT

[learn fast]

This article is intentionally misleading propaganda.

"New Orleans' local newspaper, the Times-Picayune (search), says every FEMA official should be fired for their, "feeble response to Hurricane Katrina." And the paper's editors say the aftermath is "ultimately the president's failure.""

I don't know if that's true because I can't find any google hits for these quotes. The article where they call for the firing of every FEMA official is here. Maybe they did so also somewhere else, but those quotes are not in the article. The actual article is worth a read, by the way.

"But the paper has had nothing but praise for the performance of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, finding no fault with his failure to enforce the mandatory evacuation order he issued last Sunday."

They only mentioned Nagin once, praising one thing he did, assuming it's the same article as above. This is described as "nothing but praise". They didn't mention the evacuation in this particular piece, this is described as "finding no fault" with the evacuation. Nagin put a mandatory evacuation into effect, but some people stayed anyway, this is described as a "failure" to enforce the evacuation.

"And Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard (search) says officials at the top of the totem pole, "need to be chain-sawed off," federal officials, he means."

Brit Hume knows what he really meant because Brit Hume has PSYCHIC POWERS. Broussard did not specify federal officals. The full quote was "Whoever is at the top of this totem pole, that totem pole needs to be chainsawed off and we've got to start with some new leadership. It's not just Katrina that caused all these deaths in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now." see the video. Look at how Brit Hume chose to quote that.

"Senator Mary Landrieu says, if the president criticizes her state's handling of the disaster, she, "might likely have to punch him.""

She was talking about criticizing the sheriff for evacuating the New Orleans prison. This is described as critizing "her state's handling of the disaster". Here's the video

Is there anything more serious you could lie about than this? No really, is there anything more serious you could lie about than this?

Re:Hypocracy of the NYT

[patternjuggler]

They will argue all sides of an issue if it suits their political agenda, but they have no credibility.

I wasn't really aware that if you write for this paper you have to subscribe to every detail of their political agenda. Many papers actually encourage and pay people to write editorials that contain contradictory statements to other editorials located in an adjacent column! And then sometimes people even change their mind about a topic, or will support or oppose an idea not because of its primary purpose but because they disagree with the particulars- it's a crazy world I tell you.

What's worse is these papers are not even promoting a political agenda as people are encouraged to do in democratic nations- they are doing this out of a crass and despicable desire to sell more papers to a diverse readership. I'm disgusted, truly.

Seriously, this is only slightly better than those recurring trolls who say the thousands of individual slashdot readers are hypocrites because they say contradictory things sometimes, and the thousands of moderators will sometimes mod opposing views up.

One difference...

[rapturizer]

New Orleans sits on hundreds of feet of muck (about 600 ft) and lacks access to the bedrock. Combined this with the channelization of the Mississippi and the levees, the city will sink if water is continuously pumped out. Ultimately, if we do not address the issue that the above have caused the wetlands to decrease, New Orleans will be a coastal city that sits below sea level in 2040. Best solution: rebuild on higher groud. Moral of the story: man can attempt to thwart mother nature, but like all parents, punishment may be severe.

Re:One difference...

[erobertstad]

Ok, so here's what ya do. Empty some of our land fills into New Orleans, then use the city as target pratice for our Military to level the city. This should add a good 2-3 feet to the city. Then fill it in with whatever other crap we can gather up, top off the last 4-5 feet or so with rocks/dirt and what have you, then build ontop of that.

The good.. we lower down some of our landfills, city is now above sea level, lots of jobs for rebuilding.

The bad.. the city is known as a the 'landfill city'.. but then agian, that's not really a new name for it either, in fact I think it would be a bit cleaner even with all the trash 15 feet down. ;)

Re:One difference...

[psyon1]

I believe they did that in San Francisco. They took all the rubble from the earth quake in 1906, pushed it into the water, and then built upon it. Guess what area had the most damage from the quake in 1989.

Re:One difference...

[Da Fokka]

I live in Holland, which is built entirely on muck (and more than half of it is below sea level). There are ways to build in this kind of environment and we'e been doing it for hundreds of years.

Re:One difference...

[rapturizer]

Hollands muck is primarily silts, clays, and sands where as New Orleans muck is primarily organics (peat and compressed wetlands aka future coal and oil). Geomorphologically these are vastly different with Holland having a much better base.

More interesting will be to see who lives there

[putko]

The technical stuff is interesting, but not the most interesting thing about how the city will get reconstructed. It is a sideshow.

New Orleans is the only major city now with a miniscule number of blacks. They've been flooded out. How the city gets redeveloped could have major implications. I can imagine some real estate devlopers would like to turn it into a Vegas-on-the-Gulf with history (French Quarter). A good way to make that a "success" would be to condemn the black neighborhoods and put in parks and clubs.

It would be sort of like what happened in midtown Manhattan under Guiliani: force out the criminal class, then make money. I'm sure there are a lot of real estate developers trying to figure out how to turn it into the "next" Vegas. The city has gotten so much publicity it would simply be too tempting.

Re:More interesting will be to see who lives there

[NoTheory]

New Orleans is the only major city now with a miniscule number of blacks.

Would you like to substantiate this with something other than totally fucking wild speculation, and an inability to do basic arithmetic?

We'll give the DMort teams the benefit of the doubt and say there were actually 40k people killed in New Orleans. We'll further give you the benefit of the doubt and say they're all african americans. When you subtract 40,000 from 1,300,000 what do you get?

Oh that's right, numbers that aren't going to substantially change racial demographics!

You're going to need to extricate your ass from your predjudice before you can get your head free out of it.

Re:More interesting will be to see who lives there

[putko]

You've misunderstood me.

The blacks are out of town now. Their homes are underwater. Hence, the city has a miniscule number of blacks.

If their homes get condemned, then they don't have anywhere to live. They don't come back. Voila -- Disneyland/Vegas on the Gulf.

Re:More interesting will be to see who lives there

[elrous0]

A good way to make that a "success" would be to condemn the black neighborhoods and put in parks and clubs.

Yeah, but if you built New Orleans back all the other states that took the refugees in would be looking to send them back. It's not like Houston is going to tolerate housing 25,000 homeless blacks for very long (they've already started to try to pawn them off on other cities and even cruiseliners).

The idea of building the first major city in the southern United States with no inner-city shithole black neighborhoods is an appealing one. But it would never fly.

To even start, you'd have to get rid of that mayor and his corrupt administration. Then you'd have to find a way to keep the refugees from returning. About the only way you could do that would be to bribe the mayor to get out and stay gone then jack up property values to make sure only the right kind of people could afford to live there (i.e. not Leroy the Looter and his buddy Welfare Andy).

-Eric

Re:More interesting will be to see who lives there

[fireduck]

Actually, I don't see why the grandparent post was modded flamebait. Sure, it could have been phrased better, but overall, it contains some truth. And it has little to do with the numbers of people killed, but rather the socio-economic status of those forced evacuees.

New Orleans had a huge population living at and below the poverty line. Unfortunately, this class of people tended to be predominantly black. Given that they have been forced from the city, these people are going to have to get jobs somewhere, and they're going to have to start looking quite soon. They don't have savings accounts, insurance, or any of the other fallbacks that those of higher economic standing have.

The poorest of the poor just can't wait 6 months and then move back to New Orleans. Likely, they are going to settle in and around the communities that are currently taking them in (simply because they don't have means of transportation anywhere else). Once they are settled, they likely won't be moving anywhere anytime soon, because they aren't going to be getting the high paying jobs that will allow them to move once New Orleans gets back on its feet.

Thus, it isn't that big of a leap to realize that of the original population, the people moving back to New Orleans are going to be those above the poverty level, with decent economic footing. Whether that means it'll be a predominantly white community, who's to say. But unless there's going to be major government subsidies to relocate the population back to NO once it is rebuilt, the poor black folk aren't coming back.

Re:More interesting will be to see who lives there

[NoTheory]

Talk about specious and idiotic justifications. First off, everybody from New Orleans is out of town now. If all the houses are condemned, why would people of european descent, or hispanic descent return? Second, if african americans don't have anywhere better to live, what compelling argument can you give that they wouldn't just move right back to New Orleans? Again, we'll give you the benefit of the doubt, say Disneyland on the coast goes up, what would stop them from moving into another neighborhood? Race has nothing to do with this, and it's irritating (as well as telling) that you bring it up. You don't know how New Orleans zoned, what the rezoning regulations are, who owns what, what corporations (if any) might even desire moving in, etc, etc, etc. You're just making stuff up. That is, when you're not comparing african americans to criminal elements in New York.

Also, do you always add people who call you out to your foes list? Charming conduct.

Re:More interesting will be to see who lives there

[Dr. Evil]

Somebody is going to have to put the city back together. It is going to take years... decades maybe. There's a lot of work which needs to be done and a lot of relief and insurance money to be spent rebuilding. Unemployed people aren't going to walk away, they're going to work.

The upper middle class and upper class aspects of society will probably not come back until their insurance companies signed all the paycheques of the poor to get their roads resurfaced, houses repainted, grocery stores restocked and offices air conditioned..., this could develop a skilled construction industry and subculture which could splinter off throughout the state.

I suppose all I'm saying is, I have no idea what's going to happen, but disasters and war tend to shuffle money around.

Re:More interesting will be to see who lives there

[putko]

You don't get it.

The flood is an urban redeveloper's dream. Normally the problem is getting them out. After they are out, you borrow money cheaply from the government and build crap for the yuppies. This has happened time and time again in American cities.

The geography in N.O. is so bad that it will cost a money to build anything proper. A great time to tell the undesirables -- sorry, you can't move back, too expensive.

The point isn't to forbid blacks from moving back (that would be illegal according the Civil Rights Act of 1964), but rather, to price them out. condemning their property is the first step -- it is always cheaper to redevelop property if you can take it away at a below-market price. As is clear from people refusing to leave even now, the people in N.O. don't like to move. It takes a monster flood to get them out.

This idea isn't just my idea. Many blacks at the Superome were claiming that "The Man" broke the levee on purpose -- to get the blacks out of the way.

As for you being on my foes list, if you'll read my profile, you'll see: "If you are in my foe-list it is nothing personal; I do this so that folks who make thoughtless comments are easier to spot (red mark), allowing me to waste less time scanning through crap."

Re:More interesting will be to see who lives there

[The Monster]

Actually, I don't see why the grandparent post was modded flamebait.

Because he used terminology of ethnicity rather than economic class. That put him in the same boat as Kanye West and the Congressional Black Caucus who just HAD to Play The Card, because that is what they do. It's got to stop, or my granddaughters may as well be growing up in Bosnia or Gaza.

Re:More interesting will be to see who lives there

[NoTheory]

As for you being on my foes list, if you'll read my profile, you'll see: "If you are in my foe-list it is nothing personal; I do this so that folks who make thoughtless comments are easier to spot (red mark), allowing me to waste less time scanning through crap."

Oh i read it. Ignoring people who point out that you're wrong must make your life a lot easier. As i said, charming conduct

And i most certainly get it. I also get that you're talking out your ass (again which is firmly lodged inside your prejudice). Unfortunately you seem unable to grasp that fact (Area that lies below sea level in a flood prone, hurricane prone area hardly sounds like "an urban redeveloper's dream") . And that is what has me so pissed off.

Again it's not even just that you're wrong on the facts. I'm amazed to see such a bald faced display of discrimination in 2005. Blacks as undesirerables? That because it's illegal to force them out by law, they should be forced out by economics? My, the means may have changed, but it seems the sentiment has not died. ::shakes head:: I dearly hope you're not an American. Because if you are, i am ashamed to share citizenship with you.

Btw, if someone suggests a racist idea, agreeing with the assumptions entailed therein makes you a racist too. Even if someone else said it first.

Re:More interesting will be to see who lives there

[putko]

I don't think you know much about New Orleans or urban redevelopment.

The nice areas of New Orleans are on high(er) ground. They are intact and not flooded. So the historical attractions are preserved. N.O. is an urban redeveloper's dream: if you can somehow get the criminal class to stay away, and only bring back the hard-working, law-abiding folks, you can make a great tourist attraction, and make a lot of money.

Slum clearing is classic urban redevelopment practice. The slums are under water, so it is easier to ask for razing them.

All I've done is explain how America works. I didn't say anything about what should or should not happen.

E.g. I didn't say, "they should find a way to keep the undesirables out." I haven't discriminated against anyone -- just mentioned the facts: get rid of the blacks in New Orleans and you'll drop the crime rate. Ask any cop that (especially a black cop) -- he'll tell you the same. That's just facts, not "discrimination". That's why blacks who can move away from other blacks.

P.S. By flagging the people who write thoughtless comments, I make it easier to allocate my attention. It isn't necessarily to ignore them -- but to see them coming.

Re:More interesting will be to see who lives there

[elrous0]

Blacks as undesirerables?

Tell me, Dr. King, exactly how many of these refugees has YOUR city taken in?

Liberals sure talk a good game about how we shouldn't discriminate and all that. But, if you look at a map, almost all the offers to house refugees are being made by RED states like Texas, Arkansas, etc. While the noble, liberal, anti-racist crusading BLUE states have taken in very few (the much more prosperous liberal California has taken in HOW many refugees compared to George Bush's redneck Texas?)

So, I guess you're all for fighting for minority rights as long as those minorities aren't allowed in YOUR neighborhood, huh?

-Eric

little trick

[diegocgteleline.es]

I have this neat trick to avoid cities being flooded: rebuild the city in another place where it can't be flooded

Re:little trick

[TykeClone]

After 1993, some river towns did this - but it took a lot of strong arming to move small towns (less than 1000 residents, I think). People get attached to where they are and it takes a lot to uproot them.

Can you imagine what it would take to move a city the size of New Orleans.

Re:little trick

[tazanator]

just break open the leevees and say "we won't waste any more tax dollars on this" they will move eventually.

Re:little trick

[JazzHarper]

By the same logic, I suppose you believe that San Francisco shouldn't have been rebuilt after 1906.

Re:little trick

[Andy_R]

Rebuilding towns elsewhere seems to be something of a regional speciality - after all, take a look at this place

Re:little trick

[gr8_phk]

"By the same logic, I suppose you believe that San Francisco shouldn't have been rebuilt after 1906."

Yeah, so what's your point?

Arrogance

[KrackHouse]

I think our uncanny ability to warm the planet has given us a false sense of capablility. Rebuilding large cities below sea level in Hurricane Alley is a recipe for disaster. Politicians calling for rebuilding are Soup Nazis.

Massive, post disaster, federal bailouts of property damage just encourage more building in disaster prone areas which inevitably leads to the death of low income citizens that can't evacuate.

Re:Arrogance

[Anonymous Coward]

Blaming it on global warming is a copout. In an excerpt from an interview in Discover Magazine a leading meteorologist says:

Discover Dialogue: Meteorologist William Gray

With last year's hurricane season so active, and this year's looking like it will be, won't people say it's evidence of global warming?

G: The Atlantic has had more of these storms in the least 10 years or so, but in other ocean basins, activity is slightly down. Why would that be so if this is climate change? The Atlantic is a special basin? The number of major storms in the Atlantic also went way down from the middle 1960s to the middle '90s, when greenhouse gases were going up.

Re:Arrogance

[KrackHouse]

I know that. Warmer global ocean temperatures lead to the El Nino effect which actually decreases the intensity of hurricanes. Regardless of whether we're causing global warming or not, sea levels are rising and it's a bad idea to subsidize risky and dangerous development.

Forget it, just build on the water

[maddh]

Neo Orleans
Floating Mega City

Re:Forget it, just build on the water

[hapwned]

Worked out pretty well for the characters in Waterworld; even the gas prices were comparable to today! And we all know who the mayor would be. Hint, starts with a "K" and ends with a "evin Costner".

Fighting against nature

[UnapprovedThought]

From the government publication http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/

Melting of the current Greenland ice sheet would result in a sea-level rise of about 6.5 meters

That's about 21 feet, the effects of which you can guess by looking at the nice map included with this publication that outlines the affected areas of the South in red.

Can anyone think of a solution that would cover all of that coastline shown on the map? That's a lot of coastline. Better not to pick a fight with nature in the first place, I would say.

durability

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think those fancy movable sea walls could survive a class 5 hurrican?

Move to higher ground

[WAR-Ink]

Some in the house and senate have voiced the politically incorrect position of "maybe it was a little dumb to build below sea level, right next to the sea."

I happen to agree. Move New Orleans to higher ground. Let the ocean have the original site. Spending billions on ANY plan is a waste of my tax dollars.

I live on the side of the fault that slides into the ocean when the big one hits California. I don't expect the US government to spend billions to reattach it. But, I would expect them to save me a spot on the new beach front property to replace my previous submarine property.

They built a city below sea level, in a swamp. A hurrican came, it blew away, burnt down and sunk into the swamp. What did they expect?

Re:Move to higher ground

[nilknarf]

The city was not below sea level when it was built.

Re:Move to higher ground

[theurge14]

Well, there is the problem of building that new beach front property when someone else's property is already there. It's the same problem as to who has to make room for the new city of Really New Orleans.

Re:Move to higher ground

[WAR-Ink]

Funny thing about land. It slides, it shakes, it sinks. It even burns when there are combustibles on it. Perhaps the whole "it is a swamp" thing should have been the first clue.

Re:Move to higher ground

[quarmar]

"I don't expect the US government to spend billions to reattach it. But, I would expect them to save me a spot on the new beach front property to replace my previous submarine property."

Why on earth would you expect that?

Re:all they needed

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I've heard of Meijer Thrify Acres, which is a large warehouse-type supermarket/general store around the Great Lakes region. But I can only imagine that Meiji Thrifty Acres is some kind of Japanese knock-off.

Rebuilding New Orleans

[Anonymous Coward]

> The New York Times has a discussion of flood
> control methods in use in Holland, England, and
> Bangladesh that could be used in the rebuilding
> of New Orleans.

On the other hand, they could take this
opportunity and simply relocate the city to
a safe(er) location. Moving the city to a
location above sea-level might be a good start.
This would get the levees out of the equation
and help to eliminate this from happening again
in the future.

Re:I've found this somewhere on the net, is it tru

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll

Much To Learn, But Will They Learn It?

[ausoleil]

New Orleans has been a disaster waiting to happen, as everyone now knows. And it is a city that lies in palpable danger during any hurricane season, now or in the future. Sure, we could learn from the Dutch and from others, but will we?

Our country has a history of trying to do things on the cheap, to pay as little as possible now and to postpone the inevitable for another generation. Now, New Orleans paid the price. We have bridges, highways, water systems and any number of infrastructure needs in the US that we quite effectively ignore on a daily basis.

Don't believe me? Think about how long it has taken California to replace the Bay Bridge after the '89 quake -- it was deemed unsafe then and it was decided to build a new one. This is comparable in scope to the levee system of New Orleans and the new Bay Bridge has taken over fifteen years to replace. Expect the same, Big Easy.

Blame is being passed around, something that politicians excel at. However, the Feds are not the only ones at fault. One must consider the city's priorities when they built a sports arena and did not work on their levees. One must also consider the refusal of the citizens to pay higher taxes to do both. The federal government cut funding, but if the city had REALLY wanted to fix their levees before Katrina, they could have made some hard choices. Instead, they chose to court the Charlotte Hornets and get them to move to the Big Easy. Just as a "for example."

Now, a massive rebuilding effort needs to take place, and one after the rescue and mitigation efforts are completed. The rebuilding will probably outpace the fortification of the levees, as people will want to rebuild their homes and that doing that on an indiovidual basis is smaller and easier than re-engineering levees.

However, before they do that they should consider that their new homes are in as much danger as the ones that they lost until they get their flood control issues resolved. This should be priority one for the city, the state of Louisiana and to a large degree the federal government. The cost will be in the billions, and I for one will be very surprised if the money is easily available.

Even if it is, it will take the better part of two decades -- or about twenty hurricane seasons -- for these new systems to be in place. In the meantime, NOLA better hope that another Katrina does not find their city.

Re:Much To Learn, But Will They Learn It?

[Electric Eye]

I'm just hoping that common sene taks over and we do NOT rebuild New Orleans. It was a mistake to build and would be a mistake to rebuild. Considering the unfathomable environmental damage that has been done since NO was built and now that we're pumping BILLIONS of gallons of highly toxic water back into the lake and into the Gulf, we'd have to be fucking insane to allow billions or trillions of our tax dollars to go towards rebuilding this thing. Why waste decades of effort and billions of dollars to protect a city that technically should not exist? It's assinine.
And, we do all that work, and a stronger huricane rolls through, what then? Re-rebuild? I don't think so.

Re:Much To Learn, But Will They Learn It?

[Cheerio Boy]

And, we do all that work, and a stronger huricane rolls through, what then? Re-rebuild? I don't think so.

But you can be sure that if enough people whine and moan they'll spend the money. "Oh! We must save the Frech Quarter! What about all the history!"

I say it's all ruined - build "New New Orleans" on the outside edge above sea level and let the city sink completely.

*prepares to be modded into the basement*

Re:Much To Learn, But Will They Learn It?

[ucblockhead]

Note to those who may not realize: The Bay Bridge is currently not even close to completion. When the parent poster says "fifteen years to replace", he means, "fifteen years so far". It'll probably be twenty in the end, assuming they ever get the damn thing built.

Re:Much To Learn, But Will They Learn It?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why waste decades of effort and billions of dollars to protect a city that technically should not exist? It's assinine.

There is 1.4 Million people in NO. 1000$ for each is 1.4 billion $. So technically, billions of $ is not such a big amount here.

War on Iraq cost us much more.

And, if you don't rebuild NO, what are you going to do with the people ? You have to build a brand new city for 1.4Million of people. It can cost you in the trillions of $.

Re:Much To Learn, But Will They Learn It?

[st0rmshad0w]

Maybe they can build them a city around the Segway?

Re:Much To Learn, But Will They Learn It?

[poofyhairguy82]

The federal government cut funding, but if the city had REALLY wanted to fix their levees before Katrina, they could have made some hard choices. Instead, they chose to court the Charlotte Hornets and get them to move to the Big Easy. Just as a "for example."

Yeah. Those cost about the same. Not. New Orleans has been in an economic slump for years. It could not afford the fixes. Now it doesn't have too, the Federal Government will (or risk being called racists).

Re:Much To Learn, But Will They Learn It?

[poofyhairguy82]

Why waste decades of effort and billions of dollars to protect a city that technically should not exist?

I'm glad you have no say...and you will not get your way.

And, we do all that work, and a stronger huricane rolls through, what then? Re-rebuild? I don't think so.

Yep. Just like we do in Florida every time.

Re:Much To Learn, But Will They Learn It?

[patternjuggler]

However, the Feds are not the only ones at fault.

That's fine. Enough people have died and enough billions of dollars of damage done I think everyone in a position of leadership who shares even a portion of the blame should resign, be fired, impeached, jailed, or forcefully removed from power by an angry mob.

Re:Much To Learn, But Will They Learn It?

[Anonymous Coward]

You get the leaders that you deserve, especially so in a democracy.

Hard to say it, but it's true.

Re:Much To Learn, But Will They Learn It?

[Anonymous Coward]

One must consider the city's priorities when they built a sports arena and did not work on their levees. One must also consider the refusal of the citizens to pay higher taxes to do both.

Wait a second here... I sure hope I read that incorrectly, but did you just imply there's something wrong with opposing taxes used to fund a sports stadium?

Rebuilding New Orleans with Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Rebuild it above sea level.

Re:Rebuilding New Orleans with Common Sense

[Anne Thwacks]

Yay - Lets move it to Utah!

Re:Rebuilding New Orleans with Common Sense

[Anonymous Meoward]

It worked for New Orlean's first NBA basketball team.

(Kinda wished the team changed its name after the move though. Who in their right mind would name a team based in Salt Lake City the "Utah Jazz" ? How many famous Mormon saxophone players do you know? )

Re:Rebuilding New Orleans with Common Sense

[mrbrown1602]

Mormons are in Utah.... that's almost as bad as 10' of water.

howmuch science is needed?

[argStyopa]

Build it 40 miles upriver.

Re:howmuch science is needed?

[argStyopa]

OK a light hearted comment, but I just read in the NYT a great column on the contrast: NYC was hit with fire, NO hit with water.

NYC could deal with fire, because we've learned to fight fires locally. We build to prevent it, and we all pay a premium on goods and services through the system due to the costs of sprinkler systems etc in the supply chain. We spend city $$ on fire services, and emergency response capabilities.

NO couldn't deal with water, because since the 60's the Federal gov't has taken over response to floods. Local officials are reduced to writing plans that ultimately read "wait for the Feds to arrive with help".

Moreover, with an agency like FEMA, and federal subsidies for flood insurance, he makes a persuasive argument that US gov't policies have, in effect ENCOURAGED the building of homes and businesses in flood prone and coastal regions.

If those homeowners and businesses had to pay a MARKET cost for insurance, how many would have built there? And if there wasn't a FEMA (which has historically compensated flood/hurricane victims even or especially if uninsured) would people be so lasseiz-faire about their families, dwellings, and belongings in the path of destruction?

Persuasive reading.

Re:howmuch science is needed?

[Thud457]

"If those homeowners and businesses had to pay a MARKET cost for insurance, how many would have built there? And if there wasn't a FEMA (which has historically compensated flood/hurricane victims even or especially if uninsured) would people be so lasseiz-faire about their families, dwellings, and belongings in the path of destruction?"

So... you're saying that the Free Market could have ensured that this disaster could have been much less worse? ;-)

Re:howmuch science is needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

40 miles upriver = Baton Rouge. And since Baton Rouge itself has taken on more evacuees than the state of Texas, thats kinda what's happening.

Re:howmuch science is needed?

[Puff Daddy]

It's spelled laissez-faire, and that isn't what it means. If you read the definition you'll see that someone expecting federal aid is being anything but laissez-faire.

Now, that being said, I mostly agree with the NYT's point. It should have been the job of Louisiana and New Orleans to have plans in case of flooding of the Mississippi Delta and for the federal government to assist them in carrying them out. FEMA should exist, but local governments should bear the responsibility of planning for local disasters.

Re:howmuch science is needed?

[fforw]

The problem with the local governments reacting to local desasters is that these disasters tend to destroy the infrastructure needed to react to them - so help from the outside is needed.

Re:howmuch science is needed?

[Rich0]

So... you're saying that the Free Market could have ensured that this disaster could have been much less worse? ;-)

Sure. Who would issue a mortgage on a home in an area prone to flooding if they knew the Feds wouldn't pay them off if there was a flood? Who would build a business there?

The disaster wasn't the flood - there have been floods there for the past several million years. It is only a disaster when you have a million people living in a spot that has severe flooding every 50 years or so.

You can try to move the water, or you can just move the people. Or, you can point out that anybody who builds their home there will have to rebuild it every few decades and then when the flood comes just stand and say "I told you so."

Human life is valuable. I'd support free bussing to get people out of danger even if they were idiots for being there in the first place. However, their homes are less valuable. If they're dependant on government assistance for having someplace to live, the government should at least find someplace cheaper to put them...

Re:howmuch science is needed?

[Thud457]

I was kind of tounge in cheek pointing out that this is a typical case where the rabid Free-Marketers would chime in.
In my opinion, they're right, for the reasons you state.

But you lose me right about here:
"Human life is valuable. I'd support free bussing to get people out of danger even if they were idiots for being there in the first place. However, their homes are less valuable. If they're dependant on government assistance for having someplace to live, the government should at least find someplace cheaper to put them..."

Government has a bad habit of exempting itself from the rules that they make everybody else play by. I figure that low-lying land that's uneconomical to build on because of insurance costs would be attractive for an eminent domain grab, to put civic services, like, say, public housing on. Whoops, we're back where we started.

Re:howmuch science is needed?

[Rich0]

Government has a bad habit of exempting itself from the rules that they make everybody else play by. I figure that low-lying land that's uneconomical to build on because of insurance costs would be attractive for an eminent domain grab, to put civic services, like, say, public housing on. Whoops, we're back where we started.

You couldn't be more correct. Of course, my intention was to house them where the cost is lowest in terms of TCO. However, as you point out government is traditionally short-sighted in this regard and we'll be housing these people in flood plains most likely.

Sometimes I wonder if things would be better if we just evenly dispersed people on welfare across the countryside at an even density - so some would end up in cities, but most would end up in rural areas. You wouldn't have collections of people on public assistance in the same neighborhoods. This would help people on welfare to form social networks with productive members of society, who would then be able to positively influence them and also help them find gainful employment. They would also find it boring to just sit at home 9-5 when everybody else is out working. Sometimes I wonder if the ghetto isn't half of our problem. If nothing else their kids are more likely to turn out well if they're in a non-ghetto setting.

Of course, this will cost more upfront as housing is MUCH more expensive in these areas. However, it will probably pay for itself if in 10 years we have 1/10th the number of people on public assistance...

Fault is historical

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding is that the levees weren't built for this kind of hurricane. That they could have been overcome anytime in the past decade with smaller surges than they suffered with this storm.
(See links in earlier /. stories.)

So, the fact that there have been so many people in New Orleans for centuries may be a symbol of laziness and short-sightedness.

The fact that the levees weren't designed for such a huge storm may mean the same thing, or something else.

The fact that residents of Louisiana and New Orleans felt it was just to require ME (who have never lived in any state bordering the Gulf of Mexico, or the Mississippi) to help pay for their levees and pumps is probably a symbol of greed and selfishness.

It is likely that I will be required to help pay for reconstruction of the city in the same spot. What does that symbolize?

I will donate money (and if I can see how, time too) of my own free will, to help those that are suffering from this tragedy. But it will not be right when my money is TAKEN from me to help them.

Re:Fault is historical

[Anonymous Coward]

moron, i see only 1 person who is greedy here.
you pay for their flood protection, they pay for my quake protection (or the occasional rebuild), and I pay for your terror retaliation.

that is how a country works. Otherwise, go live on a island in the pacific and be happy.

Re:Fault is historical

[Eccles]

No, it's just dumb.

Don't pay for my quake protection, landslide protection, etc. If it's a national issue (keeping terrorists from entering the country, general national defense, etc.), then fine, national taxes should pay for it. But otherwise, it's stupid to set thing up so the Feds pay for everything. Why? Because they won't spend wisely; instead, they'll spend based on seniority. The folks in Washington don't know New Orleans' needs like Lousianans. You pay for your local needs, I'll pay for mine. And if it's too expensive, then you shouldn't live there.

Re:Fault is historical

[beanball75]

Yeah. New Orleans has nothing to do with commerce in the rest of the country. Same with San Francisco or any other major city.

Re:Fault is historical

[ghoul]

Hey Dumbass
If you live anywhere in the US you benefit from New Orleans. It is the major port for oil to come in and one of the few which can handle big supertankers without the additional cost of transhipping to smaller tankers. This is because of its position at the mouth of the Missisippi delta which also makes it vulnerable. So if you are happy to get cheap gas because of New Orleans you should be happy to pay to protect the city. Protecting New Orleans does a lot more for cheaper gas then bombing Baghdad ever did.

Re:Fault is historical

[Titus B. Otch]

Whoa. Scarcasm? How much effort did that reply take? You lost me @ "Yeah".

Eccles is correct in that local funds are _always_ appropriated more directly to the need. The federal level is fantastic at doling out funds, but suck at appropriating them. When's the last time your Federal Transportation state funds were actually used for, um, roads? Write your State congressman and ask him for an audit of said funds.

Re:Fault is historical

[Wyatt Earp]

Well, unless you live on the West Coast or the Upper Great Plains.

Then our gas comes from California, Alaksa, Wyoming, Colorado and Canada.

If you live in Alaska or Hawaii, you don't get squat from the oil terminals at NO.

Re:Fault is historical

[unitron]

So what you're saying is that the areas in the continental US that don't get their gasoline from New Orleans are still paying about $2.50 a gallon instead of about $3.50? What's that? Your prices went up as well?

The shortage on the east coast that drove up prices means higher prices in the west as well, otherwise the tankers would drive right past your gas stations on their way east to where they can sell their loads for more money.

Re:Fault is historical

[Eccles]

Hong Kong has a lot to do with commerce in this country, but that doesn't mean my tax money should be used on flood protection there.

Look, in the system you advocate, they didn't get enough money to protect New Orleans. Why? Because the people doling out the money and the people who knew how much work the levees needed are distinct. What's the big advantage of having everyone pay the Feds and then having the Feds dole it out? Then you get the Lawrence Welk museum, Don Young way, and that new Alaskan bridge to nowhere -- and levees that are too week.

If, instead, Fed taxes were lower, and state and taxes were higher, Louisiana and New Orleans could make their own decisions about what was wise spending. I don't get together with my neighbors, pool our home improvement money, and then vote on what to spend it on; why should cities do it?

You're an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

The technical stuff is interesting, but not the most interesting thing about how the city will get reconstructed. It is a sideshow.

New Orleans is the only major city now with a miniscule number of blacks. They've been flooded out. How the city gets redeveloped could have major implications. I can imagine some real estate devlopers would like to turn it into a Vegas-on-the-Gulf with history (French Quarter). A good way to make that a "success" would be to condemn the black neighborhoods and put in parks and clubs.

It would be sort of like what happened in midtown Manhattan under Guiliani: force out the criminal class, then make money. I'm sure there are a lot of real estate developers trying to figure out how to turn it into the "next" Vegas. The city has gotten so much publicity it would simply be too tempting.

Science can't trump corruption

[grumpygrodyguy]

Science: Rebuilding New Orleans With Science

Editors...please, that's got to be the cheesiest title yet. We have the science, we have had the science, but a republican dominated government refused to provide the funding that would have allowed the Army Corp. of Engineers to Build levies that both the Governor and Mayor have been requesting for years before this happened.

Instead of fanning the typical Slashdot "We're so cool because we know science" circle-jerk, maybe you could greenlight an article that focuses on the issues.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[WillAffleckUW]

We have the science, we have had the science, but a republican dominated government refused to provide the funding that would have allowed the Army Corp. of Engineers to Build levies that both the Governor and Mayor have been requesting for years before this happened.

I think you mean reduced the funding and used it for other things that most people don't agree with.

Not refused to provide. It's subtle, but not the same.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[grumpygrodyguy]

I think you mean reduced the funding and used it for other things that most people don't agree with.

Not refused to provide. It's subtle, but not the same.

I agree, and if there are those who were confused by my original wording then I'm glad you clarified that point.

Instead of spending our tax dollars to help the people of america, Bush's policy of War/Oil over the last 5 years has smeared our countries reputation around the world, suffocated our economy, tripled gas prices, and left millions of americans helpless. Bush, Cheney, Rove etc. have justified all of this in order to make more money for the defense industry and the oil industry(businesses that 90% of Bush's people hail from). It's grotesque. This is not the country I grew up believing in.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[GMFTatsujin]

Oh sure, we have the science, but the real question is: can we rebuild it strong, faster, and better?

Six million dollars sounds like a bargain to me!

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

The funding problem has been going on for 50 years. Sorry, dont blame Ronald McDonald for your shitty hamburger.

There is a fact that is constantly being ignored on /. that is that New Orleans was/is a disgusting shithole that nobody cares about. The Dutch have one of the highest concentrations of wealth in Europe, hence the 3 trillion dollar dike.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[MightyYar]

New Orleans has needed flood control for hundreds of years. Blaming a man who has been in office for 5 is hardly fair. Blame people like me, who would have voted against spending so much federal money on a project, even in hindsight.

The real problem here is that people failed to evacuate. We should be having a discussion about why these people did not/could not evacuate, and how to prevent such a scenario in the future. A hurricane is one of the easiest natural disasters to avoid, and we really have no good excuse to get caught by one.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything I've read has said that even if they had gotten all the funding they'd requested, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference, as the proposed levees were never even designed to handle a hurricane of this magnitude. They would have failed anyway.

Secondly, blaming the Bush administration for a funding problem that's been around longer that Bush has even been alive is stupid as hell. There's plenty of other perfectly valid things you can criticize Bush for, no need to make up shit and look like a fool.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[electroniceric]

OK, kudos for brokering honest debate. I'm a flaming liberal and have nothing but contempt for the way Bush and his underqualified appointees in FEMA have handled this, but fairness dictates noting that New Orleans and its levees have been underfunded for at least 20 years, so a fair number of different administrations have a hand in this underfunding.

However, I do think there are several lessons. One is that we need to chart a balanced course with respect to FEMA. No, we should not spend money on projects which require ever-increasing investments to keep natural changes from destroying them. But we must to have a serious effort at lots of levels of government to prevent and mitigate disaster, and that takes earnest money. In this case, as you point out, that would have at least included prompt and effective evacuation, as well as some plan for getting the water out which does not thoroughly poison the Gulf.

That balance requires finding a way to scale back government projects in some other manner than "starving the beast". I admire your willingness to stick to fiscal conservative guns at this kind of time. I just want to know that people will have an open debate about the real pros and cons of cutting government.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[grumpygrodyguy]

Everything I've read has said that even if they had gotten all the funding they'd requested, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference, as the proposed levees were never even designed to handle a hurricane of this magnitude. They would have failed anyway.

That's not what I've read. First of all Katrina was a category 4 storm when it reached shore, with significanly less storm surge than the initially predicted 25'. The levy system that was in place was rated for up to a category 3 storm. It's very reasonable to assume that the levy upgrade they were proposing was to help safegaurd the city against category 4 storms and below. Again, if this course of action had been taken none of the terrible things that happened in NO since the day after the storm hit would be in the news. And hundreds of thousands of lives would be vastly better off than they are now.

The reason I'm especially pissed at the moment is because the usual Rove/CNN/Faux News circus is busily shopping around for a convenient scapegoat and the public(as usual) is buying it hook, line and sinker...they're trying to pin it on Michael Brown the director of FEMA. The problem is, THE DIRECTOR OF FEMA WAS APPOINTED BY BUSH. If I hire a carpenter to work as a heart surgeon is it the carpenter's incompetance or mine?

If the media can serve popular opinion to the highest bidder then the people at the top can get away with murder...and they are.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[MightyYar]

Look, I'm no Bush fan - I even voted for Kerry in the last election even though he offered little over "not being Bush". But you are way off-base with some of your assertions:

• smeared our countries reputation around the world
  True if "world" means "parts of Europe". Is Bush hated more than Clinton on average? I'd say yes, but these groups that are out to get us we out to get us before Bush even took office.
• suffocated our economy
  Que? Last I looked, we've been recovering from a recession that started just after Clinton left office. Presidents (fortunately) have very little influence over broader economic trends.
• tripled gas prices
  Wow. You don't think increased demand from China played a part? Or the improving economy? Or, most recently, a major hurricane?
• left millions of americans helpless
  Are you referring to the record high home ownership rate? Or the record low crime rates? (Both trends started under Clinton, btw, so don't give Bush too much credit...)

"This is not the country I grew up believing in."

Good, because that country only exists in your head!

Geeez, people, get a grip - it's just a politician. No need for the drama.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[jcnnghm]

Global warming is going to kill us all. The Republicans are responsible. It's true. Republicans are ruining the earth.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[FreshFunk510]

I disagree that the real problem is the failure to evacuate. Instead of simply responding to disaster after the fact, we should've prepared for this beforehand. If we addressed this before it became an issue, we wouldn't have had flooding in the first place (or much less likely). There is no excuse for this given that a flooding in New Orleans due to a hurricane was already identified as a likely disaster by FEMA many years ago.

You can't blame Bush for something that should've been done many years ago, but you can blame him for the utterly poor response to the situation. He does not take ALL blame but he sure takes a large part of it. Why did it take so long for a coherent, federal response?

Checkout the main article in the latest issue of Time. 1 things I want to mention: the 72 hours AFTER an event like this are the most crucial in saving lives.. unfortunately it took longer than 3 days for a decent response.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[MightyYar]

I agree 100%. Clearly something went horribly wrong. While it is easy to point fingers, I would like a much more honest discussion. Some conversation points:

• Most of the people left behind were poor blacks. This does not suprise me, since NO is rather segregated and poor. I am not surprised that the powerful in corrupt NO left behind their poor. So maybe we need a discussion about taking over more local disaster relief responsibity. This would have the advantage of squelching local racism, but would almost certainly be less reactive and flexible on average. For instance, the local response in NY after 9/11 was quite good - there were just no survivors to treat.
• Should one spend more money protecting land then the land is worth? The flooded areas of NO are worth about what the project to improve the flood control was projected to cost. Perhaps we should have a smaller "safe" area that is more-or-less self sufficient and capable of holding the population that is likely to still be around?
• Currently it looks like rescuers and relief workers couldn't reach the city because they were being SHOT at! We need to revisit our quarantine-and-forget method of dealing with the poor. I bet that there is a sociologist somewhere nodding his head knowingly as he watches the events unfold on TV.

Anyway, that's a good start :)

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[MightyYar]

The problem is that unless you can hurricane-proof NO to take a direct cat 5 hit, then only a full evacuation will avoid this situation. Spending more money on levvies has merit and can be discussed, but at some point a disaster will hit that will overcome our best defenses. A cat 5-proof system would likely cost triple-digit billions, and frankly NO is not worth that.

Blaming is fun, but the fact is that it is not one man. Bush needs to get the feds act together (and it looks like he is), but my understanding is that the local authorities and the state bear responsibility for security and evacuation, and they really dropped the ball. In any event, let the blame game play out later, because all it does now is make idiot politicians play politics at a time when we need cohesion and decisiveness.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[electroniceric]

I think this is really a critical issue. I guess I'd take the "quality-based" approach to this, which might be a bit bureaucratic but would allow for some flexibility:

Municipalities or regions with substantial disaster risks must prove (in advance) that they are capable of managing the event. This would involve verification via fire drill type response on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis (which would help reduce the chaos and mistrust that hamper response). If the local government cannot meet the standard, FEMA takes over directing operations. Something like that...

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[Distinguished Hero]

Currently it looks like rescuers and relief workers couldn't reach the city because they were being SHOT at! We need to revisit our quarantine-and-forget method of dealing with the poor. I bet that there is a sociologist somewhere nodding his head knowingly as he watches the events unfold on TV.

If someone owns (whether through purchase or theft) a firearm and ammunition for it, they are not poor. The actual poor don't have weapons with which to hurt people and don't attack other people (especially those trying to help) anyways because they are too busy dieing from starvation.

Anyways, the best way to deal with "the poor" is to give them access to "free" (subsidized) education, and teach them that they were provided with everything that they needed to be successful and if they aren't, they have nobody to blame but themselves. Instead, you keep giving them fish, but never teaching them how to get their own bloody fish (to use a cliche). You blame all their problems on yourself, and create a culture of hatred and blame instead of one of self-reliance, self-determination, and emancipation.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[MightyYar]

NO is so segregated, and the whites and blacks distrust each other so much, that simply throwing money at education will not help. You will end up with an educated ghetto - the same problem that Europe seems to be running into in their Arab communities.

What I was suggesting is a wholesale change involving the rich as well as the poor. If you are going to throw money at housing, make it section-8-style. Make sure schools all have a mix of rich and poor (not just black and white as the emphasis is now). In effect, make an effort to end the "haves" natural tendancy to flee the problems of the poor, thus effectively corraling them in ghettos.

I realize that this is unlikely to happen in a place as charged and bigoted as NO, let alone in more enlightened places - but I'm hoping that we can talk about it in light of how it can destroy an entire city when the "haves" leave the "have-nots" behind to fend for themselves.

By the way, one of the first things looted were the gun shops and sporting goods stores. MAYBE, the poor didn't have guns when the hurricane started (though guns and ammo are quite cheap) - but they sure had guns once the looting started.

Re:Science can't trump corruption

[gandalf23atwork]

The Corps of Engineers spent 1.9 Billion USD in Louisiana on the river and levees in the last five years (the time Bush has been in office).

The problem is not money, but the damn corruption in Louisiana.

And as someone else pointed out, what we should be debating is why people were not evacuated. The path of the hurrican was known, there was a state and city evacuation plan, why was it not followed? Why put people into the Superdome or Convention Center when they were not pre-designated disaster shelters (and thus had no pre-positioned food, water, or porta pottys)?

Hurricans are pretty easy to get out of the way of, even if you're poor, as long as there is a good evacuation plan that is followed.

The city and state really screwed the pooch here.

Barrier islands...

[Anonymous Coward]

...won't stop a katamari that's > 700m.

Think about it.

Me too! The war in EyeRack would have qualified.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, That's $1000 per man, woman, and child living in this country that got wasted over there. And climbing.

I'd have much rather spent a _fraction_ of that money shoring up New Orleans levees, even though I don't live there and have never visited. And with the money left over I could have been not watching this disaster on a nice 42" plasma.

Should've listen to the Native Americans

[drgonzo59]

The Native American tribes told the French not to build there because they've been there enough to know...but did anyone listen?... of course not.

I understand that it was the intersection of trade routes back in the day, but what is there today? I would move away from that place, I am sure so will other people. There still will be a "New Orleans" but from now on it will be known as the "Flooded New Orleans." I don't think it will ever recover completely...

New Orleans was on the top of my list of places to visit in the next couple of years, but not anymore, I think I'll wait 10 years or so.

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

I understand that it was the intersection of trade routes back in the day, but what is there today?

Um, It happens to be the mouth of the Mississippi river, where people up north can send their freight to ocean going vessels, kinda like a trade route, oh wait it is a trade route and who ever modded you post interesting is a slashbot. Also on a pedantic note it's Mardi Gras(Fat Tuesday in french). Good idea listen to the people who sold Manhattan island for some beads.

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[Mr. Slippery]

Good idea listen to the people who sold Manhattan island for some beads.

Except they didn't.

Anyway, have you traded anything for little green pieces of paper lately? Or even wackier, for a piece of paper that promises green pieces of paper? Or an electronic promise of green pieces of paper?

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[BeanThere]

Good idea listen to the people who sold Manhattan island for some beads.

Ad hominem.

If people who sold Manhattan island for beads (assuming that was true which it isn't) claimed the sky was blue, I suppose you would argue that the sky wasn't blue too.

Hint, whether or not something is true has nothing to do with who is saying it.

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[drgonzo59]

Trade routes for what? Lumber and oil. Do you really need a metropolis at the intersection of such a trade route. Do you really need 1 million people living in the path of hurricanes and below sea level because lumber and oil comes in there?

But of course you know history so well, you know that back in the day the steamboats on Mississippi where just about _the only_ reliable way to travel inland until the railroads were built, so the trade wasn't just oil, lumber and such things it was _everything_: food, consumer goods, and besides there was a large passenger transport. When is the last time you bought a ticket to travel from Ohio to New Orleans by river? That is why there was a city built there. Today there would be a small town where people who service the docks would live and not a big metropolis...

Good idea listen to the people who sold Manhattan island for some beads. -- Even better don't listen to them and build in the path of a hurricane and below sea level. You can go either way with that "Indians are stupid. -No French are the stupid ones" argument... Anyway, slashbots might have modded my post at 4, but you didn't even make past 1 last time I checked...

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[Liam Slider]

Trade routes for what? Lumber and oil. Do you really need a metropolis at the intersection of such a trade route.

You forgot to add grain, coal, steel, fertilizer, and salt to your list of what the Mississippi is a trade route for. It's a vital trade link for every State on it, or rivers that connect to it. Every barge can carry a large amount of cargo, worth millions, with fewer workers than trains carrying an equal amount of goods (you'd need several trains to transport what is carried by a single barge in many cases). Every State connected on those rivers depends on that trade for a significant part of it's economic life, and the USA as a whole benefits from that trade as well.

And given that river barges can't traverse the open seas, and oceangoing vessels aren't exactly good for condusting trade on that river...we need a port where the river meets the ocean. A port facility needs workers, workers need homes, and workers need services nearby...provided by other workers and by merchants. So yes, we need a city there.

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[drgonzo59]

I still don't think that if they were to rebuild today from scratch New Orleans would become a metropolis just because there are tons of raw materials going through.

It is the human travel and small consumer goods like shaving cream, shoe shine, as well as food such as grains and meat that will have to pass through there _and_ have no better way to go but by river. That was the case, but it is not the case anymore. You can build a large city in the middle of the desert today (think Las Vegas) and connected it by highways and an airport.

The point being that it probably is a bad idea to build any large cities on that coast that are located below sea level.

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[Liam Slider]

I still don't think that if they were to rebuild today from scratch New Orleans would become a metropolis just because there are tons of raw materials going through. It is the human travel and small consumer goods like shaving cream, shoe shine, as well as food such as grains and meat that will have to pass through there _and_ have no better way to go but by river. That was the case, but it is not the case anymore.

Those "raw materials" you scoff at are pretty important. Coal and oil are major energy sources, steel is vital to a lot of industries, salt is important for a lot of reasons, timber is vital to construction and various industries that work in wood, and...oh wait, you didn't ignore grain...possibly the single largest trade good along the river. Closing down the cheapest trade route for these basic goods means that housing gets more expensive, electricity goes up in price (coal is the major source of electrical power, particularly in the USA)...not only people's homes would be disrupted but industry as well, gas prices skyrocket...which effects everything that is transported by truck around the country, including food, and consumer goods. Cost of steel would increase, meaning the cost of everything made from steel would increase...so everything from construction to the auto industry would take a hit.

You didn't really think out the economics of it did you?

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[DerekLyons]

I understand that it was the intersection of trade routes back in the day, but what is there today?

Among other things - a massive intersection of trade routes.

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[AGMW]

Anyone visited Seattle?

It was too near Sea Level, so they raised it! Obviously, Seattle isn't actually sinking, which helps, but wouldn't this be a great time to raise the level of New Orleans to sea level or preferably above the projected flood level?

It'd be a big project, but maybe not much more expensive than building the levees?

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Hint, the title of the post I was repling to was "Should've listen..." I was pointing out a scenario in which the opinion, Don't build a city there(in regards New Orleans) given by people(yes, I realize I was over generalizing since the native americans are/were not a monolithic society) who might not have the most enlightened view. Hint: mistaking opinion for fact is a common /. mistake. Speaking of common /. mistakes,the apparent anti-humor bias, since my post was more to point out the parent posts complete lack of understanding of the economic importantance of the port of New Orleans. A feat that was far better accomplished by another poster.

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

a significant part of it's economic life

"its".

Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

which effects everything that is transported by truck

"affects".

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

But I thought god was going to rebuild New Orleans!

WARNING: Ignore Nature at Your Peril

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the reasons that flooding in New Orleans was so severe is that industry and government colluded to destroy most of the marshlands that acted as a natural barrier to prevent flooding in the low-lying areas.

Without this barrier, the waters just poured right into New Orleans, killing tens of thousands of people.

For years, ecologists and environmentalists have warned us to preserve nature; otherwise, we will be hurt. Unfortunately, their warnings fell on the deaf ears of politicians in the pockets of big business.

Now, we are screwing up the oceans. The ecologists and environmentalists are warning us about overpopulation. Teaming populutions tend to produce a huge volumes of trash, pollutants (e.g. dioxin), and waste. The oceans have become a huge garbage can. Meanwhile 3 billion people in Asia are eating fish into extinction.

That little salamander, the spotty owl, and the plankton in the sea that you are saving might one day save your life. When they are extinct, you just might be next.

Re:all they needed

[ackthpt]

I've heard of Meijer Thrify Acres, which is a large warehouse-type supermarket/general store around the Great Lakes region. But I can only imagine that Meiji Thrifty Acres is some kind of Japanese knock-off.

I meant Meijer, but typed Meiji (Emperor of Japan, 1857-1912) by force of habit.

"Thrifty" wore wooden shoes (clogs) and had a page-boy hair cut. I don't think you see him associated with the retailing giant anymore. Probably would have been available to stick his finger in the levee in New Orleans, though as I recall there were two breaches separated by some distance.

Interesting that Chicago, near Lake Michigan, used to flood and if you drive around a bit you can find entrances to the under city. IIRC elevators in many of the buildings close to Lakeshore Drive reflect this.

You Can Almost...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can almost hear the phones ringing at Haliburton even as you read this, can't you.

Let's not make this a "Swamp Castle"

[sleighb0y]

" Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands."


Let's use this tragedy to move the people to some place that is safer, preferably ABOVE sea level. I can understand the "Let's rebuild it and make it stronger!" spirit, but the money it will take to rebuild and then make flood protection that we THINK is adequate ( you know, like they THOUGHT was good enough back in the late 1960's ) would be much better spent in relocation.

To add to Patton:

[hcob$]

Patton "If men have conqured mountains and oceans, anything built by man can be overcome by man."

By extension, anything built by man can be overcome by nature. Ask any geologist, the two most destructive forces on earth are water and time.

Re:To add to Patton:

[paxdan]

Pressure and time, and a goddam rock hammer

Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

The broken canal walls are all up near the Lake seawall built in the 1930s, reclaiming land once swamp (and lake bottom). City Park is a giant park through which the Bayou St. John still flows, along its ancient path, into the middle of town (thru some big pipes in places) to the center of the bowl, the bottom of New Orleans. All that is totally under water now: the 17th Street Canal was the main burst that flooded the town, and runs along the West edge of City Park, past the Bayou.

We should expand City Park to encompass the entire Bayou area, with no development, and lots of canals. Expand the Bayou itself in the bottom to become a giant reservoir. When storms approach, pump out the reservoir. Make all drains pass through the reservoir, a giant buffer. When rain and failed seawalls allow water into the city, funnel it into the reservoir, buying time. Pump the reservoir into the Mississippi and the Lake.

The seawalls and levees themselves are not fault-tolerant. They're static, brittle, and take the whole city with them when they break. Those walls should all have rail lines along their inhabited sides, separated from the water by the wall. When a storm approaches, dumpable sandbags can be rolled into place behind risky sections, or into broken sections, or just into staging areas for delivery by helicopter, boat or amphibious vehicle, or even human "bucket brigades" when all other vehicles fail. Ahead of the storm, the rails can carry cars of evacuees out. And the other 99.5% of the time, without emergencies, they can carry cars instead of highways (most cars on I-10 are "just passing through"), passengers and freight.

Or we can just put the Dutch in charge of the city. Then they'll do all those things I mentioned, and probably something with windmills. Amsterdam and New Orleans have a lot more in common than just negative elevation - and I'm not referring just to decades of Spanish dominion ;). But at least the Dutch will actually do it: they actually do things. Instead of leaving it up to the Army Corps of Engineers, which now must be spelled Corps e , which totally failed their mission - though it looks like they were set up for failure by the civilian leadership, for decades.

Or we can just let New Orleans rot. Along with the rest of the country. If it can happen to a city everyone loves so much, that's so important to our economy, where everyone knew it was RISK #1, why shouldn't it happen everywhere eventually - and not as slowly as in the old World Capital of Molasses.

Re:Bottoming Out

[Electric Eye]

Not to totally remove blame from the corps, but you do know their New Orleans buffer budget has been repeatedly cut for the past several years, don't you? Or have you fallen victim to the White House spin zone already?

Re:Bottoming Out

[hanwen]

Or we can just put the Dutch in charge of the city. Then they'll do all those things I mentioned, and probably something with windmills.

Not to mention coffeeshops.

(coffeeshops are the place they sell marihuana in NL)

Re:Bottoming Out

[JargonScott]

Ok, that's a fair arguement for the last several years. What's the arguement for the 40+ years before that? I'd doubt they went into spontaneous disrepair in Jan. 2000.

Re:Bottoming Out

[beanball75]

This might interest you:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/artic le_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313

Re:Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

Oh, no - the White House *is* the "civilian leadership", along with Rumsfeld. Personally, I want to see all those criminals drowned in an alligator tank. But that's not going to get New Orleans rebuilt right, except for the part where they're removed from office.

I've already heard that Halliburton is getting the contracts to rebuild "Baghdad by the Bayou", which is a crime itself. These people look at disaster mitigation neglect as marketing. And our lives (now undeniably) hang in the balance. We've got to get as many incumbents out of Congress in a year as possible. If the Democrats (who have their share of blood on their hands) take the House (where every seat is in an election) by greater than 10%, they could impeach Bush. Maybe force him out, if they take the Senate (where 30 seats are in an election) by greater than 10%. But at least keep Bush bottled up in defense, where he can do less damage. Then the cleanup in 2008. By then, they'll probably have pumped out New Orleans.

Re:Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

A hurricane generates 1.5E12W in 144KPH winds over 60Km. Katrina was 260KPH over 170KM. We're talking many times the global electrical generating capacity. Maybe New Orleans windmills aren't such a stoned idea...

The power of a single spacecake, though, can bend the fabric of spacetime. So we're really talking about relativistic energy. The Dutch are lightyears ahead of us in America, even with out Shell Oil.

- posted from Nieuw Amsterdam

Re:Bottoming Out

[Incadenza]

Amsterdam and New Orleans have a lot more in common than just negative elevation - and I'm not referring just to decades of Spanish dominion ;)

Big difference: our blacks (can't call them 'African Americans', these are mostly people and their descendants that came from Surinam, plus a lot of Senegalese, Ethopians, Gambian, etc) live in highrises. In case of a mayor flood they will only lose their bicycle paths.

Re:Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

IN New Orleans, most of the "highrises", especially residences, were "public housing projects" (American for "government ghettoes"). With ovre 65% of the city Black, most of them very poor, those highrises were full of Black people who lost everything. Though few had bicycles to lose.

I've never gotten to know an African Dutch personally, though I've met several in the Netherlands. But they're of course genetically pretty closely related to African Americans (except for their Euro American ancestors). The difference between the two African-descended populations is pretty clearly the society in which they live.

Re:Bottoming Out

[monophaze]

Your plan would flood my neighborhood next to City Park.

The broken canal walls were built in the last 10-15 years--not in the 30s. They failed because they are concrete walls built on top of a shorter dirt levee. The storm surge topped the concrete walls and ate out the dirt below causing the walls to collapse. Had there been more funding to create category 5 height walls perhaps they would have never failed.

Bayou St. John (along bottom in satellite picture) is capped off from the lake by a huge lock and is thus never a threat from flooding. The areas surrounding Bayou St. John flooded because of other levee breaches in the area.

Compartmentalizing the city with internal flood walls would be a better idea that might prevent one or two breaches from inundating the city. There was also a plan proposed to build a giant sea wall along I-10 near Slidell that would prevent storm surges from entering the lake. This might have prevented the storm surge from topping the levees along the canals.

Re:Bottoming Out

[Anonymous Coward]

The ACE's problems stem from massive lack of funding, not from civilian leadership. At least not directly. You could argue that the civilians have less sway in the DoD, but the fact that higher-ups fail to recognize the value of the environmental work the Corps does is more a matter of politics.

They have the same problem managing their training bases. The military tears them all to hell and then wonders why they can't train effectively on the land anymore, all the while ignoring the advice of the civilian environmental scientists in the labs (ERDC, etc.).

Re:Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

I agree that the canal walls were too low, and were designed to collapse in a F4 or F5 hurricane (whether intentionally or not is immaterial). But the fact is that they are collapsed, and your neighborhood is flooded. My old neighborhood is half flooded: at the edge of the Quarter, my house is apparently intact, and not standing in water. But across the street, Armstrong Park is a wasteland, the Treme is a swamp. Many of my friends' neighborhoods in Midcity, around the Bayou, and in the 9th Ward are under water. Fundamental changes are likely necessary to make New Orleans liveable in the 21st Century. I'm not glibly throwing out a plan without thinking of the consequences. But certainly some sacrifices have to be made. And someone's neighborhoods probably won't be coming back (many someones).

I think that reclaiming the old Back of Town from the Lake was executed in an unsustainable way. I think you misunderstand what I'm talking about: Bayou St. John isn't the source of the water flooding the neighborhoods. It's where the water goes. Rather than pretend we can fight the vast power of nature head-on, we must learn from our mistakes to do what we actually can, to get what we want. Like allow the water to enter the city when we can't prevent it, and spend our energy on making those floods controlled and manageable.

New Orleans once was already compartmentalized with neighborhood levees, as you suggest, in the wake of an earlier flood. When the next flood came through, people broke holes in the levees keeping the water in their neighborhoods (which was keeping downhill neighborhoods dry). So the next neighborhood flooded, and those levees were broken, and so on. These strategies that merely meet the force of Nature with force of engineering show how powerful ins Nature: a 90MPH/40mi-wide hurricane contains 200x the global electrical generation power; Katrina was many times bigger.

So I suggest we plan for "failover". That means sacrificing some land areas in populated New Orleans while it's manageable, rather than all of it when the crisis hits. Many of those areas we can't keep are really desireable property now: quiet, modern neighborhoods near the Park. And of course it's easy for me to say, since I already said my tearful goodbyes to the city when I moved back to NYC. But whose neighborhood should go? Just the poor people, even if their neighborhood isn't as useful a sacrifice in the engineering to protect the city?

I know what it means to miss New Orleans. I've cried often this past week, screamed at the set, sent money, helped find people, helped find people places to stay. I didn't think I could be more furious with Bush and Congress than the past 5 years, but this storm surprised even me - in revealing just how through was their failure. I've got other wheels in motion here in NYC that hopefully will have immediate and longterm benefits to saving the city - in my own relatively puny way. I hope every one of us is also doing what we can - together we can save the coolest, most unique city in America. But we have to accept that we might have to amputate to save this patient. No one's going to like it. Until I hear about a better operation, that's at least as likely to preserve her life, I'm sticking with this one, painful as it is.

Re:Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

The massive lack of funding is caused by the civilian leadership. Like Rumsfeld and the rest of his staff, who control the Army Corps of Engineers, who design, build and maintain the levees. Yet Rumsfeld has no problem getting hundreds of billions of dollars for invented threats of "WMD" in Iraq which don't exist.

I'm not sure where you disagree with me. That "politics" is the work of the civilian leaders, by definition. Bush is the Commander in Chief, now documented to have ignored not only requests and warnings from governors, congressmembers, government scientists, in the years before the crisis. But also ignoring the requests of LA Governor Blanco for troops just days before the storm. There's blood on their hands.

Re:Bottoming Out

[Qrlx]

There's blood on their hands.

Well, yeah, there's blood on their hands from Iraq too. (And Waco. And, ... damn. I was hoping for another 4-letter American fuckup with a "k" sound and I can't think of one. "Attica" is the best I can come up with right now, and that's not much. I really shoulda looked before I leapt.)

(ahem)

Well, yeah, there's blood on their hands.

Nobody seems to care.

We've settled into a bunker mentality, and noone's coming out until the storm is over, and in case you hadn't noticed there's bodies floating in the streets of New Orleans. Ain't nobody coming out who don't absolutely have to.

The funny thing is both the melancholy Left and the Congressional Medal of Irony flag-lapel-encrusted Right are hunkered down in their panic/control rooms while the vast middle of the country falls apart, quite literally around them.

There will emerge a leader, someone charismatic, and we will give him (or her, little plug for Hillary here) whatever they ask for.

Re:Bottoming Out

[volgers]

Disclaimer: I am not familiar with the actual geographical situation at NOLA.

> The seawalls and levees themselves are not > fault-tolerant. They're static, brittle, and > take the whole city with them when they break.

Please mod this up, that is one of the more insightful remarks so far. The Dutch system of dikes is designed do be (using an aerospace engineering term) fail-safe, i.e. some can fail without causing such havoc. The rivers are controlled using a so-called summer- and winter-dike. The latter is placed outside the inner dike and substantially higher. The inner (summer) dike contains the river in normal situations. In case of high water (usually occurring once or twice a year) the inner dykes overflow with the outer dykes keeping the water out. This also substantially increases the width of the river (double or more), increasing its volume and flow and reducing the speed of the water.

The advantage of the outer dike is that is is not continuously loaded with water pressure, also allowing easy regular inspection.

> Or we can just put the Dutch in charge of the > city. Then they'll do all those things I > mentioned, and probably something with > windmills. Amsterdam and New Orleans have a > lot more in common (...)

I think Rotterdam is more like it. Windmills have been replaced by modern pumps, though.. But the above would fit the bill.

Re:Bottoming Out

[Incadenza]

Really? In the coverage of Katrina I only saw at most 5-level apartment blocks. Goes to show how television distorts reality

Amsterdam Zuid-Oost (AKA Bijlmer) was on its way to turn into a ghetto a couple of years ago, but that development was stopped by demolishing some of the high-rises and replacing them with residential buildings. (a very controversial decision by the way)

The tragedy of the Bijlmer is that its roots were really Utopian, but the outcome was grim. Just as the flats in the Bijlmer were finished, the original Amsterdam population started to earn a lot more money, and moved to the suburbs. At the same time the oncoming indepency of the former colony Surinam led to a huge influx of poor blacks (with Dutch nationality), that were housed in the Bijlmer. And then it appeared that the strict division between work and living, between car and bicycle (fully funded on the city building ideas of Le Corbusier), made social control nearly impossible and gave a lot of room for petty crime. So the Bijlmer got a bad name, and started on a downward spiral which ended with some areas more or less taken over by junkies. A real pity, for the houses themselves were really nice, and the surroundings were large and green. This was public housing that was meant to elevate people, not to hide them from view.

And yes 'African Dutch'(*) would be similar to 'African Americans', they were shipped on the same ships from the same countries, they just ended up in South America.

(*) I _never_ heard that term being used in the Netherlands. There is a discussion about 'accepting our guilt for the slave trade', a discussion that is very one-sided for only blacks take part, whites just ignore it. But I don't think I ever heard somebody complaining about terminology.

Re:Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

Well, a Slashdot post can distort reality, too. Like mine: there aren't many highrise buildings in New Orleans, not higher than 5 storeys. Most of those are in the Central Business District (next to the French Quarter, originally called the "American District"). Most of those are corporate buildings, with several (corporate) hotels. And across town, near the City Park (adjacent to the Lake) are some luxury highrises. Of the small percentage of buildings that are highrises, a small percentage are residential, but a significant (not even sure if it's majority) percentage are public housing ghettoes. In New Orleans, with its liquid foundation, a 5 storey building is almost a "highrise" itself. Many thousands of poor people lived in 10 storey highrises.

I wonder how the AZ-O "conversion" you mention has worked out. I think I drove past them a few times, taking the long way out of the Center back to Schiphol (taking as long as possible to say goodbye to the only civilized city on Earth ;).

The urban "white flight" you describe played out exactly the same here in the US. Middle class people in the 1950s and 1960s were almost entirely Euro, and suddenly got enough money to finally leave the cities for brand-new suburbs all at the same time. The neighborhoods they left behind collapsed without their part of the economy. So the rent prices collapsed, even though landowners kept the ownership of most of the buildings. That meant that poor (mostly black and hispanic) people could finally move into those city areas close to work and services, but not buy the property.

So black people inherited already-collapsed neighborhoods, and continued to pay more to live there than if they owned, or if they owned in the suburbs (which often literally kept them out by force or other economics). As those black people, never organized, educated or capitalized to begin with, lived among the decaying cities, the suburban white people started to dismantle the economics that kept city services going, building the fake "Conservative" movement that means "free ride for corporate people".

White people work in the city, spending most of their day there, consuming services and earning good livings. Then they drive to the suburbs, where they spend their money. The political boundary means they don't pay taxes in the city for the services that support their jobs, and don't need services (even sidewalks) because they're rich enough to take care of themselves. And keep out the poor people.

For example, NYC used to charge a "commuter tax" for suburban workers in the city to pay part of their way. When Republican governor Pataki took over the state (from his suburban base upstate), he cancelled the commuter tax. Republican NYC mayor Giuliani did nothing to stop his Republican buddy from defunding the city, though it cut Giuliani's budget. I point this out because I fully expect the Republicans to push Giuliani into the spotlight, probably running him for president in 2008, to save their public image with the image of "the man who saved New York City" from 9/11/2001 disaster. When in fact Giuliani is the worst kind of fascist: a smart, efficient one.

So the result in American cities is that black people are left holding the bag, when white people desert cities and destroy them. New Orleans is one of the worst examples, with every problem compounded by generations, centuries of deep racism, often completely legal (Jim Crow apartheid through the 1960s, for example).

We have the "reparations" movement in America to compensate for slavery with money. Personally, I try to ignore it as much as possible, as it's wrong in every way. It ignores the link in slavery in Africa itself, where most slaves were captured and sold by Black or Arab Africans. It ignores the impossibility of deciding who's "Black", because most African Americans have some Euro ancestors, and many "white" Americans have some African ancestors - often all secret, covered up at the time and never recognized. It ignores the return to the

Re:Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

A hard day of defending the truth from a squad of freeper zombies repeating Karl Rove lies they heard on Fox news. Here's a short page of evidence which demonstrates that 1> Bush never called Mayor Nagin before Nagin ordered New Orleans evacuated (on 8/28/05, before the storm); 2> Bush called LA Governor Blanco as she was heading into her public announcement that she was backing Nagin's evacuation announcement; 3> FEMA chief Brown waited until after the storm was passed on 8/29/05 to start acting; and 4> LA Governor Blanco ordered evacuations and declared a state of emergency on 8/27/05, days before the storm hit, which means that Bush and his hirelings like Brown were responsible for sending in rescue, relief and all other federal assistance.

There are plenty of other pages out there that show that Bush and company are responsible for proactive action when such disasters strike. Even though Louisiana did what it was supposed to do, Bush didn't even need those formal actions - he's supposed to send in the force to help the people even if the state and city don't act. This is the Homeland Security plan that Bush himself presided over, after demanding $BILLIONS, years of effort, transforming America's security system after "everything changed" on 9/11/2001, and even running roughshod over our rights in the name of security.

There are still more pages out there that describe how Bush cut the budgets of agencies working to protect and mitigate New Orleans in the event of this absolutely predicted storm and its absolutely predicted consequences, like broken levees and devastating floods.

You won't hear much of those truths on Fox News. You will hear all of the lies Karl Rove is feeding them from his "treason bunker". And you'll get that witch's brew of lies and spin in all kinds of posts from Slashdotters using the Katrina catastrophe to spew their own prejudicial agendas in ignorant (or worse) Slashdot posts.

Re:Bottoming Out

[Qrlx]

Are you really saying that you want the Bush Administration, Halliburton, and the Army Corps of Engineers to built a hurricane defense system which has the added ability of being able to ship off all the undesirable poor black people in boxcars?

Re:Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

Of course I never said they were undesireable. But your point about nazis is well taken. For Bush to be ideologically consistent, he'd have to issue "NRA debit cards" to repopulating New Orleanians, so they could repurchase guns and ammo lost in the flood. So that kind of Final Solution could be "fair and balanced".

Re:Bottoming Out

[Qrlx]

For Bush to be ideologically consistent, he'd have to find a way to turn this disaster into a cash cow for Hallliburton.

Wait...

I've yet to take my pro-gun pro-NRA "gun laws cause crime" friends to task about relief workers and helicopters being shot at by New Orleanians, but I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Care to hazard a guess on the body count?

Re:Bottoming Out

[Doc Ruby]

I think they will count 12 thousand bodies. Because they've been predicting 10,000. And the Galveston flood was 15,000. By counting that number, they'll scare us more than they've been preparing. But they'll still get to say that this wasn't the worst disaster in American history, as if that makes it any better. But it does allow a little foothold for spin.

Personally, I think that easily 30-40,000 people died along the Gulf Coast that day. Because I lived in New Orleans, and seeing the people in the neighborhoods who were still there days after the storm, I know there's many people whose circumstances (regarding evacuation "preparedness", physically and mentally) were exactly the same as them. And they all were lost, though no one might count them or publicly admit they're gone. The officials never admitted they existed in the first place, so why should they start telling the truth now, when those people aren't around to prove them wrong?

Instead of science...

[JustNiz]

they should use Lego.

Re:Instead of science...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it'd be almost done then they'd have to ditch the project because they couldn't find any more grey blocks.

I propose building New Orleans with Scientology!

I've had it up to HERE with those Thetans just lazing around thinking they can siphon my lobes without doing some work!

A better idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

...would be to rebuild it with the power of pure mathematics. Does anyone here know the block transfer equasion?

Ah, yes, the Republicans.

[porkchop_d_clown]

It's all the Republicans fault.

For example, when, in spring 2005, the NY Times denounced the flood control projects in Mississippi as environmentally destructive boondoggles, that was clearly a trick by the Republicans to preemptively blame the greenies for the hurricane.

Rebuild? There's a Bright Idea.

[Mekkis]

What's the point in rebuilding? The city's already been destroyed and the increasing frequency and intensity of hurricanes in the central Atlantic & Gulf of Mexico means that we're just asking for another disaster. Whether or not you subscribe to global warming being human-induced is beside the point; the temperature of the Earth is increasing, as is the destructiveness of the weather.

The Netherlands argument just doesn't hold water (no pun intended) because that part of the world isn't subject to the same type of weather conditions - in other words, there ain't no hurricanes in the North Sea. There are also the economic factors to consider. The United States is in debt over its head and frankly doesn't have the financial resources to waste on rebuilding a city which would then require greater and greater expenditures of capital to keep from being inundated as the ocean level rises.

Rebuilding New Orleans shows stubbornness well beyond the border of idiocy and is a stunning example of the old axiom: "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." It also shows the tremendous amount of greed involved; whether or not New Orleans is rebuilt, the impoverished who have borne the brunt of this disaster will be left out of the process, except maybe as a disposable work force to exploit in the building of new condos and upscale developments that the real estate markets in New Orleans have been looking for an excuse to install -- especially since builders can use such low-wage exploitation as a tax write-off.

Then there's also the fact that developers were allowed to build in hazardous locations to begin with -- what with the Bush Administration doing away with the Federal land easements (wetlands) that existed as a storm surge buffer and turning it over to developers.

Sacramento, California is an example of just such short-sightedness. The Sacramento River flood plains are catastrophically inundated every ten to fifteen years or so. Despite this fact, developers have been allowed to build there because they've bought and/or sued the city & county into letting them do whatever in the hell they want. The developers have also stifled the environmental and news reports as well as done their best to obscure the historical record because such information conflicts with their immediate profit interests. The result? Houses get flooded, families are ruined and the taxpayers are left with the responsibility.

Frankly, developers don't give a shit whether five or ten years down the line those houses are flooded out and destroyed, incidentally sending into financial ruin the families gullible, desperate, uninformed and/or stupid enough to be living there. They've made their profits and get to hide comfortably behind the lawsuit protection laws established to prevent consumers from holding developers responsible for faulty and/or dangerous housing. Besides, the government will pay for disaster relief and subsidize the rebuilding efforts for a new generation of suckers -- because once those houses have been built, by God they've got to stay there.

With the the Bush Administration doing the best it can to aid unscrupulous businesspeople by circumventing legal measures set up to prevent people from putting themselves into harm's way, is it any wonder there's such a cry to rebuild New Orleans? You've got people who stand to make a killing by exploiting this very preventable disaster. But then again, I guess caveat emptor is the ultimate answer and anything else is heresy to the religion of the Free Market.

Let this also serve as a reminder those who believe overpopulation is a myth that not every square mile of the Earth's surface is inhabitable or arable.

dittoheads

[falconwolf]

Wetlands and delta conservation has long been a favorite target of dittoheads and other conservative groups, who have viewed it as a liberal waste of money and barrier to economic development. I wonder if they'll start to change their tune after this.

Doubt it. Dittoheads only go by what Rush says and he'll never admit to being wrong.

"Chilehead" Falcon

Protection against the sea is half the story

[Fjan11]

... flooding caused by rivers is equally dangerous, both in New Orleans and in the Netherlands. The article mentions the Dutch Delta works, which are now in place and protect against the sea. But last decade the Netherlands had a pretty close call when flooding of the Rhine almost created a disaster of a scale similar to that in New Orleans.

Interestingly, the answer to river flooding is not building higher dikes. It is prohibitively expensive to build them high enough and you would have an "iron curtain" in your countryside. The Netherlands now has designated certain sparsely populated areas as flood zones, and built dikes around those. In case of another imminent disaster those areas will be flooded draining water form the river. The people that live there will be reimbursed, it's much cheaper than building and maintaining higher dikes.

What Makes You Think Holland Has The Answer?

[the eric conspiracy]

The Dutch are facing some pretty severe long term issues with their system of flood control - the land behind the dikes is subsiding, and the global warming is causing sea levels to rise. To me the whole proposition that you can build for long term stability in a location like New Orleans is very questionable.

Re:What Makes You Think Holland Has The Answer?

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Also the Dutch have money. The state of lousiana doesn't.

Re:What Makes You Think Holland Has The Answer?

[apoc.famine]

Add hurricanes and the fact that likewise, New Orleans is and has been sinking since it was built, the prospect of rebuilding NO in place seems like sheer idiocy.

But I guess it comes down to how many people actually want to go back. From media interviews with a lot of the refugees in Texas, a large percentage may not go back. That sort of migration complicates the decision on where/how one rebuilds NO.

Re:What Makes You Think Holland Has The Answer?

[arrowman]

There's nothing wrong with the location. The problem is the piles the houses were built on were way too short.

Re:What Makes You Think Holland Has The Answer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, isn't it? Sort of like the myth of efficient, cost-effective health care in Canada. Or the myth of the US empire and its foreign policy of aggression increasing security. Even though there's solid evidence to the contrary -- even outright failure -- the state cheerleaders will never give up their game. Like some wild fantasy, their belief in the state trumps all logic. So as we see, once again, even in the face of outright failure, the statists STILL come out to cheer their "savior".

Unless Halliburton is an option

[0xdeaddead]

it'll never come to pass.

My god Dick Cheney is going to be so dammed rich!

Re:I've found this somewhere on the net, is it tru

[tazanator]

gee if the mayor would have used the city school buses they may have saved all those people, intsead they ruined a few hundred busses that they now expect the US taxpayer to replace. I'm sorry but they had 3 days notice it was coming and more than enuff resouces to EVACUATE like they had been told to do. Too many people belived it was someone elses job save everyone's lives. Than when they realized they had to do for themsleves they went overboard.

WTC vs New Orleans

[papasui]

I keep hearing people comparing the WTC vs New Orleans. Yes they were both disasterous that happened about the same time of the year but thats really where the similiarities stop. The WTC was a terroist attack not an an evitable act of god because a bunch of Frenchmen decided to build below sea level in a hurricane prone area. This isn't the first time New Orleans flooded, it won't be the last if they rebuild it. And fire that stupid-ass mayor for blaiming everyone except New Orleans.

Re:WTC vs New Orleans

[deathy_epl ccs]

It's just part of a grassroots campaign to blame Iran.

And fox news has credibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just read the blurb and it's totally unconvincing. the NYT was against the recent highway and energy bills because they're piles of waste, nto because of any one project involved.

Fox News has such a hard-on for the NYT it's unbelievable. When they put together any kind of reporting operation instead of 4 hours of loudmouthed opinion on prime time I'll think about taking them seriously.

Marti Gra

[falconwolf]

New Orleans was on the top of my list of places to visit in the next couple of years, but not anymore, I think I'll wait 10 years or so.

I haven't been there myself but I've wanted to go during Marti Gra (sic). Guess that won't be anytime soon.

Falcon

There's no point rebuilding... or is there?

[WillAffleckUW]

Until you commit to proper management of the New Orleans area. The land under the whole area will continue to subside until this is addressed.

Now this is an interesting viewpoint. In fact, one of the major reasons, other than the destruction of the protective barrier wetlands - excuse me, the development of them, is that we no longer permit NOLA to be flooded annually and covered in silt which then builds up. Originally, most of NOLA was built with living rooms and such on the second floor and above, to permit this.

Then, periodically, people would raise the level of the house and build a new foundation - if they much of one, since most had raised porches at the very least.

This is more likely useful in a river delta, and permits gradual change. It does require tech things like power, cable, DSL, phone, etc to be elevated (on telephone/utility poles) usually, or at least kept in conduits.

Relocating New Orleans victims

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly off topic but what is going to happen to all the Katrina refugees that have no place to go back to and need to be relocated? The American Voice suggests that they be offered free farm land in a homestead program. The article is "Relocating the Victims of the 8/29 2005 Katrina Catastrophe" "A simple plan to give Katrina refugees their own new homes and new lives." It sounds like a neat idea. This program sounds like it ought to be opened to all homeless Americans.

Re:Relocating New Orleans victims

[papasui]

If they don't have insurance the government can give them an approximate amount for their home if they build it somewhere other than a flood plain. Re-building New Orleans in the same spot is stupid because it will happen again.

Pumping water where????

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read daily about how toxic and environmentally hazardous the water is in New Orleans, full of potential sickness like dysentery (spelling?), oil spills and gasoline spills from cars and gas stations, etc.. and how all of this is terribly dangerous to the people living there.

My question is "Why and where are they pumping the contaminated water to?". Aren't they concerned that they are moving a contained hazardous area to another location and increasing the danger zone?

no thinking person would wish to refuse

[carmaggedon]

parent is being absurd.
how many cities in this country are 100% 'safe' from disasters? should people all abandon san francisco? an earthquake will hit the bay area again at some point. should we never again build a tall building for fear of terrorists? perhaps all floridians should be relocated? i seem to have noticed florida getting hit by a hurricane or two. saying that new orleans should not be rebuilt is heartless and dumb. this is a major port city, which are built by water for a reason. (a port where the mississippi meets the gulf has a certain logic to it, no?)

besides which, it's a beautiful city. i'd say the best in the country. abandoning new orleans would be a loss for the entire world. a suggestion to relocate a city of 500,000 permanently is not 'insightful.'

Re:no thinking person would wish to refuse

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the parent is absurd in the least. Asking how many cities are 100% safe from disasters is not the correct question to ask. The correct question is whether it makes sense to build a city using federal tax dollars when there is a relatively large chance that the city will be wiped out in a few years.

N.O. has just been devastated by a hurricane near-miss. This event will probably happen again within the next 50 years. Maybe it makes sense to avoid this destruction by building in another location.

As for Florida, yes, I think it makes sense to consider whether it's a good idea for the federal government should continue to rebuild the coastal sections every few years. It's time for people to start considering the consequences of risky behavior such as building a city in a sinking bowl below sea level.

I don't really care about the use of state tax dollars, it's only federal dollars that concern me.

Politics and big government

[Megane]

While it's nice to talk about all the cool things that can be done, they can't be done unless those who can do them actually want to do them. I have heard that the reason New Orleans didn't have redundant levees is purely political. Each levee has a separate managing board, and this situation is apparently part of the Louisana constitution. Nobody on the boards wants consolidation because they'd lose their cushy government position, and even then, it would still have to go to the voting booths in each parish.

The only shortcut I can see is for someone in DC to declare them an issue of "interstate commerce" (with some sort of excuse like that they are along navigable waterays) and take over management at a federal level.

All the science in the world won't help if fat-cat local government doesn't want things to change from the status quo.

Why build skyscrapers?

[StevenMaurer]

The low-built Pentagon was hit just like the WTC buildings on 9/11 and it didn't collapse to the ground. So if we're going to say New Orleans shouldn't be rebuilt under water, why are we building gravity-defying skyscrapers?

And remember, "nature" doesn't want so many people on the Earth. We're way beyond what most species' population limits. Should we just let half the human population die off?

Personally, I'm all in favor of respecting nature. But I don't think we should surrender to it.

Re:Why build skyscrapers?

[WillAffleckUW]

The low-built Pentagon was hit just like the WTC buildings on 9/11 and it didn't collapse to the ground. So if we're going to say New Orleans shouldn't be rebuilt under water, why are we building gravity-defying skyscrapers?

Because rich people want them. And, after all, isn't that more important than people living in a city that has been in France, Spain, and the USA, and many inhabitants have lived there for tens of generations ...

Re:Why build skyscrapers?

[Ann Elk]

Should we just let half the human population die off?

No, just the politicians.

Re:Why build skyscrapers?

[Lord Ender]

Actually, nature just doesn't want to be anthropomorphized.

Re:Why build skyscrapers?

[Steeltoe]

Personally, I'm all in favor of respecting nature. But I don't think we should surrender to it.

Before we can surrender to nature, we're going to continue living in conflict with it. It's not until we work with nature, that we can live peacefully and in harmony. Of course, they are both co-dependent, so when it happens, it just happens.

To spend billions of dollars in rebuilding land that will ultimately end up on the bottom of the ocean, seems like a step in the wrong direction to me. It might be ok, for one, maybe two generations, but sometimes in the medium future it WILL become a loss, again. Why invest in a loss now, rather than cut the losses? The only reason must be because people are only thinking of themselves and their own lifetime, their kids be screwed.

It seems sad to me that only a major global crisis can make people wake up to the reality - To see how things really are. But we still have the choice, we just need to let the ego go. We can do it the easy way, or the hard way. Nature will provide both options, but it depends on us and our willingness to change and be flexible, like nature.

Re:Why build skyscrapers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Btw, surrender requires the most strength. Only the strongest can allow themselves to surrender, while the bone-headed go down with the changing tides. It's not about who wins, but not being affected by anything coming, being able to ride any wave gracefully. It's when you start struggling and fighting, everybody loses.

What do highway and energy bills have to do with

[porkchop_d_clown]

them blasting the Corps of Engineers for wasting the taxpayers money on flood control projects?

Rebuilding New Orleans with...

[SamAdam3d]

voodoo magic.

Let the fishes have it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I live on the coast, not far from New Orleans. I think it should be abandoned and left to sink. However, there are many political forces at work and here and it will be rebuilt.

There is a small barrier island off of the cost where I live. Its west end gets destroyed every time a storm comes within a hundred miles. It actually erroded into several pieces this time. But, it is expensive beach front property so it will be rebuilt again - with our tax dollars.

Re:great, but....

[WindBourne]

There is a park down by Costa Rica ; Jurassic Park; It helps to bring back old things. Want to visit?

I wonder...

[StarfishOne]

I really wonder if, besides the water/flooding problem, there's another problem:

poisonous/contaminated deposits of mud which will have found it's way into every corner of every building by now.

If that is the case, you'll have to remove -assuming the correct approach- the top layer of soil after the city is dry. :O

perhaps that mud could be stored securely and contained in an island just before the coast though..

but ultimately, I'm not an engineer .. so I'm just thinking out loud.

perhaps all floridians should be relocated?

[falconwolf]

Though I don't live there anymore, I grew up in Florida and friends of mine and I had this saying that you could tell the difference between true Floridians and transplants. When a hurricane comes along, while transplants throw their arms up in the air and scream "Let's get out of here", the Floridian says "it's time to batten down the hatchs.

Falcon

Science can't trump corruption, or can it?

[WillAffleckUW]

I agree, and if there are those who were confused by my original wording then I'm glad you clarified that point.

Instead of spending our tax dollars to help the people of america, Bush's policy of War/Oil over the last 5 years has smeared our countries reputation around the world, suffocated our economy, tripled gas prices, and left millions of americans helpless. Bush, Cheney, Rove etc. have justified all of this in order to make more money for the defense industry and the oil industry(businesses that 90% of Bush's people hail from). It's grotesque. This is not the country I grew up believing in.

Oh, you're from Canada too?

Re:Me too! The war in EyeRack would have qualified

[anagama]

While I agree that war in Iraq is an utter waste of resources and a complete subversion of all good sense, I also think that New Orleans' issue is primarily a local issue. Why should people who live in relatively safer areas, subsidize the choices people who live in NO have made? I've never been in the south and I even I've heard that NO is below sea level -- surely the locals were very aware of their situation. What stopped them from raising taxes to pay for the needed protective measures? If the the local taxes were so astronomical as to make it financially impossible to build there ... well isn't that a clue? Hiding the costs by shifting them to non-locals merely encourages local behavior that meshes poorly with the environment.

Anyway, my point is that economics can sometimes point to behaviors that are environmentally unwise. I'm all for helping people relocate and get back on their feet. By the same token, the money will just go down the drain if it is used to rebuild in the same spot. People want to do that, fine it's their business and their dime. Just don't take that dime to do stupid things from me.

Re:What do highway and energy bills have to do wit

[beanball75]

It's really damn hard to tell without the original article which they helpfully neglected to cite.

Lake Ponchartrain

[thelizman]

And your last sentence is falsely predicated. By taking a concentrated toxic threat and diluting it, they're reducing the overall danger.

Re:Lake Ponchartrain

[ScrewMaster]

True ... but I'm not sure I'd want to live along the shores of Lake Ponchartrain just now.

Re:Lake Ponchartrain

[thelizman]

You didn't want to live there before, trust me.

(Where do you think half the poop goes?)

Re:Lake Ponchartrain

[ScrewMaster]

As Johnny Carson used to say, "I ... did not know that."

below sea level in 2040?

[porkchop_d_clown]

New Orleans has always been below sea level. They keep pumping water out and then developing on the new "dry" land.

That's the problem. You'll notice that the oldest part of the city (the French Quarter) is also one of the driest? That's because it was built on land that wasn't "reclaimed" from the swamp.

Re:below sea level in 2040?

[chill]

Actually, when New Orleans was founded, it was about 160 ft ABOVE sea level. It has sunk over the past couple hundred years.

In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[LWATCDR]

The breach was not on the wetlands side but on the lake side. Even if the Delta was fully restored it wouldn't have made any difference this time.

If the storm had come in more to the west then it might have made a difference but I really doubt it. A category 4 or category 5 storm hitting a major city is going to cause a vast amount of destruction. Fixing the delta is valuable for many reasons including protecting New Orleans from floods it's just that in this case it wouldn't have made any difference.

We are in a natural cycle of more and stronger storms. It has happened before. As strong as Katrina was she was weaker than the Galveston Hurricane, the labor day Hurricane, and even Camile. Of course that is like saying an atomic bomb is smaller than the Ivy Mike test bomb.

The thing that cost lives in New Orleans where the actions of the Mayor of New Orleans, and the Governor of Louisiana.

No one that lives in New Orleans should have been bussed to the Superdome! The same buses that took people to the Superdome should have taken them out of the city to shelters outside the flood zone.

The lack of police, food, water, and medical care in the Superdome was the fault of the Mayor of the city and the Governor of the state.

FEMA's failure was in not realizing that the Governor and the Mayor cared more about the French Quarter than about people's lives. I get sickened every time I hear the Mayor say, "The good news is the French Quarter is is good shape. New Orleans will live again." Frankly I would have traded the French Quarter for the hospitals and peoples homes any day! What people that have never dealt with a Hurricane don't understand is FEMA is supposed to come in after the disaster and send supplies and help where the local authorities tell them. In this case the local authorities where criminally stupid or just criminals.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shh!! That's not the official story line!

The official story is that it's not the local government's fault for not following its distaster plans, and its not the state government's fault for not mobilizing its law enforcement forces in time... no, its the federal government's fault, well, just because!

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[subterfuge]

and next, in an effort to distract us from the truth they will eventually play the race ca...

oh, wait, my bad.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Rei]

Apparently you're woefully unaware that Lake Pontchartrain is (well, was) surrounded by wetlands on all sides. Oh, and in case you don't know what FEMA's job is and what they were *supposed* to be doing, here's a link:

DISASTER. It strikes anytime, anywhere. It takes many forms -- a hurricane, an earthquake, a tornado, a flood, a fire or a hazardous spill, an act of nature or an act of terrorism. It builds over days or weeks, or hits suddenly, without warning. Every year, millions of Americans face disaster, and its terrifying consequences.

On March 1, 2003, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). FEMA's continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates proactive mitigation activities, trains first responders, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration.

Certainly the local and state governments deserve a huge amount of blame for not having concrete evacuation procedures ready for the poor, but the federal response - FEMA's only serious duty - was outright embarrassing. And I know you don't want to fault the administration, but their vacation schedule while people were dying was outright embarrassing - Bush, flying over *two days* after New Orleans flooded, was among the first, with Cheney still vacationing in Wyoming, Andrew Card vacationing in Maine, and Condi spending the day shoe shopping at Ferragamo's and watching Spamalot.

The bomb wasn't just dropped - it was negligently tossed aside. As the city drowned and went to anarchy, no active duty military were sent in, and only a handful of poorly equipped national guard (the 256th's support brigade having most of their disaster recovery eq). FEMA toyed with the idea of getting school bus drivers to pick up people while squallor gathered at the superdome and thugs terrorized the convention center. Food and water weren't anywhere to be seen. Etc.

There's a lot of blame to go around. A damn lot. People have a right to be furious, at a lot of people - local, state, and federal. And I join them.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no.

If you are a Republican, then this is obviously the fault of the Mayor and the Governor (both Democrats).

If you are a Democrat, then the fault is placed on the Federal response (since the Fed is mostly Republican today).

If you are a Green, then it's the whole paving of the wetlands thing.

If you are a Libertarian, then the government shouldn't have done anything at all.

If you are a Communist, then you would live like the refugees are even under normal circumstances. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the communists have 1,500 doctors waiting for the overburdened and humiliated capitalist government to allow them to help.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[electroniceric]

No one that lives in New Orleans should have been bussed to the Superdome! The same buses that took people to the Superdome should have taken them out of the city to shelters outside the flood zone.

Volume flow: to move the same number of people 10 times further in approximately the same amount of time, you need 10 times more moving capacity.

The lack of police, food, water, and medical care in the Superdome was the fault of the Mayor of the city and the Governor of the state.

Mightn't it have just a little bitty bit to do with so much of the National Guard being over in Iraq, and with FEMA being run by a group of Bush campaign workers (read their bios) with no disaster management experience?

For Pete's sake, this kind of thing is exactly FEMA's mandate: provide resources to avert and mitigate emergencies. In other words, FEMA should have had the place crawling with responders and National Guardsmen the moment the state of emergency was declared on August 26th. I'll bet you 25 bucks that the head of the agency not only keeps his job but gets a raise. Seriously, I'll make that bet.

I say this and I'm one of the people who thinks that FEMA is way too quick to offer people money to rebuild their waterfront condos every time a flood or hurricane happens. But when push comes to shove, it is our nation and our government's responsibility to avoid the kind of human tragedy that happened in New Orleans, and that job primarily belongs to FEMA.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Rei]

(since the Fed is mostly Republican today)

Nitpick - it's "toady", not "today", and it should be pluralized (since the Fed is made up of multiple people).

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[psyon1]

If you are a resident of New Orleans, then you should have left when they told you to.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Anonymous Coward]

Over two thirds of the LA National Guard are in the US, and only half of those were mobilized before the hurricane hit. It was the responsiblility of the State's governor to call them up and have them prepared for the disaster. The standard that every state knows about is that you are on your own for the first 72-96 hours, so be prepared. They were not. Do some research before spouting your bullshit.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Rei]

Lets try out a couple wise-arse replies to this one. :)

"... whether you can walk or not be damned!"

"... whether or not there is any available transportion in the city when you don't have a car be damned!"

"... whether or not your plane got cancelled on you be damned!"

"... whether or not you're assigned to stay for vital services (prison guards, hospital workers, police, etc) be damned!"

Come on, I've got a dozen more!

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[psyon1]

"... whether you can walk or not be damned!"

So how do you get food? where are those people who helped you then? Do you have any friends or family?

"... whether or not there is any available transportion in the city when you don't have a car be damned!"

Everyone has two feet. They had notice days in advance, and were told to prepare for the worse. They should have started walking.

"... whether or not your plane got cancelled on you be damned!"

See Above, or drive.

"... whether or not you're assigned to stay for vital services (prison guards, hospital workers, police, etc) be damned!"

Had the normal civilians not chose to stay, there would not have been need for anyone else to be there.

The fact of the matter is, people chose to stay, and still are. They are finally being told to leave or they would not recieve any more food or help. That should have been the deal the whole time. "The city is probably going under water, get out now or your fucked!"

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Anonymous Coward]

Barrier islands and wetlands do help protect against storm surge, but in this case storm surge was not the problem. Storm surge occurs to the right of the hurricane track. If anything, the sea level near New Orleans would have fell, though I suspect it would be by an insignifigant amount. Notice the wind damage was from the North. Clearly the wind was not pushing water up from the Gulf (storm surge scenario).

Wind blew rain and water from the north across the lake, eroding the levees. City officials pay for studies to design levees and sewage systems for particular catagory of storm and hope that a stronger one does not come while they are in office. Preparing for too strong of a storm costs a lot of money. Clearly New Orleans was underprepared.

It has long been known that a strike by a strong hurricane would flood New Orleans. It almost happened last year but people ignore it as soon as the threat is over. The forecast was right on in this case several days in advance.

This was a disaster for the following reasons:

People did not take the threat seriously and get out. The forecast was accurate and timely.

The city held evacuees in the superdome. Why would you keep evacuees from the city IN the city they're being evacuated from? The superdome was supposed to and did protect them from the winds of the hurricane. But the threat to New Orleans was flooding. In fact in all hurricanes the threat to life is almost entirely flooding (i.e. storm surge), not wind/rain.

People who could not afford to leave and the city/state did not provide a solution. Sure we should not expect a free lunch, but this is an emergency and it's quite a bit more expensive to get them out after the waters have come. People should have had the opportunity to be bussed out for free.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[LWATCDR]

"Mightn't it have just a little bitty bit to do with so much of the National Guard being over in Iraq, and with FEMA being run by a group of Bush campaign workers (read their bios) with no disaster management experience?"
Actually not at all. Louisiana national guard had thousands of members still at home. They where not fully mobilized before the storm. If you do not like the war in Iraq then speak about that but that had nothing to do with this disaster. I am not gung ho for the war in Iraq but a red heiring is a red heiring. FEMA can not call up the national guard. In peace time and yes the guard is still at a peace time footing the National guard is under the control of the Governor of the state. The federal government ask the Governor to give them the control of the National Guard. She refused.
The Police is under the control of mayor and the state police are under the control of the governor.
FEMA screwed up but even if they had been their within minutes many people would have still died because they had not been evacuated. The city would still be destroyed. FEMA has no mandate to evacuate a city before a disaster. FEMA has not mandate to take control of the police or National Guard away from local government. I don't care if FEMA was run by trained monkeys. That in no way relieves the Governor of the state or the mayor of their criminal neglect of their responsibilities. FEMA's errors pale in comparison to the failure of the local government. This failures are what cost the majority if the lives. If New Orleans had been evacuated then the death toll would have been much lower.
BTW FEMA can not call up one National Guard member and it is illegal for the regular military to act as a police force in the United States. These are good laws for the most part. They protect the rights of the individual. In this they allowed the gross stupidity of the local government to cost lives. The head of FEMA should be fired. The Governor of Louisiana should be impeached! The Mayor of New Orleans should be put on trial for gross negligence.
People need to stop using this as a way to grind this or that political ax. If the Democrats where in the Whitehouse I am sure that the Republicans would be screaming that the cuts in military spending and base closures and their choice of the head of FEMA. I am all for fixing FEMA but the real cause is being totally ignored and this will happen again. Notice that the loss of life in Mississippi and Alabama will be much lower than in Louisiana. Mississippi suffered much greater damage when the storm hit but the state and local officials did their jobs.
And yes I will bring up race! Some people probably did die because they where poor and black. The racist act was NOT by the FEDERAL government but by the government of Louisiana. I heard that when people tried to walk out of New Orleans the meet up with local police with guns and dogs! They claim they where protecting their parish but that is just criminal. Again the these where local police under local control. Maybe the president should have declared martial law and taken over the state police and national guard but that would have been an act that would have had constitutional ramifications.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Rei]

So how do you get food?

  - The people at your nursing home feed you
  - You pay someone to bring food over once every couple weeks
  - Your mommy gets it for you
  - You wheel your wheelchair onto the bus to go to the grocery store
  - Etc

where are those people who helped you then?

  - They fled on their own
  - They didn't have enough transportation to bring everyone, so either stayed behind themselves so as not to split everyone up or just left.
  - The service ceased operating in advance of the hurricane
  - The service never left the city anyways

Do you have any friends or family

2/5ths of the city didn't own a car. In the poor areas, cars even rarer.

Everyone has two feet

Ah, I get it. They should have taken your idea, filmed it, and sold it as "The Elderly And Poor Try To Outrun The Hurricane On Foot 80-Mile Marathon, 2005"!

Any more brilliant proposals?

See Above, or drive

Ah, so now we're talking about "The Tourists' One Day Mad 80 Mile Dash Because Those Who *Did* Have Cars Already Evacuated Marathon, 2005". Remember, their flights were cancelled, without warning, 24 hours before the hurricane hit.

Had the normal citizens not chose to stay, there would not have been need for anyone else to be there

Hello? Prison Guards? Hospital Workers? Police? What the heck was your plan - prisoners choosing to leave of their own free will? A 24 hour evacuation of all of the hospitals in town with all of the vehicles fleeing, including those on intensive care or needing immediate surgery? (also remember, three days earlier, it was a tropical storm that everyone was saying was to re-hit Florida). Declaring the city a "Looters'
  Free For All" by taking out the police? Or an "Arsonists' and Weather-Caused Fire Damage Free For All" by taking out the firemen? I could easily keep going here. Seriously, what the heck are you thinking?

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mightn't it have just a little bitty bit to do with so much of the National Guard being over in Iraq"

Nope. Not even a little. Because the eventual response (that came too late) was fine and showed what could and should have been done in the first place. Note of course that response occurred despite the war still ongoing; no troops got redeployed from the Middle East afaik.

Remember, this was a hurricane that had been watched for days. The National Guard and military that were eventually deployed could have been on high alert ready to move into the region in case of disaster. Even the response that came when the hurricane hit, was days late, as everyone knows.

Remember, people knew this was going to be big. Just not exactly where, but certainly what region was going to get slammed.

This was a problem of planning and mismanagement, not manpower or the people who did make it down being inadequately trained. People should have been prepped as the hurricane was happening, even in the air flying to the region as the hurricane hit. Right now, it looks like FEMA and your other point may be spot on.

But not troop or Guard deployment. Frankly, the "troops were deployed in Iraq/our poor response" excuse is really just a disingenuous attempt to inflame and generate anti-war sentiment. To do so in light of this disaster is really just a pitiful political move on your part. There are plenty of reasons to dislike and hate the war in Iraq; this is not one of points where blame can be made though.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[LWATCDR]

"Certainly the local and state governments deserve a huge amount of blame for not having concrete evacuation procedures ready for the poor,"
And for not providing food, security, medical care, evacuating the hospitals, moving the cities school buses out of the flood zone....

" but the federal response - FEMA's only serious duty - was outright embarrassing. And I know you don't want to fault the administration,"
But I do fault FEMA. They could have done better. I also understand the problems.
Hurricanes are unpredictable.
Military airlift should have been called up sooner. Part of the problem is the city government said the day after the storm that New Orleans had escaped the worst of the storm. Remember the news stories? Then Blame! FEMA should have reacted as if the predictions had been correct which it turns out they where.

" but their vacation schedule while people were dying was outright embarrassing - Bush, flying over *two days* after New Orleans flooded, was among the first, "
That has everything to do with how things look vs how they are. Also the first day after the storm New Orleans said that they where okay." I will give you that it looks bad. Hell I am more upset that he went to the hurricane zone! Other say it helped. I am also pissed at the news people. Why did the shoot picture of sick and dieing people and then drive out of New Orleans leaving them!
Now they couldn't save everyone but how many lives does it take before it is worth doing!
What is getting me is all the people using this as a way to make their point! Good grief don't uses these people's death as a tool to make political gains. That is just wrong on so many reasons!

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[psyon1]

Ah, I get it. They should have taken your idea, filmed it, and sold it as "The Elderly And Poor Try To Outrun The Hurricane On Foot 80-Mile Marathon, 2005"!

With a few days notice, even the slowest person could have gotten out of town on foot.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Rei]

How many times do I have to point out that "a few days" before, Katrina was a tropical storm headed back to Florida? If you seriously thought that the elderly should have tried to walk out of town because of a tropical storm headed to Florida, you've clearly never lived in the south. You don't evacuate your own city when there's a tropical storm headed *straight toward it* (or even a weak hurricane, generally).

And if you think that the "slowest person" could walk 80 miles in even three days (let alone the one that they actually had), you're insane. Or, if you think that less than that would be a reasonable safety zone as far as a hurricane goes, you're still not quite right. You *cannot escape hurricanes on foot* unless perhaps you're a professional athlete and/or psychic.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Rei]

After the first day after the storm New Orleans said they where okay.

The storm struck on the 29th. The very next papers said they survived with heavy damage, but the levees held. That evening, the levees overtopped, and by morning on the 30th the city was starting to transform into a hellscape. The news was full of scenes of devastation, people stranded in New Orleans, the first reports of violence. Everyone was wondering the whole day why Bush had been spending his time posing for pictures and giving speeches on unrelated topics while we had our own little hellhole brewing on every network.

On midday of the 31st Bush finally decided to cut his vacation short, but simply flew over the area. Cheney was still on vacation. Card was on vacation. Condi was shoe shopping and watching Spamalot. The list actually goes on, but I don't have it on me.

The 1st? Bush held a press conference, but nothing else. It wasn't until the 2nd that he actually went on-scene. Meanwhile, Cheney and the other vacationers were still on vacation.

It's a horrible response - it makes them look insensive self-focused, especially combined with the fact that the whole time FEMA, the military, and the national guard were botching the relief effort and pretending that everything was going peachy. Every time I heard them speak about how wonderful things were, and then saw people crying and literally dying, the immediate question comes up: why on *earth* do these people still have their jobs? How can there be such a ridiculous disconnect? And why on earth do we have people with no emergency management qualifications heading FEMA at all?

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Anonymous Coward]

"And why on earth do we have people with no emergency management qualifications heading FEMA at all?"

And why does the new chief justice (Roberts) have close to 0 (None) experience as a judge in a court of law? And the list goes on forever. John Bolton hates the UN and he is our representative there. Apparently, if you are big in an oil company (on the board), then you get a top job.

People have been hoping that the majority will wake up to the lies that we live in for a long long time. It is a strange world.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[LWATCDR]

"On midday of the 31st Bush finally decided to cut his vacation short, but simply flew over the area. Cheney was still on vacation. Card was on vacation. Condi was shoe shopping and watching Spamalot. The list actually goes on, but I don't have it on me.
"
And if Bush had cut have ended his vacation 24 hours sooner would it had made a difference? If he had visited it would have take resources away efforts to save people. You said it. "it makes them look insensive self-focused". It makes them look. Again are you trying to fix the problem or find what you can blame on Bush? Are you letting these people suffering serve your goals?
It was not even in Bush power to evacuate New Orleans. It was not in his power to call up the National Guard. It was not in his power to put Police in the shelters.
If he had done any of these things it would have been abusing his office and breaking the law.
The majority of the blame for the deaths are clearly on the heads of the Governor and Mayor. The Federal Government made mistakes and could do better. The Governor and Mayor are guilty of manslaughter. What I am seeing is people wanting to ignore the criminal negligence of the Governor and Mayor because they think it will take the heat off of the President and the feel that laying blame on the Republican party and winning the next election are more important than showing where the real problem was and fixing it. The feel that their greater goal is more important then the truth.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[HungWeiLo]

Average annual income of whites in NO - $30,000
Average annual income of blacks in NO - $11,000

Disregarding the dispicable disparity between the two figures, even a $30,000 is really paltry for uprooting a whole family to move to another city.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[LWATCDR]

Walk to where? How do you carry the food and water you need? Where will you find shelter? What will you do with your children?
You are being a cruel idiot.
Even back in the days of the wild west before people tried to walk 80 miles they would spend weeks getting ready to go. Even with game too hunt and clean water to drink many died.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[unitron]

"With a few days notice, even the slowest person could have gotten out of town on foot."

With a few days notice sure. But with hurricanes you only get a few days notice of where it might go and how strong it might be when it gets there. If you evacuate a few days in advance you may find that you've moved to where the hurricane actually winds up hitting.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[psyon1]

You didn't have to walk 80 miles to be out of the flood zone.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[psyon1]

Yes, I am cruel. I firmly believe in survival of the fittest.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[psyon1]

Even with one day, the could have been to higher ground.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[tehdaemon]

"no troops got redeployed from the Middle East afaik."

Not correct. However the numbers were so small that your point holds. IIRC, there were less than 100 redeployed from Iraq.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[mOdQuArK!]

even the slowest person could have gotten out of town on foot.

Yeah, I can just imagine that 90-year-old with emphysema dragging his oxygen tank behind him for 80 miles - well, until the oxygen runs out anyway.

You must be one of those "compassionate conservatives" I've heard about - the way you don't let facts get in the way of a buttheaded theory makes it pretty obvious.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[glitch23]

And I know you don't want to fault the administration, but their vacation schedule while people were dying was outright embarrassing - Bush, flying over *two days* after New Orleans flooded, was among the first, with Cheney still vacationing in Wyoming, Andrew Card vacationing in Maine, and Condi spending the day shoe shopping at Ferragamo's and watching Spamalot.

What exactly do you expect them to do? They can survey the damage but they have underlings to do that for them. Do you expect them to pick up sandbags or starting handing out food? There are underlings for that.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[glitch23]

Mightn't it have just a little bitty bit to do with so much of the National Guard being over in Iraq,

You can play the war card all you like but it has nothing to do with Guardman over in another country. Not *all* of them were over there so it's not like we didn't have any left here. There are plenty to go around; it is just a matter of mobilizing them which could have been done ahead of the hurricane hitting to put them on alert.

From mercurynews.com: "There are plenty," said Lt. Col. Mike Milord of the National Guard Bureau. "There are about 331,000 Army National Guard and 106,000 in the Air Guard, so nationwide about 437,000. Subtract 100,000 for all deployment operations, and you still have 337,000 National Guard available." And sure, it may take longer to get Guardsmen in place if the wrong ones happen to be deployed in Iraq but read this: "Asked why out-of-state Guard units didn't come to the gulf earlier, Senator Bond said Missouri's troops were "in place and ready to move" but "they weren't requested." http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/po litics/12554783.htm

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Rei]

And if Bush had cut have ended his vacation 24 hours sooner would it have made a difference

Heck yes! FEMA was, by all standards, completely blowing a humanitarian disaster, and he was sitting on a ranch! When he first started to comment on it, what did he do? He praised "Browny" (pet name)'s 'great job' and stayed on vacation. Only after essentially a political riot in the media for the neglect of dying people did he actually get off his freaking ranch and do something - and even minimal "something" at that.

It was not in his power to call up the National Guard

It was in his power to call up the active duty army, which everyone was calling for him to do from the day that the violence broke out but wasn't done until several days later.

Put police in the shelters

All of the police force was busy (at first, trying to do rescues to make up for the lack of federal aid), so lets not try and pretend that there was some surplus police force sitting around. I don't fault anyone for that - I fault the mayor majorly for such humiliatingly bad evacuation plans (even with 24 hours notice, if they had prepared bus evacuations well in advance they could have gotten 90% of the remaining people out) and the governor for such a bad guard deployment.

The Governor and Mayor are guilty of manslaughter

And so is FEMA, more than anyone else. This is FEMA's *sole job*. The administration is in charge of who runs FEMA, and Bush was *congratulating* them as late as the 31st. It was sickening to watch, them going on about how peachy everything was, and how everything was getting to better, as the situation turned to hell. They put a fired horse lawyer in charge of disaster relief (and the rest of the cabinet-level FEMA positions also have no qualifications for the job - they're all campaign managers), and when they predictably bombed at the task before them, he *Congratulated* them for their fine job, on national TV. Literally, not figuratively.

Note that I'm not getting into the deployment of the national guard to Iraq. I'm not getting into army corps budgets. Anything like that. I'm soley talking about how they reacted to things *when they happened*. It was humiliating. People were dying and he didn't even stop his vacation. They were dying and he was congratulating "browny". They were dying, and the sec. state was watching "spamalot" and shoe shopping. How the hell can this not make you furious? Seriously? YES, the governor and mayor are incredibly culpable for such bungled preparation. But when this happened, *At Least They Weren't Congratulating The Handling Of The Unfolding Disaster While On Vacation*. How can that not get under your skin??

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Rei]

You had to walk 80 miles to get away from strong winds - did you forget what happened along the rest of the coast? You'd have to walk two dozen miles or so just to get away from the storm surge. They had 24 hours: better run.

Better film it.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[Rei]

I expect them to sack the incompetent fired-horse-lawyer head of FEMA instead of congratulating him with pet names as NO turns into hell (and only becoming critical once a political firestorm erupts, but still not holding anyone accountable). I expect him to deploy the active duty armed forces as soon as a city goes into anarchy instead of waiting a week.

And yes, I well expect him on the ground! People are dying; it's the least he can do to see it. In the old days, kings and emperors would ride into battle with their troops. When their people needed support and inspiration, a leader is supposed to be there. Heck, even *Clinton* of all people was on the ground after Andrew before it even stopped raining. And now, here we may have just lost 10,000 people, the levies had overtopped and the city was flooding in the nightmare scenario, and Bush spent the day giving a speech in San Diego and playing guitar with a country star. What the hell??!? Yes, the full horror wasn't revealed until later, but *bodies were floating in the water, the levies had failed, and the city was drowning*, and he was aloof. And the next day, he was congratulating the bungled rescue efforts and pretending things were fine!!

Sorry, he really made me furious with all of this. My apologies for getting emotional.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[unitron]

" Even with one day, the could have been to higher ground."

One day before the hurricane hit that higher ground could have been where the hurricane was going to wind up hitting.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[LWATCDR]

At least you admit that you are. A cruel member of a society is not to be trusted since they will take advantage and not contribute. Think of a member of a pack of wolves that preys on the pups of the pack. That renders them unfit to survive.
By your own standards your fitness is very much in question. You may want to think about that.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[d34thm0nk3y]

It was not even in Bush power to evacuate New Orleans. It was not in his power to call up the National Guard.

This website disagrees with you.

And I quote:
In addition, the President of the United States can activate the National Guard to participate in Federal missions.

Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped.

[glitch23]

I am angrier over the fact that city officials did nothing(they didn't call in National Guard from other states even when those Guardsmen were ready) and they are the ones who are actually supposed to be in charge when things like that happen. The President can come by, visit, and comfort people to show that he is willing to be down in the dumps when the going gets tough but the people who were supposed to manage the situation were not doing anything. I'd be more angry at the people who could have made a difference in fixing the problems rather than one person who could have just came down to comfort people a little bit. Unless the President is involved in making disaster recovery decisions (and although I'm not up on that type of stuff I haven't seen anything that says he makes those decisions) I don't think he had any pressing reason to visit the city. Besides, he may be congratulating them in public just because they finally did their job but ridiculing them in private because it took them so long to do it. As a manager you don't yell at your employees in front of their peers. As a side note, he visited NYC soon after 9/11 and was there on site with the firemen and he gave a good speech.

Re:WARNING: Ignore Nature at Your Peril

[MROD]

The problems with New Orleans runs far-far deeper than polluting etc.

New Orleans is placed on a river delta. After the sediments in a delta are deposited they are guaranteed to subside. It's a consiquence of compaction, de-watering and the isostatic response of the lithosphere below the basin to the extra load. Unless more sediment is added continuously the delta will eventually (and quite quickly in geological and indeed historical terms) sink beneath the sea.

When New Orleans was founded a few hundred years ago it was above sea level. (after all, who would found a town on a salt marsh?) Since then it's subsided continuously until today a great deal of the city is now below sea level and a great deal lower than the river (which has since built up its base by depositing sediment).

When the corps of engineers stopped the river naturally switching its channel (which it does around once every 1000 years) and straightened the current channel they put in motion a set of events which meant that the delta lost its sediment load to further out in the Gulf of Mexico as the river is flowing at a greater rate. This has caused the coastline (and all the natural defences) to not be replenished and go below the sea.

You may like to see this google cached article from a Baton Rouge newspaper in 2002. It gives a decent overview of the situation.

As a geologist, I would be in the camp which suggests that the government take this as an opportunity to move the city to higher and more stable ground and abandon the old city to be an archaeological curiosity and tourist attraction. Rebuilding it would merely prime the charge for an even bigger loss of life when, not if, the river breaks its banks. This time only the low-level lake to the north broke through which soon equalised its level.. this wouldn't happen with the great river.

How long do you want to fight a losing battle with the planet? How high do you eventually want the levees to be before you give up? When the city's subsided to the point where it's an isolated bowl in the ocean?

I know it's not going to be abandoned, there are too many politicians who have staked their carreer on the "we will rebuild it" bravardo and a King Kanute attitude.

(Before anyone corrects me about King Kanute, I know that the popular story is wrong, the King was trying to show how impotent he was rather than believing that he could actually stop the sea.)

Re:WARNING: Ignore Nature at Your Peril

[Anonymous Coward]

This had nothing to do with the flooding in NOLA. A floodwall between the city and the lake broke. Marshes south of the city wouldn't have much of anything to stop that flooding.

Nobody's read the Rift?

[PhoenixPath]

All this talk about levees, spillways, about how the Mississippi wants to move, was *supposed* to move, but for our convoluted measures keeping it in it's place....and no-one's mentioned this book yet.

Check it out...good book.

" The Mississippi Delta is a land that exists on sufferance of the big river. Only because the Mississippi stays behind its levees, follows its locks and spillways, and agrees to overflow onto its batture, is the area safe to live in. It's a complex system, decades in the making, and perfectly adequate to corral the waters unless something...catastrophic...were to happen."

Mod Parent up

[AlistairGroves]

N.O. really isn't anything like Holland, and the same rules shouldn't apply.

Dumbest Idea EVAR

[thelizman]

The people who were displaced by Katrina are predominately black, poor labor-class urbanites. You'll sooner make farmers out of them as you'll make engineers out of Montana Sheepherders.

Personally, I find the America Voice's proposition to be a racial insult. Forty Acres? And what...a mule? I think most of the people down there fell for that once alread. Lets try something a bit more realistic this time... like an affordable and accessible education.

Re:Dumbest Idea EVAR

[Anonymous Coward]

"You'll sooner make farmers out of them as you'll make engineers out of Montana Sheepherders." doesn't make sense.

Re:Dumbest Idea EVAR

[Anonymous Coward]

> The people who were displaced by Katrina are predominately black, poor labor-class urbanites. You'll sooner make farmers out of them as you'll make engineers out of Montana Sheepherders.

Now that is a racial insult. You are saying that poor black people cannot learn to be farmers!

Did you even read that article "Relocating the Victims of the 8/29 2005 Katrina Catastrophe" "A simple plan to give Katrina refugees their own new homes and new lives."? There is nothing in there about race. And it is voluntary. Don't you think the Katrina victims should be allowed to make their own choice about something like?

Re:Dumbest Idea EVAR

[thelizman]

Now that is a racial insult.

You're right. I should certainly apologize to the Montana Sheepherders. Meanwhile, it will take three to five years to teach someone how to farm. It ain't about plowing land and broadcasting seed. It requires considerable education, which is why farming tended to be a family trade. The skills needed to grow food, maintain a farm, and properly market goods requires years of education. In this day of fluid commodity prices, even long-time farmers are giving away to corporate farms and professionally managed coops. So don't insult farmers by suggesting what they do is somehow a no brainer. And don't insult these people in NOLA by telling them their current skillsets are irrelevent, and their government massa is going to tell them whats right.

Did you even read that article...

Yes, and I especially loved the part about giving them Farmland in Alaska - because we know how easy it is to make a living off of a 28 day growing season.

I also loved the part about giving them chainsaws to build thier own houses with. The folks camping out on overpasses, getting plucked from the roof of their homes, and waiting on relief supplies, are not at all equipped to live rustically. It takes an entirely different skillset to survive in the wilderness than it does to survive on 15th street and Jackson Ave.

And when it comes to choices - this is not a choice. This is bait. And it's a stupid plan at that. Figures it'd come from a collectivist indie propaganda mill.

cites...

[porkchop_d_clown]

This is true. Unfortunately, NYT makes you buy the right to read articles that old.

The reference is to an editorial on 24 June 2003 (that blasts the Army Corps of Engineers as wasteful and destructive) and one 13 April 2005 that attacks $17 billion earmarked for Mississippi flood control as a boondoggle and pork-barrel politics.

Good Point

[AlistairGroves]

I was wondering the same thing when reading an article saying they were pumping the water back into the lake. One dead lake coming up...

Rebuild somewhere else

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we rebuild the French Quarter so people can still get shitfaced at Mardi Gras, and we turn the rest of it into a national park.

It's just totally stupid to rebuild New Orleans and still have it under sea-level. Unless, of course, you want to hand a bunch of no-bid contracts to some US companies (oh, wait, we already did that in Iraq).

BAH!

Lessons from Monty Python

[Rei]

When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a city on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That blew down, flooded, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up! And that's what you're going to get lad, the strongest city in all of America!

Re:Lessons from Monty Python

[cluckshot]

And the oil industry will pump the support right out from under the city sinking the "Strongest City in all of America" beneath the waves. So unless its a submarine, don't buy there. New Orleans should be renamed New Atlantis.

Re:I've found this somewhere on the net, is it tru

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how the two comments on your post are people bitching about money.

Florida

[redeyeowl]

What happened in New Orleans is a tragedy and the people there do need help. But let's not forget the people of Florida who have not yet recovered from last year's 4 hurricanes. They need as much help today as they did before Katrina. Don't send all the funds to New Orleans Peter Kuhn Lakeland Florida doublewidetrailer@gmail.com

Places not to live

[geekwithsoul]

Please make a note not to live in any place that has:

- floods
- earthquakes
- wild fires / forest fires
- regular hurricanes and/or tornadoes
- blizzards / ice storms
- volcanoes

Hmm, I guess that leaves 1% of the land area of the planet worth living on.

Rather than bitch and moan about people living in the path of natural disasters, the money spent to rebuild, etc., why don't we try coming up with some real solutions.

The problem is not that New Orleans was destined to get obliterated at some point, as the same can be said about any major city. The problem is that between poor urban planning and poor emergency response planning, any city that gets struck by a catastophe (natural or man-made)is destined to become a cluster-fuck.

There is no such thing as a "safe" place to live, and in planning our cities and our responses to disaster, we need to recognize that and make plans accordingly. For example, if state and local governments spent a quarter of what they do for transportation on things like telecommuting, better designed cities, and other measures, when disasters do strike, their impacts would be much less.

Re:Places not to live

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget about astroids, but that would leave 0% of the earth as safe

Hypocracy of the NYT

[Leers]

Long record? Two editorials in 15 years? Saying a bill that had God knows what else in it besides flood control was "bad legislation?" Oh and are they opt-ed or actual editorials? opt-ed are the opinions of the editorial writers not the paper. Two editorial writers do need the non-conflicting view points. In fact, one of the signs of an unbiased paper IS having editorial writers that disagree!

It will take more then a random quotes from the Fox news spin factory to make me believe that. NYT may be a bit biased but its way more objective then anything that ever came out of Fox news.

Is technology the answer as TFA claims?

[krisamico]

The article was interesting. Before reading it, I did not know anything about the North Sea Flood or the Deltaworken that came of it. Right away, I noticed that the article takes a rather particular stance on the purpose and value of big projects such as these -- the problem is the sea, and we should invest in project such as these to keep the sea out of habitable land. I think the article would have been a lot more interesting had it included at least a cursory discussion of the fact that while technology like this has a temporary benefit, the problems caused by development in wetlands cannot be permanently solved.

IMO, the real problem with inhabited wetlands is not storm surge, but subsidence, which is what allows storm surge to inundate inhabited land. We populate the wetlands, pumping out the water which would normally bring along with it silt, which accretes, contributing the the land mass that will naturally buffer storm surge. Once inhabited, the land mass gradually subsides (sinks), making vulnerability to flooding worse. I believe that no technology will stop this.

If my opinion is a correct one, there is no prevention of such disasters, only preparedness and remediation. I live in the Los Angeles metro area, and I have the same problem. The best thing I can do is buy property on land out here that the USGS has not identified as prone to liquefaction or heavy shaking and hope for the best. I do not expect my government to build an $8 billion gadget to protect me, because there is no way for sure to know that it will even work!

What I am left wondering is whether or not the people of NO expect to be protected, and would it even be worth it to try. These people live in a dangerous area, just like me, and I think that money spent on disaster education and readiness would probably be well spent, as opposed to wasting billions fighting nature in a losing battle. Our arms are too short to box with God, so perhaps it would be better to spend money on learning to roll with the punches. Based on the chaos and loss of life I saw, I don't think anyone down there was even the least bit prepared. I see the same indolence here in L.A. where I live, and a lot of people are going to die some day because of it.

Whatever

[N8F8]

Maybe if all that money wasn't going to the Big Dig there would have been enough left over for New Orleans.

Bzzzzt!

[n6kuy]

...but for a heroic captain who plugged a breach in a dike with his ship.

Wha?
It was a little boy (Hans Brinker?) and his finger that saved the dike! Everybody knows that..

Re:Bzzzzt!

[DoktorTomoe]

The legend of the brave Dutch boy - by others thought to be named Hans Brinker - who supposedly put his finger in the dyke to prevent a flood, was actually a literary invention by the American writer Mary Elizabeth Mapes Dodge (1831-1905), who was born in New York.

From http://members.chello.nl/m.jong9/map12/hansbrinker .html

I Have One Word To Negate Your Whole Post

[thelizman]

Venice.

Re:I Have One Word To Negate Your Whole Post

[Mekkis]

Especially because of all those hurricanes that happen in the Adriatic. Tragic, indeed.

The Italian government spends a tremendous amount every year to keep Venice above water and much of that money comes from tourism. There also isn't a whole lot of development occurring within the city either. However, should that funding be cut and an equally destructive event occurs a few years down the line that inundates & destroys Venice, it would be equally pointless to try and rebuild it.

Hey, why not bring back Alexandria while you're at it? The lighthouse has been found in the Mediterranean, so the city's got to be around there somewhere. People would love to live there-- think of the amount you could make on tourism!

Re:WARNING: Ignore Nature at Your Peril

[handorf]

You're a little out of touch... the current crop of Americans and our Government won't be swayed by your so called "facts".

Besides... we have cash to burn. Iraq can't be costing more than about a billion dollars a week now.

We have God on our side! New Orleans will rise again!

(Can I buy that ticket to someplace else yet? I'm looking for hard vaccum and a nice view of the asteroid belt...)

Low tech solution

[HermanAB]

Stilts. Simply mandating that all dwellings must be built 3 feet above the 2005 flood level will go a long way to mitigating damage. All houses there are built on piles and a concrete slab anyway, so just make the damn piles taller. Then if they do flood again, little damage will be done.

Re:Low tech solution

[n6kuy]

Good idea. Then they should tear down the levees and let the silt return and fill in underneath. Of course, that would make it kinda hard to drive around the city, unless thay also built elevated roadways...

The "Big Easy" is now the "Big Gumbo".

Re:Low tech solution

[Anonymous Coward]

In Biloxi (I think) CNN showed one mansion built on stilts. It survived the storm surge.

Building new houses below the flood level again, would be criminal.

Re:I've found this somewhere on the net, is it tru

[deathy_epl ccs]

It is indicative of the source of a lot of the problems...

this is not flamebait.

[bit trollent]

I have wondered this myself. The questions he brings up are real, if not openly discussed on TV.

Did you know that the rich (white) part of New Orleans is already dry? It has been for a few days, even before the pumps started working. The large part of the city which is submerged will likely have to be rebuilt from scratch anyways. How we rebuild it will change the face of New Orleans.

Uptight moderators may have called your comment flamebait, but for what its worth, I think this is one of the few posts on this story which cuts to the heart of an important issue. I have read many commentaries on New Orleans and this is the first time that pressing question has been asked (that I have seen).

Jesse Jackson has been trying to keep people in a disused army base close to the city so when it is rebuilt they will be the first ones back. He fears the scenario you are describing, and is attempting to prevent it. Everyone else is doing their best to publicly ignore it.

Scientists and all others can donate here

[sugarmotor]

http://www.sparkplugfoundation.org/katrinarelief.h tml

or

http://www.foodnotbombs.net/dollar_for_peace.html

Grassroots organizations make more sense in this case to me.

Stephan

The Blame Game

[thelizman]

And fire that stupid-ass mayor for blaiming everyone except New Orleans.

That stupid assed mayor joins alot of stupid assed politicians and a lot of stupid assed people all over who think that blame necessarily has to be assigned. While I'm all for blaming the French, or even against all logic blaming an atmospheric phenomenon which has the benefit of being personified as "Katrina", I'd rather just accept the one truism that always applies:

SHIT HAPPENS!

Re:The Blame Game

[JhohannaVH]

Ok, but where has the blame been for the last 1 years that they've known this was gonna happen? It all starts at the ground level y0. Or, rather... as you say... Shit happens. Shit also rolls downhill. So there you go.

I hate to say it... but damn, this all should have been addressed at the state level over the past several years, and this was fully preventable. The mere fact that THERE WAS NO PLAN at the local level. Holy crap! There was a full blown Evac planned for the entire downtown of San Diego on 9/11/01... I was party to it.. I was there. But damn, nothing like that even looked organized in NOLA, but I wouldn't expect it.

The one thing that I gotta say is that NOLA is/was has been known for years and years has worn on the fabric of the city and dinged it just a bit. Just a few years ago, they were ranked among the most corrupt police forces in the country, and the murder capital of the Nation. Um, something smells. And everyone knows the politicians have been sour for years too.

I'm just saying that the blame shouldn't be laid just anywhere right now... we have to pull together, or we're not gonna make it through this. But there should be a full investigation, and it should start with the one shouting the loudest. I see that mayor on TV, and I'm all for him callin' for help... but I wanna know what side of the fence he'll be on when the investigators finish up. Jho

National Geographic..

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that National Geographic described this very scenario in an article from October 2004?

A snippet from the intro of the article 'Gone with the Water:

" It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however--the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

[...]

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn't--yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. "

Very freaky!

Article can be found here: http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/featur e5/

Rebuilding New Orleans With Science ...

[Anonymous Coward]

They had better make it an intelligent design!

political hacks cannot trump facts

[thelizman]

but a republican dominated government

Years Louisana operated under a Republican dominated government: 6.

Years Louisana operated under a Democratic dominated government: 128.

Conclusion: Clearly the Democrats are at fault.

(Note: Conclusion based on the same dumb fucking logic the parent poster uses.)

Compensation akin to the WTC families??

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 2 things here. First of all, we have people suggesting that victims' families be compensated similar to how the victims' families were from the WTC attacks. You know why that's bull?

One was an unpredicted act of terrorism. The people in those towers had no idea that a plane was gonna ram then until it came in at a few hundred MPH. No time to react.

The other was an act of God, that was forecast. The hurricane was moving toward new orleans at a blazing 7 MPH. Plenty of time to react, and the people chose to stay there. In their arrogance, they dared nature to f*** with them, and oh yes, they got f***ed with.

Now I've heard the argument that they couldn't afford to evactuate, blah blah blah. They could afford 10 4x8 sheets of 5/8 inch plywood... Put that into gas money and get the hell out, like a sane person.

As far as the federal levee funding goes, levee improvements have been cut out of the federal budget for decades, so get off your bush-bashing soapbox and get a clue.

The worst thing about it is that you know the federal government is gonna roll over and give em all money to rebuild. Just like they do in Florida. That way, the buildings can get demolished again. Hey! I want a new house every 5 years too! Oh, and I don't want to pay for it!

You live in a hurricane prone area at your own risk, stop taking my tax dollars to compensate for your stupidity.

but for a heroic captain who plugged a breach in a

[PigIronBob]

mmmmmmmmmm, I was born in Rotterdam, lived there for 29 years, never heard THAT story before, sounds about as good as plugging a hole in a dike with your finger, those that actually have seen a 'sea dike' will see the funny side of that story. Also the 8 Billion Guilders was the initial budget (1953) needless to say that they went over 'a bit' seeing the project went for more than 30 years, some extraordinary innovations were made due to some extraordinary problems they faced such as having to build on silt rather than bedrock, but in the end they were true to the creed: "Luctor et Emergo", the Lion in the coat of arms of Zeeland does stand knee-deep in water for good reason. One lesson the American people could learn from this was the fact that the entire 'Delta Plan' was enshrined in an irrevocable Law, to make sure that no one could weasel out of this when the memory of the flood subsided!

Silver lining?

[quarkscat]

The hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans at Force 4 levels. The wind, rain, and flooding were all managable, with the city's pumps clearing away the 2 to 3 feet of flood water. It was the storm surge that followed Katrina inland that breached the levees. The levee system, as well as the port facilities, were all "owned" by the US Army Corps of Engineers, and have been for decades.

Dredging of shipping channels, construction of canals for the diversion of water, and continued construction of port facilities brought new economic development to New Orleans. But officials at all levels of government have known for a decade that the levee system needed to be upgraded in order to withstand the worst that nature could wreak on the city. Enough money was never made available for reconstruction of the wetlands or barrier islands, or for improving the levee system.

Three times during the Bush administration funding has been slashed to 1/6th to 1/10th of needed levels to properly address the above issues. The loss of live may climb to ten thousand or more, with property damage in New Orleans proper that could reach $15 Billion USD. It would not be the first time that the neo-conservatives have been exposed to accusations of being "penny wise and pound foolish". The fiscal liability exposure by commercial insurance companies will likely result in several of these companies filing bankruptcy.

Whatever funds that the US Congress and the Bush administration spend on reconstruction in New Orleans will likely be dwarfed by commercial enterprises. The US Supreme Court has opened the way for local/state government to seize private property and turn it over to "more commercially viable" private enterprise. While the taxpayer burdeon may be mitigated by such actions, the notion of private ownership rights, due process, and equal treatment under the law are all due to be sorely tested as the cleanup and rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast proceed. The current regime in power has never made any bones about favoring big commercial interests over those of the individual. Times that try the boundaries of the US Constitution and the Bill or Rights versus the power of big corporate-owned government are coming...

Re:Silver lining?

[Rei]

You know, a part of me is hoping that a lot of those skyscrapers will be damaged beyond repair. Seems like it'd be a good excuse, with 80% of the city underwater, to just raise the level of the land like Galveston did when it suffered a total loss. I don't know how they could raise downtown with all of those buildings still standing, though.

Re:Silver lining?

[quarkscat]

I don't know too much about the geology surrounding Galveston (TX), but I suspect that it is far less a floodplain/wetlands than New Orleans is. Those parts of New Orleans that hold the greatest tourist interest (the French Quarter) has survived far better than those areas where the poor of New Orleans lived.

Part of the point that I was trying to make (apparently unsuccessfully) is that the Bush administration and the neo-cons in control of Congress seem to spend little time or money on infrastructure (or real security) until disaster strikes. Then there is an almost Sun Tzsu/Confucian ability to make vast sums of money (through private contractors and large commercial interests), often at taxpayer expense. (Disaster equals opportunity.)

The ability of government to seize private property through (commercial) emminent domain has been validated by the very same US Supreme Court that "elected" George W. Bush. The axiom "the greatest good for the greatest number" has been usurped by the modern interpretation of emminent domain to specifically include "commercial interests" at the expense of private citizens' property rights. I expect that many citizens of New Orleans will be finding out that the rationale of emminent domain will be used to separate them from their property. I also fully expect that there will be vast sums of taxpayer money that is diverted to private contractors for the rebuilding of New Orleans. The current regime in power has shown a remarkable distaste for prophilactic public expenditure including infrastructure, in favor of hugely mismanaged spendthrift government spending subsequently. That has been the Bush/neo-con track record thus far, particularly in regard to Iraq.

Re:Silver lining?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real silver lining in all this is that the press stopped fawning over King George and started doing their job......

Re:Silver lining?

[will_die]

In no sense of the word does the army corp of engineers "own" the levees.
They are in charge providing maintenance and information to local and state government on the levees. The local and state government provides the largest portion of the funds with some coming from the federal level, they also provide the leadership on what level of protection is acceptable and accepts/rejects recommendation that the corps makes.
Also the levees that broke were upto levels that had been requested by the local governments.

Why should local levees of New Orleans be paid for by the federal government? That is as stupid as having the federal government pay for boston's Big Dig. Yea the local governments cry about it but that is a local responsiblity not something the federal government should be paying for.

Re:Silver lining?

[quarkscat]

Oh, sure.

The US Army Corpse of Engineers no more "owns" the levee system around New Orleans and the Mississippi River, any more than they "own" the Florida Everglades, right?

No major construction project in the USA that effects waterways, navigable or otherwise, can move out of the "start blocks" without the express approval of the US Army Corpse of Engineers.

They provide the management oversight as well as the basis for funding of all such projects in the USA. Of course, that does not mean that when the excriment hits the fan, that there isn't some other government agency that might take the fall.

After 60 years of the US Army Corpse of Engineers screwing around with the Florida Everglades, they have tacitly admitted that they might have made a mistake with the destruction of the Everglades. The destruction of the mangroves/wetlands is slowly being ameliorated by undoing what the Corpse has done there. And it may well take 100 years or more for the Everglades to heal.

If you think that the state of Louisiana or the Port of New Orleans has final say in what channels get dredged, which water diversion canals get built, or what levees get augmented (or not), you are mistaken. The US Congress provides the funds, under the direction of the Executive Branch (eg. GW Bush) at the recommendation of the US Army Corpse of Engineers.

Not only has the Federal government failed to provide the funding necessary to make recommended improvements to the levee system over the last five years, but they have also failed (miserably) in their timely response to the inevitable disaster that followed. Of course, much of the National Guard manpower, and their equipment, have been siphoned off to augment the badly run optional war in Iraq. NG units are not only being pulled into the Gulf Coast from all over the country, but even some units from the Iraqi war zone.

Re:Silver lining?

[quarkscat]

Amen!

The flood surge of Hurricane Katrina has washed away the wool from the eyes of the press, and the teflon flag from the shoulders of King George.

"The emperor has no clothes!"

What's their political agenda?

[sheldon]

In 1993 it was a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President, and they argued against it.

In 1997 it was a Republican Congress and a Democratic President, and they argued against it.

In 2005 it was a Republican Congress and a Republican President, and they argued for something.

So what's their political agenda again? I'll bet if it was flood control in New York, they'd be all for it.

all politics is local.

this IS flamebait.

[NoTheory]

Get out of town!

Seriously people! This is flamebait! Clearly so! The reconstruction of New Orleans, whatever form it's going to take, is a lot more fucking complicated than "the blacks have left, we can build a resort town now!" That's why this is flamebait. This chunk of the thread was built on a lack of information, racist and wrongheaded assumptions, and speculation spun from thin air.

Sure you can wonder what's going up in New Orleans, and anyone who watches the freaking news can watch people ask the same questions, but the reason why there aren't answers yet is because nobody freaking knows what they're going to find, let alone what's going to happen in the future. Making up stuff, racially charged stuff no less, is not going to help, and will only serve to make people like me have to bitch-slap people like putko.

a drinker's levee levy

[zogger]

You could have had more than adequate funding for repairing and maintaining the levees by charging a ten cent per alcoholic drink "levee levy" tax. Of course now it's all wiped out, not much drinkin' going on. But, the tourists would have paid off the infrastructure cost in advance.

Basically, I am much more in favor of direct use taxes, rather than general taxes that have to be shuffled through 18 layers of expensive bureaucracy first before they do any good.

Latest estimates for rebuild on drudge I see are 150 billion, last week it was 25 billion. Next week maybe half a trillion or something, who knows. It's wiped out and contaminated now though, that's a gimmee. Where are you planning on dumping an entire giant city that is basically contaminated trash? You have to move that crap out before you rebuild. Plan on using every dump truck in the US?

I don't see it as being cost effective. Perhaps if they redisgned the city like a big venice instead? just accept reality that the water needs to be there and have canals instead of streets? Approach it from that engineering angle instead of trying to maintain it perpetually as dry land. Or contract with some state out west and buy raw dirt and fill that sucker up, then add twenty more feet, just bury it. Build on top, STRONG. Massive concrete, thick, reinforced. Bottom floors designed to shift water and flood occassionally.

I like the canal idea better actually. Would result in an even more interesting tourist town, and lead to advanced port rebuilding. The techniques learned would be applicable to other coastal areas as well.

Re:a drinker's levee levy

[Fnkmaster]

Burying the city with dirt wouldn't help. The problem is that the city is sinking because it's in a river delta - it would still keep sinking even with some dirt, concrete reinforced blocks, etc. on top, so you'd just postpone the problem coming back again for a few years.

You either have to accept the crappy location and elevation and build better, more expensive defenses every 20-30 years, or you move the city (or rather, as much of the residential areas as you can) to higher, more stable ground.

Re:a drinker's levee levy

[Anonymous Coward]

That argument just can't be completly correct, afterall, the area can't have infinite sink depth, eventually it must be fully subsided.

Re:a drinker's levee levy

[Red Flayer]

The problem with directed taxes is that they place an unequal tax burden on different segments of the population. NO would be off their rocker (prior to the current catastrophe, of course) to increase any of the taxes on the tourism industry.

One of the main tenets of the current tax structure (in theory, not in practice) is that taxes are collected fairly amongst the population.

Re; rebuilding, either you rebuild where it is, or you rebuild nearby. There is a need for a port city there,and that need will be fulfilled. Either way, you've got to decontaminate the area.

Rebuilding the city like Venice isn't very practical. Too many fluctuations in water level... and if you want to avoid that, you've got to spend a ton of money pumping water and building levees anyway.

I'd like to see the historic areas picked up, moved uphill, and a new NO built around them. Clean the contaminants, let the basin between the lake and the river do what it would naturally do...

Key word: YEARS

[mrbrown1602]

Sir, my entire family is from New Orleans - it has nothing to do with the "republican dominated government". You yourself even said so - the Governor and the Mayor have been requesting for YEARS... since the 70s, in fact.

The problem now: our incompetent moron Governor, Kathleen Blanco. The federal government would've helped a lot... if they had been allowed in by the Blanco regime.

This is a blatenly racist post

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a paying member of the KKK?

Re:This is a blatenly racist post

[elrous0]

Are you a paying member of the KKK?

I will be when your mother starts taking credit cards personally instead of just through the brothel.

-Eric

In the UK the Thames Barrier is the exception

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

The more normal approach is one of "managed retreat".

One example here:
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/news/1145746? lang=_e&region=Environment%20Agency%20Wales

The Thames Barrier makes sense because it's cost-effective - one relatively small barrier prevents a lot of damage.

The comparison between the UK and NL North Sea coasts is interesting. On much of of the UK's coast there are no sea defences at all, but in Holland the sheer scale of them has to be seen to be believed. I guess that the reason is that people in the UK have a choice (to be flippant - how many people would miss Norfolk?) - one part of the country is tipping into the sea as another part is rising out of it. In Holland it's not quite that simple - if you retreat into "safe" areas you may well end up speaking German.

That said - Holland still suffers from flood problems, such as when rivers from Central Europe carry floodwater in. There's not a lot you can do about that. And somehow, I suspect that moving the Port of Amsterdam and Europoort et al to higher ground isn't going to work.

Re:In the UK the Thames Barrier is the exception

[PigIronBob]

The last time the thread came from the rivers the Dutch evacuated the entire city of Nijmegen (200,000 people in all). In the aftermath they decided to give the river (Rhine) a bit more room, rather than raising the dikes even higher.

NOLA: The New American Venice

[thelizman]

First off, anyone asking the question "why rebuild" ought to be thumped soundly with a good sized stick. N'awlins is a strategic point economically. It only makes sense to build there, even with the 50 year risk of major flooding. Secondly, what needs to be rebuild represents a fraction of the total value of what is already built and has survived. So rebuilding is simply not an option - it's an inevitability.

The answer to "how" might seem more novel - and less expensive - than most people think. Simply accept that the area is going to flood. Now build the city such that water and flooding becomes an integral part of the urban planning. Canals and locks can move heavy goods more efficiently than trucks. Build physical plants on elevated earthen damns, and just accept that streets and parking lots are going to flood out. Ban residential construction in flood-prone areas (should be a no brainer). Convert existing structures such that the first two floors above ground (or within the 20ft flood stage) are used for parking and industrial plant works. Lastly, use locks on the channels so that when (not if) a levy breaks, that section is automatically sealed off.

Engineering a city isn't impossible. It's hardly difficult. It merely takes the will to do it.

Re:Rebuild? There's a Bright Idea.

[BulletMagnet]

I'll back him up on this. As a Sacramentan, I lived in areas that were flood prone before I bought a house in a non-flood zone. All the housing that has gone into the Natomas area (and it's a LOT - numbering in the thousands of homes) are ALL in floodzones.

In 1986, the area where my former employer is located was under 10 feet of water (hence, they never occupy building space on the 1st floor) when the levee system failed. Just over 10 years later, in 1997, we had similar record rainfall and the levees were again taxed to the brink of failure. I lived right near the river and the water was running damned near the top of the berms. We were under constant evacuation notices (not mandatory orders, but voluntary ones) I was lucky: Some of the levee system did fail in various areas of Sacramento and caused some X millions of dollars in damage.

The ACE then came in and did a fair bit of retrofit work to the existing levees by cutting them open in the centerline of the berm, trenching all the way down below the waterline, and backfilling the cut with slurry, since many of the earthen berms were weakened not by nature or or design flaw, but by burrowing animals like moles. Supposedly the digging critters could not tunnel through the slurry wall. Unfortunately, most of this work was done AFTER levee breaks during the 1997 floods.

I would wholeheartedly agree that shortsighted developers can be to blame in building up infrastructure where it shouldn't be, but if you protect it well enough (which it sounds like NO was not) it *should* stay up - but with unforseen weather patterns that the system was not designed to handle, you will end up swimming sooner or later.

Quite The Opposite

[thelizman]

Especially because of all those hurricanes that happen in the Adriatic.

Amidst your pedantic and infantile trollish attempts at wit, you miss the obvious point: Venice is a city sinking into the sea.

The second point, albeit less obvious, is that while New Orleans faces the possibility of a Katrina-level event every hundred years, Venice faces it every twenty.

That's when they're not dealing with drought, or erosion of foundations, etc, etc.

Again, once word deftly negates your entire ill informed rant. Venice.

Re:Quite The Opposite

[Mekkis]

Every hundred years? How many hurricanes have happened in central Atlantic the past 18 months? How many more are projected to occur in the next 18 months? What's the likelihood that New Orleans will be hit by a hurricane during the rebuilding effort? How much more damage will it cause? How much will it cost the national economy?

Many coastal cities are sinking into the sea, but the point of my "pedantic, infantile rant" was that there are major differences between cities like Venice or Rotterdam and New Orleans -- not simply environment and location, but primarily economic. For example, Italy isn't carrying the world's largest national debt. Venice hasn't had the national government cut funding to its system of protection & maintenance by 80%. Developers aren't undercutting regulations in order to build suburbs in the flood plains outside the city despite the danger in doing so. That's not to say Venice doesn't have its problems, but simply because it's a coastal city below sea level doesn't mean its problems are comparable to New Orleans, nor does it mean the solution to those problems can be applied to all cities in the same situation.

Did you actually read anything in the parent post? What I said has to do with developers ignoring danger and then exploiting disaster -- and asked the question whether the U.S. would be better served by spending money it can't really afford to spend relocating the victims of the disaster or set itself up for failure & subject people to more hardship by pouring it into the pockets of people who cut and run at the first sign of trouble?

How does Venice have anything to do with that?

N'awlins

[Odd John]

''It's dead, Jim!''

Re:I've found this somewhere on the net, is it tru

[jcnnghm]

That's all well and good, except blaming Bush isn't going to work. An Army Corp of Engineers rep said that even if Bush had increased funding starting day 1 of his first term, this wouldn't have been avoided. Try a different scapegoat.

One difference?

[EccentricAnomaly]

New Orleans sits on hundreds of feet of muck (about 600 ft) and lacks access to the bedrock

And that is different from the Netherlands how?

Ultimately, if we do not address the issue that the above have caused the wetlands to decrease, New Orleans will be a coastal city that sits below sea level in 2040.

it is already below sea level. So are the Netherlands... which has much fewer wetlands left than New Orleans.

National Geographic

[TheLearnerX]

National Geographic Magazine had reported way back in October 2004 about the dangers New Orleans faced.

The chances of such a storm hitting New Orleans in any given year are slight, but the danger is growing. Climatologists predict that powerful storms may occur more frequently this century, while rising sea level from global warming is putting low-lying coasts at greater risk. "It's not if it will happen," says University of New Orleans geologist Shea Penland. "It's when."

United States

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why should people who live in relatively safer areas, subsidize the choices people who live in NO have made?"

This is why it's called the United States. For banding together on safety issues like this, you get an economic return. In this case, you'll notice that the price of gas has gone up dramatically. 17% of the U.S. oil supply apparently went through this area. Over the many years that oil was flowing through those piplelines you, wherever you live, have reaped an enormous economic benefit.

Had Lousiana been an independent entity, it would have charged the rest of the U.S. tariffs for shipping down the Mississippi and become a very rich place. As it is, the wealth for that shipping mostly went to corporations located elsewhere in the country, and Louisiana is a fairly poor state.

The people in New Orleans never made a "choice" to live below sea level. The city was built when that land was above sea level. The people living there have merely continued from generation to generation. Originally, they were the descendents of the actual slaves... what did you expect those poor people to do? An environmental impact analysis that said in a hundred and fifty years the city would be under water, so they should move up north?

You're probably right that rebuilding in the same spot now would be foolish. I suspect the same thing. That doesn't have anything to do with localism, though. Localism is historically and economically short-sighted. In a sense, the people in New Orleans died so that you could have a good standard of living, like any high-risk worker on an oil rig.

And we'll call it...

[Snorpus]

The Andrew Jackson National Park.

By the way, NOLA isn't the only area that's ill-prepared for a Cat-4/5 hurricane. Look at the development practically anywhere on Florida's coastline (but especially around Tampa Bay), and up the East Coast through Georgia and the Carolinas.

About the only place where the barrier islands are allowed to function as they should is along the Outer Banks of NC, and even that in places (Corolla, Duck) is becoming condo-central.

Re:And we'll call it...

[Doc Ruby]

The Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets contain enough runoff to raise global sealevels by an average of 10 meters. They're predicted to be completely melted by 2080-2100. It's already begun, and is always "surprisingly" ahead of schedule. The Florida Peninsula is entirely below that level, as is most of the Gulf Coast. If we rebuild New Orleans, it might become an island off the coast of the New Gulf.

But it's not just a local issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of a lot of the people that live in NO didn't 'choose' to live there. Many of them are amongst the poorest people in the country, born into poverty with low prospects of escape. The city includes the menial but life supporting jobs that just don't exist in the 'burbs. Move to a less expensive city?

Because NO supports the whole country. The Mississippi is vital for shipping. Why do you think NO is where it is? Notice the domestic price of grain dropping because it can't be shopped abroad? That hurts farmers throughout the mid-west. Notice the price of gas increasing? There's a whole nation-wide economic cost to this disaster, most of which won't be easily measured.

Because NO has a cultural history that few cities in the USA rival.

Collectively, the nation is going to end up paying billions more just in economic costs than we would have spent protecting NO properly in the first place. That's before the taxpayer costs in paying for the disaster relief, before the millions that will be donated, before the billions that will hit many of us in additional insurance costs.

The reality is that NO will be rebuilt, and we will all end up paying for better defences anyway. We can't really afford to have let this disaster happen.

Rebuilding New Orleans With Science?

[notAyank]

No way! This is America. We rebuild with Christianity!

Vanport Flood

[serutan]

The Vanport Flood of 1948 provides a more recent example of a lost city. Vanport was the second largest city in Oregon at that time, with 50,000 residents. The entire town was washed away when a dike holding back the Columbia River broke. The town was never rebuilt but eventually became an industrial area.

My bet is that most of the totally devastated parts of New Orleans will go the same route. According to CNN last night, 90% of the evacuees they talked to in Houston said they did not intend to return home. Sometimes there's no point.

Re:Vanport Flood

[Z4rd0Z]

My bet is that there are no totally devastated parts of New Orleans. If you look at the pictures, most of the buildings and houses still remain. When the water subsides and the structures dry out, people will clean them up and move back in. This isn't the first big flood in New Orleans, you know. Five years from now, tourists will go down there and it will seem pretty much the same as before. If people decide not to move back, you know what that means? Lots of cheap real estate in a historic city!

Re:Vanport Flood

[6th time lucky]

The buildings are mostly still standing right now, but even if the flood waters go away tomorrow (and they arnt) the houses are going to be covered in toxic slime, will grow toxic mould and will want to be so severly cleaned that it will be cheaper to just build again.

As for the larger buildings, being underwater for what is going to be weeks is not good for what holds them together. Steel and concrete (and wood!) degrade and many structures wont be sound to stand up even if you wanted to clean the slime off of them.

Even those houses that were raised will have problems with their foundations. Not to mention the services to those houses like power, water, the roads, will all need to be rebuilt.

My bet is on it being cheaper to flatten the whole city, dredge some silt (well a metric giga-ass load) from the lake to build it up to a reasonable level and then maybe rebuild an industrial city to support what actually needs to be there, rather than just living there because its nice. However, people wont like that, so my 2nd guess is that it will just degrade (back?) into a slum waiting for history to repeat itself.

Some good points from a BBC reporter.

[tetranz]

From the BBC Reporters log

Justin Webb, Washington DC, 1545GMT

It hasn't happened yet, but there remains a real possibility that Hurricane Katrina will swamp the Bush administration and leave it wrecked beyond repair.

On the face of it, the inquiries, which will start this week on Capitol Hill, would appear to be a big threat to the president. But, it may well be that other targets loom larger once the searching questions begin - targets which will include America's entire system of government, which has proved itself to be incapable of coping with a big disaster on its doorstep.

The nation is proud of its local democracy and local power, but a bewildering array of competing fiefdoms hampered the management of this crisis and may well need to be swept away - a change requiring a fundamental cultural shift in how the United States is governed.

Re:this ISN'T flamebait.

[bit trollent]

So it is more complicated than that. so what. That doesn't make it flamebait.

I guess saying anything involving race is now flamebait on slashdot. I assume you had no problem with the media ignoring that almost everyone left in New Orleans was black for the first few days of hurricane coverage. They tiptoed around that simple statistical reality because of wrongheaded political correctness which got in the fact of reporting.

Sometimes there is a plainly racial element. This is one of those times.

Do you think black neighborhoods are never bulldozed for upscale, largely white housing? There are thousands of companies litterally looking for an excuse to bulldoze poor neighborhoods and build over them. Their only major obstacle is usually the people living there. This is real. Ignore these facts at your own peril.

putko didn't seem to be advocating building a resort over the black neighborhoods at all, merely aknowlaging that the situation existed. The post appears to have been made in good faith. Moderators would do well to not use mod points to intimidate people into ignoring these issues.

There is racial friction in this country, especially in the south. It's not out in the open, but anyone who looks around can plainly see it. Many cities still have defacto segregation still going strong in 2005. When you ignore it in the name of political correctness you hurt the people you are probably trying to help.

I hadn't heard that before.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Not that I doubt you, but do you have a cite? I'd like to learn more.

Re:I hadn't heard that before.

[chill]

Of course, now that I look for the exact reference I can't find it...

But, here are a few that give the basics of original construction. The Fort that was later New Orleans was built upon the only non-swamp "high ground" at the time. The city was basically set up to be a scam, if you read the history.

http://techcentralstation.com/090305A.html
http://slate.msn.com/id/2125229/nav/tap2/
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal- pe.city04sep04,1,5490304.story?coll=bal-oped-headl ines

The U. of Texas has an EXCELLENT digital map library. The Historical New Orleans are enlightening. Too bad they don't show elevation, though. The one from 1849 shows depth of flooding at the time: 4-6 feet in the western part of the city.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/louisiana.html

Finally, page 20 of this PDF would be nice to own -- if I had $850 to spare.

http://www.arkway.com/pdfs/Cat49.pdf

  -Charles

Putting a port there makes sense.

[porkchop_d_clown]

But I'm not sure it makes sense to put 1.3 million people around the port.

Urban Legend?

[fforw]

Congrats - you're propagating a newly created urban legend designed by right-wing groups to pretend that Bush really *was* on top, and it was the evil liberal's fault!

This kind of "urban legends" is better described with another word: propaganda

Re:Urban Legend?

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer the term real article .

The previous poster is just a troll who deliberately put an error in the phrase he searched for. Notice the lack of the dollar sign in his search attempt.

The really sad thing is that he was modded up after his lies were shown.

Someone is cheating, but its not who you think

[nwbvt]

I used your link to search for the first line of his quote ("Anyone who cares about responsible budgeting and the health") and got an article dated April 15, 2005 titled The Untouchable Corps.

Then I searched for the similar section of your article ("Anyone who cares about sound budgeting and about the health") and got a different article dated August 19, 2002 titled Taming the Untouchable Corps.

So either the Times published two stories with very similar titles and eerily similar lines by coincidence, or someone felt lazy and just changed a few lines and republished the same article. If you have a subscription, feel free to read them and determine which is the case. Since the latter seems more likely, I'm not in the mood to pay them.

Congrats - you're propagating a newly created urban legend designed by left-wing groups to pretend that right-wing groups are misrepresenting the holy New York Times editorial page in a attempt to pretend that Bush really *was* on top, and it was the evil liberal's fault!

Wow, that was a mouthful.

Re:Someone is cheating, but its not who you think

[JhohannaVH]

*SWEEEEEEEEEEET*!!!!!! Ferris Bueller You're my hero! :p Jho

Friends don't let friends live below sea level

[arrowman]

I live below sea level in The Netherlands. It's not safe and it never will be. Global warming, rising sea level, storms, weaknesses in levees, terrorism, meteorites, technical failures, maintenance, politics, budgets. Looking at the pictures from New Orleans it's completely obvious what the city needs to do: move itself 10 feet or so upwards. That's all there is to it. How difficult can that be?

Re:Learn from nature OR GOOGLE at least

[ankhank]

> NO DATA
Oh, for Christ's sake. Take 0.34 seconds to check what it's like BEFORE adding the toxic waste.

Results 1 - 100 of about 24,900 for "Gulf of Mexico" +"dead zone". (0.34 seconds)

NOAA's National Ocean Service: The Gulf of Mexico's dead zone swells each summer to about 18000 square kilometers--roughly the size of New Jersey....
oceanservice.noaa.gov/products/pubs_hypox.html -

The Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico is a large region of water that has very low oxygen concentrations, and therefore can't support aquatic life.
www.smm.org/deadzone/

Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone," which last summer reached the size of the ...
www.fishingnj.org/artdedzn.htm

Gulf of Mexico "Dead Zone" Is Size of New Jersey
Each year a swath of the Gulf of Mexico becomes so devoid of shrimp, fish, and
other marine life that it is known as the dead zone.
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0525_0505 25_deadzone.html - 28k - Sep 4, 2005

beneath the waves of the Gulf of Mexico lurks the "dead zone," a vast area off the Louisiana-Texas coast where oxygen-depleted water collects every ...
        news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2000/12/1204_fish .html

Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia
The Gulf of Mexico "Dead Zone", or hypoxic zone, is an expanse of oxygen-depleted
waters that cannot sustain most marine life. This hypoxic zone is caused ...
www.ncat.org/nutrients/hypoxia/hypoxia.html - 7k ....

7000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico. Called the Gulf Dead Zone....

Build-Up vs. Protection

[Mekkis]

I remember both those floods pretty well. '97 was a vicious flood year, not just in Sacramento County, but in other surrounding counties as well.

From my memory, a lot of the major problems in the surrounding counties came from the token efforts at infrastructure (if they even existed), the cover-ups relating to historical flood records and the general philosophy of "throw enough money at the problem and it'll go away". When the floods came and demolished the homes of people who had been enticed to come live there, the developers got off scot-free -- better than scot-free in fact, because they got government funding to rebuild on exactly the same spot. The developers' evasion was mainly built upon the caveat emptor argument, never mind that prior to the disaster they had done their best to make sure that historical records, environmental reports and other data were unattainable to buyers. The weather patterns were not unforseen, but rather were disregarded or obfuscated in the quest for profit, and such criminal disregard went completely unpunished.

Caveat emptor is an empty argument because there should be layers of protection when it comes to land ownership, some of the big ones being planning commissions, county boards of supervisors and city councils. Hazardous locations such as flood plains, active volcanoes, tailings fields and settling ponds should never be zoned for development in the first place, and to evade prosecution by claiming "let the buyer beware" is in effect, blaming the victim.

But I digress...

Re:Build-Up vs. Protection

[istewart]

I live in San Joaquin County, and the floodwaters in 1997 came within probably 1/4 mile of my house. Luckily I'm just off the flood plain, but unfortunately 1997 didn't change much in terms of development. Entire new neighborhoods are opening in the floodplains north and east of here, with nothing in the way of flood protection. Apparently those levees which didn't break in 1997 are suffering from seepage problems (keep in mind, new houses are being built right next to them), and there's no real money or initiative to get them fixed. A couple of developments have been proposed with ridiculous dike systems that would protect them at the expense of everything around them, and as far as I've seen they're sailing through approval. I certainly hope those aren't the new wave of development, because they stand to do a lot more damage than economic benefit.

Meanwhile local newspapers tend to carry articles about the red-hot housing market rather than the real danger people are buying into. I wouldn't be surprised if, in the next few years, we're faced with our own mini-Katrina in central California. The 1997 floods garnered some minor national attention, but it wasn't the wakeup call it should've been.

Re:Build-Up vs. Protection

[Qrlx]

Ever see the movie Chinatown?

Global Warming behind Hurricanes

[Anonymous Coward]

i was shocked to learn that, several years back, a team of scientists predicted an increase in, i believe, Gulf hurricanes as a result of global warming. the prophecy seems to have been fulfilled (remember florida got hit 4 times last season). so it is one thing to use science to design a flood-resistant city, but we need to use some even deeper preventative science as well...like not heating up the planet so much!

for that matter, a properly designed city does not require the use of cars...so we've got work to do

wetlands don't replace levees

[EccentricAnomaly]

The storm surge overran it, and without wetlands to flood into, the water piled up to six feet over its normal level.

It seems like an awful lot of handwaving to say 'wetlands' would have stopped the disaster. It would require some very complicated computer models to accurately predict how much storm surge could be absorbed into given amount of wetlands. Where as building a dam on Lake Pontchartrain is a much more tractable problem.

Preserve wetlands for environmental reasons, but don't count on them for flood control without hard numbers.

The levee didn't just break - it overtopped.

Actually the flood walls overtopped and then broke as their foundations washed out.

Re:wetlands don't replace levees

[Rei]

It would require some very complicated computer models

Actually, at it's basic level, it's really mostly a volume calculation. Just integrate over the landscape and you can tell how much additional water it can take, then factor in the influx. I believe the models that they use are more complex to accurately calculate the influx and uneven water levels at different points, but the result is that a single square mile of restoration equals a reduced surge of one foot.

In short, yes, the models already exist.

and then broke

Do you not know the meaning of "just", as in "The levee didn't just break"?

Re:wetlands don't replace levees

[EccentricAnomaly]

Actually, at it's basic level, it's really mostly a volume calculation.

I think that's too basic a level.

I believe the models that they use are more complex to accurately calculate the influx and uneven water levels at different points, but the result is that a single square mile of restoration equals a reduced surge of one foot.

This is the sort of complexity needed. The flow will be uneven, and the uneveness will depend on the direction of the storm amoung other things. I am sceptical that such complex flows can be accurately modeled by computers.

Such computer models need a lot of expensive testing with scale models... and I doubt that this has been done.

but the result is that a single square mile of restoration equals a reduced surge of one foot.

I wouldn't bet my family's lives on such a rule of thumb. I am familiar with the complexities of modeling fluid flow... especially mixtures of mud, sand, air, water, and seasonal vegitation. I seriously doubt that anyone can accurately model this.

Do you not know the meaning of "just", as in "The levee didn't just break"?

levees != flood walls. The levees didn't fail, flood walls did.

Re:wetlands don't replace levees

[Anonymous Coward]

at it's basic level

"its".

camille was in 1955?

[/dev/trash]

Damn time does fly.

Re:Rebuild? There's a Bright Idea.

[Hatta]

Rebuilding New Orleans shows stubbornness well beyond the border of idiocy

So you expect Bush will fund it then?

In Holland, everyone's Dutch

[Simonetta]

In the Netherlands, there is long tradition of working together for the common good. Everybody shares a heritage and for the most part, a vision of what Dutch society should be like.
    But New Orleans is the most racial segregated city this side of South Africa. And it's got a lot of history of race relations. Not much of it is good. The city has always been divided; and each side would be willing to just look the other way if something were to happen that caused the other side be destroyed. There is not much sense of one common New Orleans society shared by the blacks and the whites. Each side thinks that the city would be a better place if there were only far fewer of the other group.

    It was the African-American sections of the city that suffered the most flood damage. A large percentage of the Euro-Americans with more money moved to the suburban parishes (usually Jefferson Parish next door) starting in the 1970's.

    Look at a map of flooded areas. The flooding starts right on the parish line. In regards to NOLA area, the black areas are under water and the white areas are dry. Outside the city everyone is under water.

    This bad racial heritage has really twisted the local New Orleans mentality, regardless of how much people like to pretend that it hasn't. Jefferson Parish (where most of the white people live(d) in New Orleans) is the home of former Ku Klux Klan leader (and Republican governor candidate) David Duke. White racism is widespread and not far below the surface there. It's like Bensonhurst NYC or Federal Hill Providence RI, except everyone is Cajun and redneck instead of Soprano. Same general mentality. Everyone gets along fine with 'those people' as long as they stay 'over there', in Orleans parish.
    It occured to me that someone could have destroyed NOLA without a hurricane by simply parking a few trucks full of diesel and fertilizer next to the weakest levee. It was the levee break and not the hurricane that made NOLA uninhabitable.

    Anyway, I hope Lestat got out OK. And his Rue Royale house didn't get flooded.

    If it keeps on raining, levee's gonna break.
    When the levee breaks, got no place to stay..

    All last night, sat on the levee and moaned.
    it's got what it takes to make a mudman leave his home Led Zeppelin 1971

I Makes As Much Sense As

[thelizman]

...15-20 million on the San Andreas fault.

You're a moron. (I have proof.)

[thelizman]

Every hundred years? How many hurricanes have happened in central Atlantic the past 18 months?

The real question is "how many category 4/5 hurricanes strike New Orleans head on in a given period?". The answer: 1 every 100 years. Category 3's were a one-in-twenty phenomena, which is why the levees were built to that standard.

For example, Italy isn't carrying the world's largest national debt.

And - coincidentally - their economy is smaller than many US States (California, Texas, New York to name a few). Their GDP is smaller than our typical Federal Budget.

When you grow up and get an education, one thing you'll learn about a national debt is that it's utterly meaningless when talking about finances of Nations.

Of course, all of this has jack to do with hurricanes.

What I said has to do with developers ignoring danger and then exploiting disaster

What you said is idiotic. Its about developers playing odds. Natural disasters happen anywhere and everywhere. Everywhere you live in this country puts you at risk. Build on the Gulf or Atlantic? Hurricanes. Build in the midwest? Tornados. Build in the middle of the Desert - flash floods. Build on the west coast? Earthquakes. People have to live somewhere, so when a developer develops a tract of land, they consider the odds. The chance of NOLA flooding are good, but the chance of a catastrophic flood resulting in massive economic losses is rare. The people who lived in those flooded out areas play the odds, and the house eventually wins.

As to Venice... they are a prime example of a city which has managed flooding, encroachment, and growth with respect to curious geologic conditions. So when shit-for-brain morons (that would be you) start talking about the futility of rebuilding, I'm apt to point out that humans can and do survive anywhere they can extract an advantage.

Re:You're a moron. (I have proof.)

[Mekkis]

*shrug*

If you feel it necessary to ignore the salient points of my argument, grab a few sentences out of context so you can then insult me, you do more to support my argument than your own. I'm sure you won't care, but when you have to resort to insults and argumentum ad hominem to back up your position then you have already conceded.

You may notice the rich white folks aren't the ones who are camped out on rooftops or swimming through sewage and corpses, but that's okay - you can go on blaming the victims if you feel you must. Developers play the odds, but you've ignored the point I made about how they rig the game in their favor. I suppose it's about "playing the odds" to build Colorado's Rocky Flats developments in plutonium slurry fields, and hence it must be the buyer's responsibility to investigate the kick-backs involved in the cover-up of the existence of that toxic waste dump -- or maybe it's their responsibility to own a geiger counter before they move into a home.

I'm not saying that living anywhere in the country isn't risky, either. But you also totally disregarded my point about it being possibly more efficient to invest in moving from a destroyed city to a more hospitable and less dangerous place rather than dump money into the pockets of people who will repeat ad infinitum the cycle of corruption.

The question still stands: if we as a nation are are already making budgetary sacrifices when it comes to proper schools, firefighters, police, health care coverage, and other war-related things like veterans' benefits, funeral costs for KIAs, armor for troops & vehicles, etc., it makes no sense to spend tens of billions rebuilding and maintaining a city that's already pretty much destroyed and stands a good chance of being destroyed again in the near future. Why not just relocate people into existing cities? Or if you must move to a location - preferably above sea level - and start from scratch?

Re:Rebuild? There's a Bright Idea.

[DerekLyons]

What's the point in rebuilding?

Because until teleportation becomes practical, or the American Midwest (essentially everything outside of Texas between the Rockies and the Appalachians) becomes an uninhabited desert - we'll still need a port at the mouth of the Mississippi.

Doesn't help- we tried

[boatboy]

Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development.

Mississippi has extensive barrier islands which are undeveloped, didn't seem to have helped, and in some cases were completely eroded by this storm. The hurricane was a category 2 some 200 miles inland- no amount of island would have prevented the coastal damage in this area.

Adapt!

[J05H]

Here's the deal: we need to live with nature. One aspect of this is that cities will get destroyed - the ruins of destroyed ancient cities ring the Earth.

New Orleans as it is should be adandoned. The high ground of the french quarter might be preserved. The deep water port and industrial areas like Michoud are restored. These areas have proper seawalls built with regard to natural silt flows, the rest of the city becomes Delta again. People that live in the area live the way you're supposed to in a swamp: in boats and house-barges. The swamp dwellers seem to have faired well, and came out of the woods to help evacuate the city. If the population was competent enough to live in the swamp instead of against it, they could flourish. As it is, they have probably crippled the shrimping and subsidence issues doom much of the city. Imagine a million houseboats stretching through a restored river system. People commute to work by boat, work in hi-tech, shipping and restored shrimp industries. Let the Mississippi wander as it needs, build the deep-water port out in the ocean and have lighter barges for carrying containers and oil in-shore. If people want to live there, they should adapt to life on the water.

I want to see a JMOB/SeaHub container facility in the Gulf of Mexico. This technology can be applied to housing, shipping, huge mobile hospitals, etc. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/01/07/wo_ schrope072501.asp

Josh

Re:WARNING: Ignore Nature at Your Peril

[Anonymous Coward]

...and a King Kanute attitude.

What the fuck are you talking about?

You look oddly familiar.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Do I know you?

Anyway, I *want* the cereal people to hang out by the San Andreas fault. Sooner or later, the whole state will split off and they can declare independence and we can close the border and the California problem will be solved.

Personally, I've been waiting for that long promised earthquake for 30 years now.

Call that slow?

[pommiekiwifruit]

Pah, here in London it took 15 years IIRC to pedestrianise a single square (leicester square). The link to the channel tunnel is still not finished. Shanghai on the other hand...

New Venice, anyone?

[fbg111]

Instead of spending all this money to rebuild New Orleans, let's just put the buildings and houses on stilts, replace the cars with bass fishing boats (gondolas are just too inappropriately European), and change the name to New Venice.

[Dons flame-retardant suite and ducks...]

Oh yes it is! ::nyah::

[NoTheory]

Discussing racial issues does not make one a racist. Calling blacks undesirables, associating them with criminals, and claiming that people should forced out of the city they lived in simply because of their race makes one a racist.

That is most certainly flamebait.

Do you think black neighborhoods are never bulldozed for upscale, largely white housing? There are thousands of companies litterally looking for an excuse to bulldoze poor neighborhoods and build over them. Their only major obstacle is usually the people living there. This is real. Ignore these facts at your own peril.

I am not ignorant of these facts. I am well aware of these facts. I happen think rehabbing poor neighborhoods is in fact a very important and worthwhile project. However, definitely not by steam rollering people indiscriminately based on race, OR taking advantage of the worst natrual disaster in US history, to kick hurricane and flooding victims collectively in the balls. But that's besides what you're discussing. I called putko out because he's both wrong and a racist. He may think that developers have a hard on for the land that low income housing rests on, but that is in spite of the facts about the land, and the prospects for development in New Orleans. In fact the only reason why he's suggesting that developers might want this land, is because it might be avaliable now that all the "undesirables" have been "forced" off it. I'd wager that putko has no idea what areas of New Orleans are genuinely low income, nor would he know how this corresponds to the flooded areas in New Orleans. He's speculating, and he's doing it based on his prejudices. Again, wrong and racist.

As for my views on race and ethnicity, i most certainly make cultural distinctions. I'm also aware enough to decouple a person's genetics from their cultural upbringing. I'm very aware of cultural problems across the US, particularly in places where there are unspoken elephants in every room. Being aware of these problems is the first step in addressing them. And calling out people who make up shit, and perpetuate lies and falsehoods is and important part of addressing problems and misconceptions.

Re:Oh yes it is! ::nyah::

[bit trollent]

He never said that black people should be moved out of the city, but that there were forces at work which may result in that.

The bit about Guliani forcing out the 'criminal class' was a bit poorly worded, but I don't think he was implying that he thought blacks were undesirable. It seems that he sees forces at work which view many blacks as part of an undesireable group of people. Many blacks were in fact forced out of New York by a process known as 'gentrification' where property values and as a result rental rates are increased, forcing poor people to leave. Even by non-racists this is seen as a threat to the black community. This is because blacks are statistically more likely to be poor. This fact is actually embraced by anti-racists who see cuts to programs for the poor as an attack on blacks.

Gentrification coincided with a major crackdown on crime. Indeed the two processes were designed to work together. Poor neighborhoods tend to have higher crime rates, and Guliani's policies were seen as a double proged approach at attacking the crime problem.

Again, I see no endorsement of these practices, merely an aknowlagement of their existance. I come to this conclusion because rather that calling the results he describes a success, he calls it a "success", implicitly questioning whether it is a good thing.

His whole post is meant to describe the actions of real estate developers, not promote or encourage them.

I would agree with you that rehabbing poor neighborhoods is better than bulldozing them. I think a healthy variety of economic status and race is good for a community. The city I am from, Houston is a pretty random mix of economic class, races, and cultures. The result is a city which is much more fun and interesting than Dallas, where each race and economic level prettymuch is contained in one or two areas. It is also seen as 'more ghetto' than Dallas.

In many ways New Orleans is more like Dallas than it is like Houston, even though 75% of the people in New Orleans are black. There is a rich white area built on high ground and a much larger area surrounding it comprised mostly of blacks. Statistically in New Orleans white=rich, black=poor. Since most black people are too poor to afford flood insurance, they will likely be unable to afford to rebuild. They are also more likely to be renting their home rather than own it, which gives them nothing to even come back to.

Real Estate developers are ruthless people. even if they are not racist, they assume that their clients are. In many respects they are right. Property values in white neighborhoods are statistically higher than those in similar minority neighborhoods. Knowing this, they do whatever they can to turn their property into a white property, which they can expect will secure a higher price.

Again, putko is describing what he thinks real estate deveopers are likely to do in this situation, and predicting its outcome.

Re:Oh yes it is! ::nyah::

[elrous0]

I happen think rehabbing poor neighborhoods is in fact a very important and worthwhile project. However, definitely not by steam rollering people indiscriminately based on race

And who do you think lives in poor neighborhoods, there Sparky? Here's a hint, it ain't Chad and Buffy Whitey.

Chad and Buffy only move in after you "rehab" it and raise property values. And guess who gets moved out in the process?

-Eric

Science is a liberal conspiracy!

[Sinner]

New Orleans should be rebuilt with Faith.

Thanks for the links!

[porkchop_d_clown]

I know what you mean about not being able to find the cites when you need them; I appreciate the research.

reservoir?

[YesIAmAScript]

I just don't get that. It does have the tempting thing of keeping the pumps above water longer. But if that's a problem, just build levees around the pumps and put pumps above the pumps to keep the pumps dry.

As to your reservoir, you are not going to make a dent in the amount of water in the Mississippi, let alone the ocean, by digging a hole for it to flow into. There was plenty more water available to fill the city, and it would have still done so.

Will it buy time? Perhaps. But people didn't leave. They're still there! Buying time isn't going to help. If the levees break and people don't leave, they're boned.

Blaming the Corps is ridiculous. The #1 problem was the huge hurricane, the #2 problem was everyone knew this would happen, including the Corps, and no one took it seriously enough. It didn't take a lot of research to find that those walls were built for a cat 3, not a cat 4 with a cat 5 surge.

The city wasn't safe for the hit it took. That's it. It's not the Corps fault, with the proper money and time they probably could have made it safe for a cat 4 or perhaps a low cat 5. But they weren't given the money, nor tasked to do it.

Where do you get this "city everyone loves so much" and "so important to our economy" stuff. Are the refineries in the city limits all of a sudden? The actual hurricane damage (as opposed to later flood damage) in the other areas was what really hurt the economy. Not damage to a city with 33% of its citizens below the poverty level. Although it would suck if the Mississippi were no longer navigable.

Re:reservoir?

[Doc Ruby]

#1: I did not blame the Corps of Engineers down to the level of the people who actually build levees. The response of the local chief, when asked why the failed canal walls were built only for an F3 storm, was "that's all we were authorized to build". I blame the Corps itself, which is responsible for that protection. Responsiblity means taking the blame when it fails, not just taking the checks when it's built. That's why I talked about the "civilian leadership", which means Rumsfeld and his sleazy yesmen.

Your criticism is like people who hear someone opposes the Iraq War now, and then they say "you don't support the troops". We have a serious problem in the Pentagon, where the people in charge are abandoning the troops and the citizens of America to their serious planning mistakes. And getting away with it, by deflecting criticism with spin that converts criticizing the leaders into criticizing the troops. That's an extra disservice to everyone in uniform.

Now, you might not love New Orleans. That much is obvious. How you can not love an entire American city really shows where your heart is at. I better not find you calling yourself a "patriot", when you've been caught not caring about an entire American city.

New Orleans is important to our economy. The refineries aren't the only critical link in the quarter of our imported fuel that flows through the port. A port which is the biggest or second biggest port in the country. A port which only works because the city is home to its support infrastructure, including related industries, but also including all the people. Who are the experts in running that huge port. Most of those citizens below the poverty level also work. Some in ways directly serving the port, others indirectly - a huge cheap labor pool that keeps the port and other business in town working. New Orleans is the biggest city for hundreds of miles, the biggest city in Louisiana. All those things make it important to our economy. Because the mouth of the Mississippi, mostly protected from the Gulf, is extremely valuable - where you build a port and a city to run it.

Jesus, I can't believe I actually have to justify that the city of New Orleans is important to our economy. If you don't already get that, this entire post is really a waste of time. But I've got a few minutes to state the obvious, so you got it.

The reservoir would buy time to get more people out. And to get more people who can help, help evacuate, in. It's not supposed to catch the ocean - or even the river. It's supposed to catch some of the lake, slowing down the destruction. Which also buys time to use the rail system I described to repair levee/canal breaks. Or didn't you read that part of the message?

Re:WARNING: Ignore Nature at Your Peril

[Dun Malg]

...and a King Kanute attitude.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Ah, another victim of our modern education system!

Canute, a Dane who conquered England and ruled from 1016 to 1035. The legend of Canute and the sea: (from Wikipedia)

He is perhaps best remembered for the legend of how he commanded the waves to go back. According to the legend, he grew tired of flattery from his courtiers. When one such flatterer gushed that the king could even command the obedience of the sea, Canute proved him wrong by practical demonstration at Southampton, his point being that even a king's powers have limits. Unfortunately, this legend is sometimes misunderstood to mean that he believed himself so powerful that the natural elements would obey him, and that his failure to command the tides only made him look foolish. It is quite possible that the legend is simply pro-Canute propaganda.

Stop perpetuating this false dichotomy!

[mrchaotica]

Of course no city is 100% safe from disasters, but some cities are safer than others. New Orleans shouldn't be rebuilt because it is exceptionally unsafe. Even moving it just far enough inland to be above sea level would be a marked improvement!

besides which, it's a beautiful city. i'd say the best in the country. abandoning new orleans would be a loss for the entire world.

Is its beauty worth killing thousands of people for? Because that's what we'll be doing if we rebuild it where it is now!

Why rebuild at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

As many people have mentioned - why rebuild there? Aren't we pissing into the wind?

If you had the chance to invest in property that is in one of the following categories - would you?

1) Building a town below sea level
2) Building the most important State on a fault line
3) Building a house on the Mississpi flood plane
4) Building a house in a known hurricane landing area

Sounds like good ideas right? not... I'm just waiting for the next disasters to occur and listen to people say "Why me?", "this is what Hiroshima must have looked like" and "Our country suffers so much... poor us".

I feel for the people who weren't healthy enough to leave and the people who did not have the money to leave but that's where my pity stops. The people who said "I'm not leaving" and "I'll ride this out" knew what they were getting into... If you don't have the survival gene in you, well what's going to stop you from stepping out in front of the bus. Those are the same people who are going to rebuild in the same location again and I'll chuckle once more when people say "God has our back" just 2 hours before the levy bursts.

Good luck with all that...

don't love NO

[YesIAmAScript]

I say I don't love NO, and you transform that into that I don't care about it. That's an interesting way of taking it. You started this "my city is awesome" contest by saying everyone loves NO, not me. So I don't love NO. Sue me.

What kind of relativism is this anyway? If Gary, Indiana floods out, that's okay, because no one loves it. But if NO floods, we'd better get right on it? Apparently I can't call myself a "patriot" because I don't hold NO above other cities.

The rail system idea is interesting, but I don't think it's worthwhile. Repairing a busted levee (or retaining wall, as the case may be) while the water is flowing over it (and over the tracks) isn't easy. In this case, it probably would have been near impossible. It'd really be better just to fix the system so the walls won't break.

Eh, who am I kidding? Due to the pumping the ground is subsiding, this problem gets worse all the time. Really, the fix is to raise the ground level so that the pumps can be turned off. Then the ground will stop subsiding and there will be have fewer problems next time this happens. Where to get all that dirt, I dunno. Moving it wouldn't be easy either, but it'd be easier than digging a hole and then building a city over it!

I still think your hole idea is crazy. And no, you can't fit a significant portion of Lake Ponch in there either. The lake is 10x the size of the entire land area of NO. And the Bayou area of NO is what, 1/8th of it? So, if you dug down 8 meters, you could hold 10% of the volume of lake Ponch. That'd be les than 1/3rd of the surge alone, forgetting the water already there. All it would do is give maybe a couple hours before the water started rising. But since it'd been 5 days now since the water started rising and people are still there, do you think a few more hours would have helped?

Really, it'd be most important just to get everyone out. People just didn't leave because they've been through this before, and they don't feel like leaving their pets behind, spending money and time to get far away just to come back. Well, they were wrong about that this time, and it cost them. But building holes won't fix that.

You are blaming the Corps here. They were tasked with building protection to a Cat 3 hurricane. They did. That's the end of it. Expecting protection for a cat 3 to work on a cat 4/5 is ridiculous. It's like buying a 4-cylinder car and then complaining it isn't the V6 version. You asked for the 4-cylinder version, you paid for the 4-cylinder version. If you needed a 6-cylinder, why did you buy the 4-cylinder? And it isn't as if the Corps was hiding that the protection wasn't enough, everyone knew. A band even wrote a pop song about it! Someone didn't find the problem a big enough concern, or more likely couldn't find the money to pay for it.

The Corps and everyone else knew the walls were only good for a cat 3. No one bellied up the money for more protection. So you get what you asked and paid for.

And I don't like Rumsfeld either, but this has been a problem since before 2001, if Katrina had blown through in August 2000, the problem would have been just as bad, and you'd have no way to blame Rumsfeld.

Re:don't love NO

[Qrlx]

Didn't Katrina slow to a cat 3 or 4 before landfall, and landfall was a good 20 miles from New Orleans? Perhaps this is why Bush said "Nobody thought the levees would fail" or whatever bone-headed comment that was.

If that's the case, I'm not convinced the Army Corps of Engineers is without "fault," as it were. It seems possible to me that their levees faces an "effective" category 3 storm and failed.

Re:don't love NO

[Ihlosi]

It slowed down from cat 5 to cat 4.

Re:Rebuild? There's a Bright Idea.

[patternjuggler]

With the the Bush Administration doing the best it can...

It's funny to hear people try to defend incompetence with the 'they did the best they could' line- that's the point, the best they could is not good enough. Even if someone else would have done the same, or just as poorly, the one who was there in control at the time has to take their share of the blame- and there is plenty of blame to go around, don't worry.

Science would be ...

[DoktorTomoe]

... *not* rebuilding New Orleans.

Seriously. Abandon the city, do not rebuild it on a terrain that is actually *below* the standard level of both the Mississipi *and* the standard level of that sea of theirs. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:New_Orleans_Lev ee_System.gif.

Building a city in this terrain was crazy in the beginning. Rebuilding it means playing with the lives of people again. Remember Murphys Law: If something can go wrong, it will. I easily can imagine douzends of things that can go wrong building "better" flood control, starting at a corrupt city/state/federal government.

BTW: After the Storm Flood of 1962 in Hamburg/Germany, some areas are off-limits even today because disease control. How many of the New Orleans area will have to be shut of from the public?

How much safety is enough?

[Solandri]

There are probably trillions of dollars worth of safety improvements that could be done throughout the country - enough to bankrupt the country. The question is, which ones should we fund? Politicians and even voters have been putting off upgrades for centuries. It's a roll of the dice - a calculated risk. Sometimes they get lucky and nothing happens, and everyone pats each other on their back for money saved. Sometimes, as with Katrina, they get spectacularly unlucky and people go on a witch hunt trying to place the blame.

Trying to pin the blame entirely on Bush is a gross misrepresentation of the decision-making process that leads to these sorts of funds being cut. You are essentially saying Bush in his omniscience should've foreseen that a major hurricane would happen this year in that area, and preserved funding for levee renovations there. Why the levees in New Orleans? What about earthquake retrofitting in California? Or tornado warning systems in the midwest? Or money to help uncover terrorist cells? You cannot judge these decisions in hindsight on the basis of what did happen. You have to judge them on the basis of what we thought could've happened at the time.

What if Katrina had grown no bigger than a tropical storm. What if Bush had then funded those levees in NOLA, cut funding for the war in Iraq, and Iraq degenerated into civil war because the US had inadequate troop presence? I suppose you'd think that would've squarely been Bush's fault too?

Blame people for the bad decisions they make after they've been given adequate data (e.g. the total lack of any connection between Iraq and terrorism). Do not try to pin all the blame on them for decisions which later turn out to be bad due to totally random phenomena like the weather.

Re:How much safety is enough?

[Ihlosi]

What if Katrina had grown no bigger than a tropical storm. What if Bush had then funded those levees in NOLA, cut funding for the war in Iraq, and Iraq degenerated into civil war because the US had inadequate troop presence? I suppose you'd think that would've squarely been Bush's fault too?

Of course not. It would be squarely the fault of whoever invaded Iraq to search for those elusive stockpiles of WMD ... ... hey, wait a minute ...

Re:Rebuild? There's a Bright Idea.

[Raven_Stark]

Sacramento, California is an example of just such short-sightedness. The Sacramento River flood plains are catastrophically inundated every ten to fifteen years or so. Despite this fact, developers have been allowed to build there because they've bought and/or sued the city & county into letting them do whatever in the hell they want. The developers have also stifled the environmental and news reports as well as done their best to obscure the historical record because such information conflicts with their immediate profit interests. The result? Houses get flooded, families are ruined and the taxpayers are left with the responsibility.

Why be so authoritarian? If it wasn't for the damn fed's insuring people who build on flood plains and constantly bailing out insurance companies who made promises they can't keep, people would stop building in areas prone to flooding. Take some of the money now used to pay for flood damage and funnel it into a service to that home-buyers can call and get the straight dope about where they plan to move.

Since people built in NOLA with the understanding that the fedgov would bail them out in the case of a flood, they should get that money but with the understanding that they will never again be compensated for flood damage. Drain NOLA long enough to collect the bodies, do general cleanup and demolition, and move historical buildings to higher ground. Then return everything to the state we found it.

Re:Rebuild? There's a Bright Idea.

[snarfwarg]

What's the point of rebuilding?

The port of New Orleans and environs is one of the top three ports of the united states. Massive tonnage of imports/exports flow through this port, including 15-20% of all petroleum products used by this country, the majority of exported agricultural goods; not to mention all the oil infrastructure currently existing in the Gulf of Mexico.

NO and the surrounding communities are where all the oil and dockyard works live.

Re:Learn from nature OR GOOGLE at least

[Red Flayer]

Look, the Gulf Dead Zone is scary enough to those concerned about the coastal environment. But listing multiple sources in your post that reference New Jersey?

There's no reason to make the Dead Zone seem that bad.

Yes, I'm from NJ.

Re:not the same article

[mrsteele]

I agree that the titles and lines are oddly similar, but in this case I think it was more a case of the NYT referencing itself, not publishing the same op-ed. (and both of these are op-eds)

The 2002 article summary reads: "Editorial backs efforts of Sens Tom Daschle, Robert Smith, John McCain and Russell Feingold to institute top-to-bottom overhaul of Army Corps of Engineers"- 630 words

2005 article: "Editorial strongly opposes bill that would shovel $17 billion at Army Corps of Engineers for water-related projects including $2.7-billion boondoggle on Mississippi River that has twice flunked inspection by National Academy of Sciences; warns bill would also weaken civilian control over fiercely independent corps that operates in parallel universe, spending billions of dollars on public works projects, often to satisfy Congress's appetite for pork" - 415 words

You Just Look Odd

[thelizman]

Seriously, didn't most people find K5 from /.?

Salient Points

[thelizman]

If you feel it necessary to ignore the salient points of my argument,

When you make a point which can be - by even the loosest standard - considered salient, I will let you know to what extent I decide to ignore it.

Re:WARNING: Ignore Nature at Your Peril

[danila]

How long do you want to fight a losing battle with the planet? How high do you eventually want the levees to be before you give up? When the city's subsided to the point where it's an isolated bowl in the ocean?

How long? As long as you need to get the technology to win. I don't expect water to be a problem in 2030 New Orleans. It's all a matter of production forces. Once you get enough of them, there is no stopping you, planet or no planet.

We already can build underwater hotels (coming to Dubai in 2006), 8-km high oil rigs, 0.8-km high skyscrapers and what not. There will eventually be no problem in building a city in the crater of an active volcano, on the sea floor 2km deep, on the South Pole, in Earth orbit or in the Missisipi delta. With AI and nanotechnology it will all be a piece of cake.

Now the only two real questions are whether it's better to fix the city or build a new one and whether (New) New Orleans will hold on for 20-30 years in spite of the coming global warming.

Us old farts, yeah.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Before it went all politics all the time and all.

and I don't mind looking odd; it makes it easier for my mommy to find me when I get lost in the shopping mall.

Re:Us old farts, yeah.

[thelizman]

My mom just duct-taped a pole with an orange flag to my arm. If she couldn't see the flag, she could at least ask anyone holding their hand over their eye and screaming if they've seen me.

Re:WARNING: Ignore Nature at Your Peril

[Anonymous Coward]

As a geologist, I would be in the camp which suggests that the government take this as an opportunity to move the city to higher and more stable ground and abandon the old city to be an archaeological curiosity and tourist attraction.

And just WHERE do you expect to move it to? Who's land are you going to seize in order to build a new city at that new location?

Your ideas contradict the facts

[coopex]

Repeatedly, in The Detroit News and in other media, the term "white flight" was used to describe the exodus that led to the city's white population decline from 1,545,847 in 1950 to 116,599 today, or 12.3 percent of Detroit's current population., which backs up White flight

"The loss of pedestrian-scale villages caused a loss of community connection. People no longer know their neighbors and rarely walk unless they place a high value on exercise."

"Although a few expensive items, such as pianos and sewing machines, had been sold on time before 1920, it was installment sales of automobiles during the twenties that established the purchasing of expensive consumer goods on credit as a middle-class habit and a mainstay of the American economy."

This is in addition to the economic dependence on foreign oil, environmental impact of pumping massive amount of CO2 into the air, and the health problems caused by these supposedly freedom loving people driving. The only "freedom" given by the car is being free to spend hours in gridlock because you choose to live far away enough from your job and think public transportation is for commoners. In very few instances is the car anything more than a glorified, highly visible status symbol.

As for it providing a life away from home and work, how exactly is it doing that, seeing as how nearly everywhere people drive to is a popular area, not Big Sur. Driving instead of taking the bus isn't freedom, it's laziness.

Don't need a New New Orleans...

[TamMan2000]

Skrew rebuilding.

Insurance/govt. relief funds should be provided to displaced people, who can then settle at a place of their choosing.

Those who had little in New Orleans (low wage jobs/no property) are already trying to set up shop in the places they have been evacuated to. Apparantly the Burger King across the street from the Astrodome is being flooded wiht applicants.

Re:Don't need a New New Orleans...

[JDevers]

I can second that. As horrible as it sounds, the evacuees have helped out the economy of my area somewhat. We wish we actually had a few thousand more. Right now we are sitting at 2% or so unemployment and the services sector was where it was worst. There were literally more jobs than people, that is obviously still true but it has helped somewhat. From the newspaper stories, it seems like the vast majority of evacuees are happy here (of course that is based on a decidedly biased viewpoint).

BTW, I live in Northwest Arkansas, a state which has sheltered more evacuees than any other state besides Texas (and also which FEMA didn't know HAD any evacs until yesterday :/) and also doesn't have any large metro areas like Texas to help absorb "the burden."

Re:not the same article

[nwbvt]

To be honest, since I did not read the full text of either one (I do not subscribe to the NYT online site) I was also assuming the rest of the text was similar as well due to the parent's claim that they had altered the text (if the two editorials were clearly different, surely he would have noticed).

Of course my origional claim that someone is cheating still stands, just the guilty party is the poster if not the newspaper. He apparently flat out lied in an attempt to claim there is a "vast right wing conspiracy" out there.

Move! Quick!

[TamMan2000]

I wouldn't bet my family's lives on such a rule of thumb.

Your residence was most likely built based on a large chain of rules of thumb. Contractors who build almost all residential structure don't do finite element analysis of planned buildings; they simply build to code, which is a conservative set of rules of thumb.

I am familiar with the complexities of modeling fluid flow... especially mixtures of mud, sand, air, water, and seasonal vegitation. I seriously doubt that anyone can accurately model this.

I know a thing or too about modeling of fluids myself, but mostly air. I worked as a computational fluid dynamics engineer for over 3 years at a major jet engine manufacturer, now I am an applied super computing consultant at a major academic institution. One thing I have learned is that although you can get a better answer from really high fidelity analysis, you can usually get on that is right enough with low fidelity analysis. There are times to use the best modeling, and times to use less. When you can get 80% of the answer in 5 minutes or 99% of the answer in 1 year, it is often better to take 80%, and apply a safty factor.

I don't doubt that nobody could do acurate first principles based modeling of the wetlands problem, but as much as I hate it, first principles models are not alway the best tools to use... There are several assumptions you could make for this problem to get good enough answers, I suspect that is where these rules of thumb came from.

Floods are good for wetlands but bad for people

[sunnyflorida]

The idea off building levees and floodwalls and stopping the subsidence are mutually exclusive. If you do not want the city to loose elevation you must flood it from time to time. In fact the current flooding will actually raise the level of the city (flooded areas) by a few fractions of an inch. The Dutch system does not completely depend on single layers of dykes. It is a system that also entails vast low lands of farmland that can be flooded. Where would we get such "empty" reservoirs around New Orleans? Condemn part of the City and enclose it? Drain more of the wetlands and enclose them? Barrier islands would not have helped much since the water came in from the west and north across the Lake. It would have helped a bit if the Lake (actually a shallow bay) would be sealed off from the Gulf. That would be a big project and would ruin a vast estuary. The only engineering solution is to dredge and canal residential areas that are currently below sea (actually Lake) level. This would create a huge political problem and entail massive condemnation and property confiscation battles. But property values would soar. One other thing that drives me nuts is the concept that once the water comes out people can return. Houses that have been dunked will not survive. I guess this begs the question as to why there was such a rush to pump.

but maintained a cat 5 surge..

[YesIAmAScript]

Well, mostly. Apparently, they think the water has more inertia than the air, so when the storm dropped to cat 4, it maintained most of it's cat 5 force in terms of surge. True? I dunno. But that's what I heard.

Also, the spinning direction of the storm means the winds (and thus waves) were blowing right into Lake Ponch, piling up even more water there than you would otherwise expect.

Rebuilding, "Engineers"

[pipingguy]

Slashdotters take note: the people rebuilding the area will be real engineers, not so-called "computer engineers" or "software engineers".

My comment will be modded down to oblivion.

Re:Rebuilding, "Engineers"

[(1 -sqrt(5))*(2**-1)]

My comment will be modded down to oblivion.

Actually, here in the Slashdot ghetto, replying to 2+ day old stories; the mods rarely take note.

I notice you're a tardy poster.

Re:Rebuilding, "Engineers"

[pipingguy]

Actually, I'm just a tard.

Next time I get mod points I'll wander around the old ghetto and mod up the good ones that got ignored due to short attention spans.

Re:Rebuild? There's a Bright Idea.

[Mekkis]

The problem is that New Orleans is now almost completely destroyed and it's going to take decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to bring it back. We as a nation don't have that kind of money to waste; we're already making sacrifices on things like education, public assistance, universal healthcare, social security -- and then there's the war, another money sink, but one that we can't fight effectively because we can't afford armor for troops or vehicles or death benefits for KIAs.

Rather than pouring money the U.S. doesn't really have into a location that's assuredly going to suffer another catastrophic inundation, why not move the port to higher ground, at the very least? The problem is the rebuilding effort is focusing on where everything used to be instead of looking for new locations. By insisting we must rebuild exactly where everything used to be, we are effectively thumbing our nose at Mother Nature.

Re:Move! Quick!

[EccentricAnomaly]

Your residence was most likely built based on a large chain of rules of thumb. Contractors who build almost all residential structure don't do finite element analysis of planned buildings; they simply build to code, which is a conservative set of rules of thumb.

building codes are built on conservative rules of thumb. Your wetland rule of thumb is optimistic. Rules of thumb are fine, I just have a problem with your hand-waving.

I worked as a computational fluid dynamics engineer for over 3 years at a major jet engine manufacturer, now I am an applied super computing consultant at a major academic institution.

Then you should know the difficulties in modeling reacting flows with many complex species. now imagine that with sand and mud and plants and debris and topography you don't know well.

One thing I have learned is that although you can get a better answer from really high fidelity analysis, you can usually get on that is right enough with low fidelity analysis.

And until you do the high fidelity analysis (or better, real world testing) you don't know how much to trust the low fidelity analysis.

There are times to use the best modeling, and times to use less. When you can get 80% of the answer in 5 minutes or 99% of the answer in 1 year, it is often better to take 80%, and apply a safty factor.

To do so, where people's lives are at stake, you need to know an adequate safety factor. I've seen many screw ups resulting from fudge factors pulled out of engineers asses. (Columbia springs to mind)

I doubt anyone knows the right safety factor for the placement of wetlands to absorb storm surges.

I don't doubt that nobody could do acurate first principles based modeling of the wetlands problem, but as much as I hate it, first principles models are not alway the best tools to use... There are several assumptions you could make for this problem to get good enough answers, I suspect that is where these rules of thumb came from.

How do you know those answers are good enough? Has any wetlands-based-hurricane-abatement system ever been tested? Without testing such a mound of assumptions is little more than hot air.

But when it comes to levees and the like there are millennia of real world experience with failed levees. We know the bad assumptions, and therefore we can build a safer levee system than we can a swamp system.

I have nothing against expanded wetlands... there are lots of good biodiversity and pollution reasons to do so. But I am skeptical of their use for protection from category 5 hurricanes.

Re:Move! Quick!

[TamMan2000]

I wasn't the person who proposed it, I just defended it...

The only thing I have to add is about the lack of testing. There have been (sort of) extensive tests. Huricanes hit areas of extensive wetlands during the development of surrounding areas (these wetlands have since been developed as well). We could know from experience if the rule of thumb is in the right niegbhorhood from compairing similar storms during and after development.

USE PARAGRAPHS, ASSHOLE

[Anonymous Coward]

And before you reply that you did use paragraphs but they didn't show up in your post because Slashdot removed them, here is another piece of advice: USE THE "Preview" BUTTON, ASSHOLE.