posted
Why should we spend money to rebuild a city that in 50 or so years is likely to be wiped out by another hurrucane? As long as it is below sea level, it is always going to be at risk.
Posts: 514 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I don't think that we as humans usually do things because they are easy or without risk. To defy our limitations and to challenge the forces that we cannot control is what makes us human.
Posts: 1256 | Registered: May 2005
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Why should we [build lives and create works] that in [generations or centuries] is likely to be wiped out by [global warming, world war, an asteroid, an ice age]? As long as [we are human], [our works] are always going to be at risk.
The rhetoric around such a sweeping question would tend to obscure even more practical issues, such as: should redevelopment include stricter protection of wetland coastline -- that can serve as a natural buffer to hurricane storm surges -- and restrain rampant greed of developers? Etc.
(edit, typo; also: what camus said )
Posts: 431 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
It does make sense though, to lower risk as much as possible. This city had storm walls (levees?) and they failed. Of course every civilization/city is going to fall eventually, but that doesn't mean we should try not to save as many lives.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I don't think we should stop whoever wants to rebuild New Orleans, but I don't think the government should put federal dollars toward it.
Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Let's take it one step futher than the levees and city under sea level situation and build New New Orleans as an undersea dome city. Isn't it about time we had one of those?
quote:Originally posted by Teshi: It does make sense though, to lower risk as much as possible. This city had storm walls (levees?) and they failed. Of course every civilization/city is going to fall eventually, but that doesn't mean we should try not to save as many lives.
I believe the levees are partially to blame for the damage. They're supposed to protect the city from regular flooding from the Mississippi, but they've helped destroy the wetlands around the city. The wetlands would have slowed the storm down and taken some of its energy.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
Oh, okay. I don't know much about it. Until a couple of days ago, I wouldn't have known even where New Orleans was expect for "somewhere in the south".
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I don't mean to sound blunt, but it sounds like a lot of you have either never been to New Orleans, or went and didn't really SEE it. New Orleans is a huge cultural hub. It's one of Louisiana's finest assets. Without it, our state is going to go under financially: Most of our shipping trade comes through there. Most of our financial headquarters are there. MILLIONS of people call this place their home, and half of them are responsible for keeping a lot of this state up and running. Tourism is huge in New Orleans...that brings in a pretty big chunk of the economy. Also, New Orleans is kind of like a haven to bored Louisianians seeking something to do on the weekend. We could go to the Aquarium, the IMAX, the zoo, the art galleries, or simply just walk around downtown and enjoy the eccentricity of it all. Without it, the state is bereft. I know it's hard to expect you to understand this since you don't live here, but it's like the heart of LA is missing.
Of course we should rebuild. It might take years, but with today's technology, the city can be rebuilt to be safer and even more protected from natural disasters. It's inevitable that they will come again, but next time we CAN be prepared.
Posts: 1225 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
That's what I was thinking. Build new things in a safer location, if you have to practically start from scratch.
Posts: 1014 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I don’t have a problem with rescue efforts and all that. But why should government funds go to rebuild in disaster prone areas? Isn’t that insurances job to pay for?
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
You kinda have to start from scratch, but kinda don't.
Much of the electric/telecom infrastructure can be repaired. Building this from scratch would be massively expensive. The other key is that, New Orleans is already owned. How would they relocate the entire city? Get someone to swap them out an equal amount of land somewhere else in the state, and rebuild the city exactly as it was?
I really can't think of a way to make this work. If someone has one, I'd love to hear it.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
And Jay, in the grand scheme of government expenditure, I think federal aid for disaster relief is one of the least questionable activities.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:But why should government funds go to rebuild in disaster prone areas?
Every place is prone to some type of disaster. We have tornoadoes where I live. Other places have earthquakes, and some places have hurricanes. There are not too many places to relocate to that provide security from natural disasters while offering certain geographic benefits.
Posts: 1256 | Registered: May 2005
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You know that insurance will only pay for so much, right? They hit a cap and don't cover all losses. Plus, lots of buildings that were insured years ago won't be able to be rebuilt for the amount they were insured for.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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There's no way it's going to be exactly the way it was anyway.
I agree with muppet. I don't think government funds should be used to rebuild.
I can't even imagine what all the refugees are going through right now. Even the ones who were able to evacuate early and had family or friends to take them in. They have no homes, no jobs, no schools... nothing to go back to and no idea when they will have. It's mind boggling, but no matter whether we rebuild New Orleans or not, those people will have to start over completely. It might as well be in a safer place.
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
I’m not saying anything about disaster relief. But I know even in my hometown there is a guy who owns the Anna Jarvis birth place and has some kind of museum or something set up across the road from the house. Well…. This is in a flood plane and pretty much every year gets flooded. And he gets money all the time from the flood to rebuild. Sort of like the town joke. So….. why should our tax dollars go to this sort of thing? My point is they don’t pay for the 100 car pile up on the interstate and no one would even consider the government having to pay for that. So why doesn’t insurance have to be the ones that pay for the rebuilding (note rebuilding, not recovery).
Not sure I feel very comfortable talking about this though while people are still dying down there….. But it is sort of an on going thing every time
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:But why should government funds go to rebuild in disaster prone areas?
Every place is prone to some type of disaster. We have tornoadoes where I live. Other places have earthquakes, and some places have hurricanes. There are not too many places to relocate to that provide security from natural disasters while offering certain geographic benefits.
Of course everyplace is prone to something, but from what I've been reading, NO has been a focus of disaster planners for decades, with its unique location and vulnerabilities. There are many cities in hurricane prone areas who are far better able to withstand the storms than NO. That in itself is not a reason to rebuild on the same spot.
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
Much of Little Rock is built in a flood plane.. so naturally every year it would flood and every year state and federal tax dollars would go to the clean up. It always made me furious to see all that money going to waste when it was just going to be spent again next year when it floods.
But then.. all of you know my opinion of the government spending other people's money....
posted
That's a beautiful sentiment, much like "War is bad". But I still would like to hear a feasible alternative to rebuilding the city where it stands now. I really can't think of a way to make that work.
So no matter how little sense it makes, I don't see any choice but to rebuild there.
Also, rebuilding and recovery are the same thing in this case. There will be no recovery until enough stuff is rebuilt to allow the city to be self-sustaining.
EDIT: this is to Jay and maui-babe, not Pixie.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Wait, so a city that has survived for 400 years has on catastrophic accident and it's suddenly accident prone? What if it's another 400 years until something happens again?
Yes it should be rebuilt, but smarter. This is the perfect chance to take environmental concerns into account, to build stronger levees. Does anyone know how old the levees are that broke? They also can build better drainage to get rid of storm surge. If Washington DC or New York were in this situation, no one would be questioning the rebuilding. We're still building skyscrapers even though we know terrorists feel compelled to knock them down.
It's the 21st century. If we can spend billions of dollars on the Big Dig in Boston, and billions on a water pipe in New York, we can spend billions rebuilding one of America's oldest cities, and making it hurricane proof.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
johnsonweed -- I wish you had your e-mail address in your profile. You have this way of starting controversial threads, and then dropping off the face of the earth (or at least out of the conversation) for a a couple of days.....
posted
My other comment is that it's hardly a case of yearly flooding in New Orleans. This is a hundred year storm.
I agree with Lyrhawn, they should take this opportunity to improve the levy and pump system.
Lyr, New Orleans doesn't really have a 'drainage system' per se, because all the storm water has to go uphill to get back into the lake. But they could easily upgrade the pumps.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote: I don’t have a problem with rescue efforts and all that. But why should government funds go to rebuild in disaster prone areas? Isn’t that insurances job to pay for?
Federal Disaster aid only covers necessities, and is only a temporary stop-gap unitl insurance companies can get involved. In most cases, federal aid (grants or loans) has to be deducted from whatever amount of money is given to you by the insurance company. Also, the gentleman that you refer to probably has national flood insurance which is expensive and covers this type of situation...
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
No, NewOrleans was never a city until after the 1803 LouisianaPurchase. In fact that is why Napoleon sold the territory: A British Under-Secretary of the Exchequer granted asylum in France -- he was fleeing the Crown's arrest warrant for malfeasance in office -- created a stock swindle in which the village-on-a-disease-ridden-swamp of NewOrleans was touted as a thriving metropolis (with "natives just jumping to seize the opportunity to become civilized slaves") soaked up so much capital that the French currency was being pulled under. With the economy nearing collapse due to the lack of valid backing of their monetary system, Napoleon's treasury needed gold so badly that when the US offered $2million to purchase the port of NewOrleans, the French had to counter-offer the sale of the entire LouisianaTerritory for $15million.
posted
You know, it's 2005. We should really have the better giant dome building technology that scifi promised us.
Posts: 5264 | Registered: Jul 2002
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It is, however, sinking into the sea almost visibly. They are very lucky there are no hurricanes in the Mediterranean.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Venice feels musty all the time. It's so humid, it feels like nothing drys up. It's weird. Venice is a great place to go for a couple days, just to see it, but I wouldn't ever want to go back there.
Posts: 879 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House was recently quoted in Chicago as saying "is makes little sense to sink billions of dollars into rebuilding NO" and that "much of it should be bulldozed"
Later he tried to spin that and say he was advocating better safety measures.
Oops, about the drainage thing, I didn't take that into account, but I agree a better pumping system could make up for that.
Further, on a purely dork point, NOLA wasn't the reason Napoleon sold the LA purchase to America, and Jefferson certainly didn't buy it not knowing what he was getting. Jefferson already had delegates in France attempting to buy NOLA all by itself when Napoleon offered the LA purchase. He'd previously sent thousands of French troops to Santo Domingo to stop the uprising of Toussaint Louverture, an uprising slave who led a revolt of the slave population. He was eventually captures and extradited to France, but yellow fever was killing the French soldiers by the thousands and French coffers were being quickly depleted. Jefferson sent the delegates to buy NOLA fearing they would lose the right to use the port.
So, they actually were trying to buy JUST NOLA from Napoleon and knew exactly what they were getting, but he offered the entire purchase instead in an attempt to rid himself of the whole mess, and get some money out of the deal. But the main factors were the losses on Santo Domingo.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
It wasn't merely a matter of getting some extra money to play with, the purpose of the sale was to save the French economy from currency collapse. The Caribbean rebellion was only a side issue which made other strategic considerations lean toward favoring the sale.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
"It wasn't merely a matter of getting some extra money to play with"
Who said it was?
And it wasn't merely a side issue. The Caribbean rebellion was the largest reason why Napoleon decided to abandon French territories in North America. And also, efforts expended to STOP the rebellion is what led to much of the lack of funds that put the French economy in that position to begin with. So yes, you can call the currency issue the most important one, but the rebellion caused it and ended it.
Regardless, this wasn't my main point, it was about NOLA.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Rebuilding New Orleans is going to mean more than just rebuilding the buildings and streets, as would have been done in Florida after a similar hurricane. What makes New Orleans so much worse is the fact that it lies beneath sea-level, and is protected by a tenuous network or pumps, levees, dams, and canals. The city runs pumps to prevent the streets from flooding during average rainstorms.
Furthermore the wetlands that protect the city from storm surge, and even natural erosion, are disappearing through erosion. Rivers do not run through a continuous course. Even small rivers are known to divert their course several miles in as little time as a century. When people live on the delta of a river as large as the Mississippi they aren't really living on dry land. If the river were left to its natural movement it would create 'new' land and cover existing dry land after every major rain storm, but especially during yearly floods. Because the Mississippi is so heavily controlled, this 'new' land is prevent from forming. So much of the coast of Louisiana is being eroded away without being replaced by the sediment of annual floods.
quote: Several factors — most human-made — have contributed to the steady decline of the delta at the bottom of the Mississippi. But most of the erosion is blamed on the levees, which faithfully steer all the water from the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico. That prevents occasional flooding, keeping area residents above water most of the time. But one unforeseen consequence of the levees has been to cut off wetlands from their life force.
The regular floods served nature's purpose by feeding the delta, bringing fresh water and sediment that served to sustain life and replenish the wetlands. Without the regular flooding, the wetlands naturally “compact.”
About $14 billion is needed for a variety of projects, including diverting river water and manually depositing sediment. Even still, it’ll take about 20 years to reverse the effects erosion, she said.
That $14 billion was an estimate of what it would have cost before the hurricane. In the hurricane many key parts of the levee system were severely destroyed. This could make it less expensive, because sediment that has to be cleared out anyways is readily available, so the disaster could be a chance to gain some ground (literally). But it could also make it more expensive if these older levees have to be replaced in addition to building the newer system to help fix the problem in the long term.
It would probably be best if civil engineers, geologists, and environmental scientists teamed up to evaluate the situation post-Katrina, but realistically there are millions of people eagerly waiting to get back to their lives and who will remain homeless and jobless until the city is fixed. So I suspect that the relief money from the government and private organizations will be used to fund 'quick-fixes' that will make the city inhabitable now. This may make it uninhabitable fifty years from now, but hey, we have plenty of time to do something before then, right?
For an idea of how severe coastal erosion is in Louisiana here are a few pictures and websites that seek to show the extent of the problem: P.A.C.E. ; USGS ; Restore or Retreat .
Back to the main question, do I think it is worth it to rebuild New Orleans? I don't think we can afford not to for three main reasons. First New Orleans is an important shipping port, the Mississippi River. Figures vary but over a hundred million tons of cargo go through the port of New Orleans every year, including roughly 60% of US grain exports. Secondly New Orleans is a very important historically. In its own way it rivals Philadelphia, New York, and DC for historical significance. Thirdly, just as those cities it is a culture center for the deep south. The only city comparable to it in the South might be Atlanta. (NB: the nearest I've been to the southeast is Pennsylvania or maybe Utah, whichever is closer).
So yeah, New Orleans is always going to be at risk, and its going to cost a lot of money to rebuild it, but we've already invested a lot money and time in making not only liveable but a vital part of our economy and history. To give up at this point would be a little fool-hardy. Furthermore if we didn't rebuild we would still have to do something with the millions of people who live there. There just isn't any place in our country to take them in for the long term. Economically there isn't a region that would be able to provide jobs for the refugees, and new homes would have to be built for people who have nothing. They have no clothing or food, and most of them might not have funds available to purchase these things in the short term let alone the long term. The real reason why we'll rebuild New Orleans, and do it quickly regardless of cost, or long-term stability is that there are millions of people who need to get their lives back, and New Orleans is most convenient place to put them.
Posts: 349 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
I'm sad that no matter what happens, I think NO will never be the same. It was an amazing place, in part, because of all the old structures and the chance to visit historical settings pretty much unchanged by time.
I can't imagine not having a thriving city on that site though. It just doesn't make sense.
But maybe they'll do something better than levees this time?
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Farmgirl: johnsonweed -- I wish you had your e-mail address in your profile. You have this way of starting controversial threads, and then dropping off the face of the earth (or at least out of the conversation) for a a couple of days.....
FG
Sorry FG,
The semester has started and I have trouble getting back here regularly.
posted
I didn't mean to sound so brutal when asking the original question. I loved the many times I have been to 'Nawlins, but I still wonder of it will be worth the cost. I understand that the city is the heart of the state, and perhaps with Atlanta, the heart of the South. The problem is that it will not be the same. I would hate to see a Disney-fied version of the way it used to be with faux finishes, etc. There are many cities that are built in places that should not have cities, like Venice and even Mexico City. My fundamental question is since we have to rebuild so much, is it worth rebuilding it where it will likely be lost again?
Posts: 514 | Registered: May 2005
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I vote "yes". That the question could be seriously considered is shocking. I am horrified at the news reports coming from there. It will take a lot of time and a huge amount of effort.
And quite a bit more than $6 million, JT.
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
You know that the levees were designed to withstand Cat 3 hurricanes because a cost benefit analysis was done and it was decided that bigger ones were not cost effective. Ironic?
Posts: 514 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I like the idea of either a US Venice or under sea domes. Seriously. Either of those would be cool. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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If you lived in an under water bubble, would you need an eruv? If you can't see the sky, how do you know when to daaven? If you live in a bubble, can you grow a garden? What if it were hydoponic? Do you still say "ha'adomah"? Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Sure, you can rebuild buildings where buildings once stood. But you can't force it to be New Orleans again. That won't happen. Posts: 3636 | Registered: Oct 2001
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