Not picking nits, I have an degree in the subject... rather, picking at political nits...

D'you have some pre-built posts for Los Angeles and San Francisco? (San Andreas)

Memphis and St. Louis? (New Madrid)

Seattle? (Mt. Rainier)

I got your point - it's trashed now, why rebuild it, based on the science, which doesn't apply to the other cities (in that they aren't physically trashed now, regardless of what people might think of the politics of the residents...) and it's a *lot* harder, really, to fight off the sea than it is to build for an earthquake...

Abandonment seems like surrender, which doesn't go over well politically, unless you're French.

Hmmmm...

I lived on the Outer Banks of North Carolina for five years (Kitty Hawk, Albemarle Sound side) and saw beach erosion on the coast that no project that the Army Corps of Engineers had could stop. I've spent time in NOLA, went out to the bayous, and concluded that if I was going to live there for the rest of my natural life, it would be in a residential version of a submarine!

This is a very good topic for us, as a nation, to be discussing. It covers all types of development in areas that there is risk... fires, floods, earthquakes, etc. There needs to be an agreed cut off for personal responsibility and society responsibility. Are people aware? Who pays? What is done? etc. Also, we are going to be having this discussion about a number of oceanside communities as sea water continues to rise.

I am FROM Louisiana, and I still think they need to pull the *FLUSH* handle on New Orleans...

And all this *repopulate ASAP* BS is just that, BS... People are going to DIE from filth and disease, Nagin is trying to open New Orleans up to make himself look good, "See what I did?? I am the saviour of new Orleans..."

The Federal Reclamation of New Orleans Act of 2005 brings to mind 2 words: Eminent Domain

Why not build New Orleans in the center of the Gulf, with a walkway to it, rather like an oil rig. That would preserve all the wet lands in the area, and offer residents splendid ocean views at maximum expense???

I'm with John of Argghhh! on this. While we need to discuss the rebuilding on a national scale, the fact is that nearly all of the US population lives in places that are susceptible to natural disaster on a fairly regular basis. It is a risk that many people live with, but the question is how much risk and how much should the federal government compensation those who are directly affected by the disaster when it strikes.

We have insurance products to cover many of those natural disasters - flood insurance, hurricane insurance, disaster insurance, and policy riders to cover various contingencies. Many people don't have 'em despite the possibility of being affected.

And one could even argue that by government backing some of these policies that we encourage further development in high risk areas. Maybe that's something that should be discussed as well.

In response to John of Argghhh!'s post:

LA and San Fran are susceptible to violent earthquakes due to their proximity to the active San Andreas fault. The New Madrid fault,
(from what I recall, I may be wrong), isn't seen as being prone to a large earthquake in the foreseeable future, nor is Mt. Rainier projected to blow in the near term, and even if it did, there is a chance to could blow in the opposite direction of Seattle.

In each of these instances, there is a distinct though slight possibility of destruction. These possibilities, however, are not generally viewed as immediate impending threats, and are viewed more as geologic long-term scenarios that have a low probability of occurring in the next 50, 100, or even 1,000 years. Even if they do occur, a recurrence during any given lifetime is extremely remote.

On the other hand, it is a probability (not a possibility, but a probability) that New Orleans will be inundated by the Gulf of Mexico, permanently, and within 100 years. Efforts to disrupt this natural event by building levees and sea walls has actually accelerated this march to the sea, not mitigated it. In fact, man's interference in the sedimentation and water flow cycle has accelerated the death of the marshlands, posing a major threat to the Mississippi flyway and the estuary system that acts as a nursery for much of our nations seafood and migratory birds.

If we lost Los Angeles or Memphis, the rest of the country would not be greatly affected on an environmental scale. The efforts we are pouring into keeping New Orleans, however, is having a major environmental impact on the natural resources mentioned above.

The "foot" of Louisiana is something of an natural abomination, and is geologically in search of correction. According to the scientist quoted in my post, the Mississippi is due for a major shift in it's course just south of Baton Rouge (see the second map in the post), one that will carry the river far away from New Orleans. The shortest course to the Gulf is to the southwest, in the general direction of Lafayette.

New Orleans is not destined to survive, and it is only our human arrogance that will prolong its natural and preordained death. You are right that it might not be politically popular, but you cannot beat the ocean, you can only hold it at bay for a little while.

I happen to think that money would be much better spent relocating people now, instead of pouring billions into the sunken city many don't want to return to, only to have to relocate those that do return once or twice more before we finally get the fact that it is far too expensive to keep rebuilding a city that was a mistake to begin with.

Quite frankly, with the track T.S. Rita is currently taking, I'm not even certain New Orleans will last another two weeks, much less another 50 years.

Flooding of a city located below sea level is just SO special!

Earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, fires, etc.
the event lasts for minutes, hours...
recovery/repair can begin right away.

A quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in 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 burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.

lawhawk: "...nearly all of the US population lives in places that are susceptible to natural disaster on a fairly regular basis."

Uh, what? I'm no geologist, but that seems a rather broad statement. In fact, that's gotta be dead wrong -- only a small majority of the ~ 300M live in disaster-prone areas, no?

Maybe Al Gore can invent water that runs uphill.

lawhawk: "We have insurance products to cover many of those natural disasters - flood insurance, hurricane insurance, disaster insurance, and policy riders to cover various contingencies. Many people don't have 'em despite the possibility of being affected."

Actually, most of the people that DO have flood insurance only have them because the federal government backs the coverage.

No sane private insurer would EVER sell flood insurance in the New Orleans area without being forced to charge exorbitant rates. The only reason such coverage exists is because Uncle is willing to back it.

Thank you, lawhawk. I agree, the question is not "Do we rebuild NOLA" or even "Do we, uh, preemptively not rebuild SF/LA/SeaTac/...?" A better question is how to manage risk: in particular, how to force people as much as possible to internalize the costs of their decision to take risk, and how much "leftover" (i.e. still-externalized) risk to assume at the federal level.

MrSpkr, I'm confused: if Uncle Sam underwrote all the flood coverage, and actually had the money to cover it, we wouldn't be scrounging $200B to rebuild NOLA now. Clearly either (1) Uncle Sam didn't have enough money to cover this predictable event (perhaps he didn't charge high enough premiums), or (2) many people didn't buy the insurance, and the $200B is going mainly to bail them out. Please correct me if I'm off-base.

For the record, I'm in SF, and I just re-upped my quake insurance. IMHO anyone who lives here without some form of quake risk management (i.e. insurance) has no right to demand reparations from Washington after the fact. Of course, they will anyway...

You can't drive a car without a basic level of insurance coverage; buying/renting a home should be the same.

Abandonment seems like surrender

Agreed that this is a problem . . . but then, we're not fighting a Global War Against Acts of God here.

I have to agree with you.

New Orleans, like Venice, is a doomed city. It is best to cut our losses and allow the Mississippi to go where it wants to.

I know people will bring up the loss of the port. We do have a thing called the intracostal waterway that can take the goods that would go to New Orleans to Houston, Biloxi or other ports.

The only reason I see to rebuild New Orleans is to get all the New Orleans gangs and thugs back to where they belong. Already Houston is having a big problem with them. The only good thing about that is that Harris county doesn't f**k around with thugs. If they manage not to get killed by the person they are trying to rob they will be sent to jail and if they kill someone they send em to the gas chamber. There ain't no such thing as the "touchy-feely" approach to criminals that exists in more liberal places.

Here's a question. Assuming the mississippi does change course, how quickly will its new course become navigable? Should we be embracing the inevitable and building a channel for it to ensure ships will have clearance?

First flood insurance:
1) The feds have been paying out about 50 cents on the dollar of damages in recent flood events. I've seen mention of people having $115,000 in surveyed damage and getting a check for $50,000. And another with $20,000 in damages and getting a check for $8900. The speculation is that the flood insurance program would go instantly bankrupt if they payed out full damages.

2) There is little incentive for people to buy flood insurance, they know that FEMA will fly in with checks for all who suffered loses whether they have insurance or not.

3) The flood insurance program should just be handed off to private companies. If someone has to buy insurance and it costs them $2000/month then that might be a sign to them they they need to move elsewhere. Let market forces drive people out of these insane building locations.

--Rebuilding New Orleans in place would just be madness. Find a higher elevation spot upstream and move the place there.

agesilaus

The "foot" of Louisiana is something of an natural abomination, and is geologically in search of correction. According to the scientist quoted in my post, the Mississippi is due for a major shift in it's course just south of Baton Rouge (see the second map in the post), one that will carry the river far away from New Orleans. The shortest course to the Gulf is to the southwest, in the general direction of Lafayette.

New Orleans is not destined to survive, and it is only our human arrogance that will prolong its natural and preordained death. You are right that it might not be politically popular, but you cannot beat the ocean, you can only hold it at bay for a little while.

First, please identify any "scientist" who respondes to your questions. I've got precisely as much confidence in anonymous "experts" that I do for the for-hire medical experts I deal with as a defense attorney.

Second, "experts" have been telling us for decades that we faced a threat from the erosion of our coastal wetlands. They have also been advising on ways to restore those wetlands. Meaning that it is possible to un-do some of the damage caused by the channelling of the Mississippi and other major rivers in the region. Follow this link for sources: http://cswgcin.nbii.gov/ecoregion/wetlands/lawetlands/

With regard the changing course of the Mississippi, the general consensus among "experts" is that the course will shift towards Morgan City, rather than Lafayette. It is also not inevitable.

Finally, and the reason I'm responding to this in the first place, is that your conclusion "New Orleans is not destined to survive" is utter nonsense. Using the logic displayed in your post, Holland should be abandoned. The simple fact is that humans have manipulated their environment for thousands of years, and that includes riverine systems and settlement of areas prone to flooding.

Additionally, failing to rebuild New Orleans would deprive the United States of one of its biggest ports, among other economic impacts.

Caveat: I am from New Orleans, and have a personal interest in seeing it rebuilt. I believe, however, that I am also able to objectively judge the situation and reach a different conclusion from yours.

Your superficial understanding of the situation in South Louisiana generally, and New Orleans specifically ought to embarass you.

"and it is only our human arrogance that will prolong its natural and preordained death."

Ooooh, what a clanger. All of human civilization is a struggle against nature. If that's "human arrogance" then better get used to it. We either persist with our arrogance, or we go back to hunting and gathering all day.

I'm sorry, Robert, but you not objective. If you really are an attorney, you also are surprisingly inept at making your case.

My source is as credible and qualified as any expert cited by the mainstream media, and perhaps more so; Unlike Dan Rather’s sources, I've had a chance to review his resume and his work. For obvious reasons, as a scientist who conducts much of his research with government grants, he chooses to remain anonymous.

Of course, you don't have to rely on him; the initial graphic was from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers drawing, used by LSU. Or you could have watched the Discovery Channel special that aired shortly after landfall that showed that marshland area the size of Delaware is disappearing every year. Or you could simply read any of the wetlands research published over the past decades that shows the decline of the Mississippi Delta.

Holland is a tiny country that has no choice but to push back against the sea. It literally has nowhere else to go. We, on the other hand, have town in some areas of the midwest and west all but giving away land to build communities. In addition, while the North Sea does generate storms, Holland does not face the constant threat of hurricanes. Rebuilding New Orleans is optional, as other than culturally, it offers little that can't be rebuilt in a better location at a fraction of the cost. Your comparison is, quite frankly, silly.

The weight of scientific evidence buries your biased opinions, and the link you provide proves my point exactly: to maintain and artificially-channeled delta and marshland system is technically possible, but cost-prohibitive and a huge waste of federal tax dollars. If Louisiana wants to rebuild a city in a hole in a swamp, Louisiana should pay for it. Baton Rouge should foot the bill, not Boston, and not Boise.

I'm also with John of Argghhh! on this one. On the west coast we have the threat of earthquakes (and just last week there were indications that stress in building in the fault). Half the east coast gets pounded by storms at least as badly as the Gulf does. If risk was an important factor in rebuilding it seems like we'd all be huddled together somewhere out in the midwest living in underground tornado shelters, with the rest of the country consisting of rusting ruins from past disasters. For good or ill that's not the way most Americans seem to operate.

Leaving New Orleans to become a swamp has its own set of costs, monetary, cultural, emotional. It seems to me that even if we didn't rebuild, the importance of the area as a port virtually guarantees that another city would grow up in about the same spot, anyway. It's going to be rebuilt, and despite all the grumbling and second-guessing there was never really any doubt about that decision. Just like there won't be any doubt about rebuilding LA when the Big One hits, or rebuilding Miami the next time it gets smashed. Yeah, It's going to cost a lot and be a difficult job, but it also gives us a chance to build a hell of a city virtually from scratch.

Robert's got a good point. However, I am unsure why his conclusion supports that the federal government should pay for this attempt at salvage. Risk-taking like this seems ready-made for the visionary investor (or, if it sinks, the crackpot debtor).

How about this for grist for the discussion.

Let the Mississippi flow free through the region. Unleash it to go to the Atchafalaya which is where it wants to go. Then build a canal connecting the Intracoastal Waterway to the new Mississippi River along the existing course. That is, turn the current river into a canal that connects the MRGO to the city to the river.

New Orleans WILL lose delta swamp immediate adjacent to it eventually. With the predicted course correction to the Atchafalaya, the delta swamps to New Orleans's east will lose any chance of sedimentation restoring it. Why not reclaim it right now as the Dutch reclaim land. Build redundant 10,000 year sea walls there for protection from future hurricanes

Just some thoughts...

Frankly, I think the $200 billion dollars would be better spent buying out the residents of the delta who demand the river be choked up in the levees all the way to the Gulf shooting the river into the sea like a firehose if they refuse to allow the river to flood again so as to recharge the protective delta swamps...

Well, there is a conceptual leap from scientific conclusion to policy conclusion. You can't pretend that the two are one and the same. What you can say is that given the scientific situation, here are some of the possible policies and their probable outcomes. I would say that "rebuild it the same way" would end up pretty low on any reasonable priority list. But seriously, so would "abandon the whole place." Humans have been reshaping the environment for millennia.

Humanity has gravitated toward flood plains since their earliest days - there is nothing special or unusal about the City of New Orleans existence nor it's important position in the American economy.

The greatest impediment to rebuilding New Orleans (and let's understand something - the entire city isn't gone, there are numerous parts with scarcely any damage) is neither weather nor environmentally related - it is the human created sinkhole of interminable poverty and an enormous dependency class caused by corruption and the benign neglect of the American welfare state.

Graft and generational dependency ruined New Orleans far worse than any floodwaters can or ever will.

Earlier posts here comparing New Orleans to San Francisco and Seattle in their risk of natural disasters are somewhat offbase: better comparison could be made to all coastal or riverine areas that can expect regular hurricane damage, flooding, or coastal destruction. IMO the reason discussion of *whether* New Orleans should be rebuilt has been actively rejected, is because of immediate comparisons to Florida, not San Francisco. As soon as we begin questioning how much money should be used to rebuild homes that are flooded or destroyed by known coastal risks, it calls into question the viability of most of the east coast (especially Miami and most of Florida)as well as wealthy beachfront property on the west coast (which as you may have noticed, is prone to sliding into the ocean). No legislator wants the finger pointed at them saying 'we won't help you rebuild this area', so they won't point the finger either.

IMO, we as a country are afraid of realistic evaluation of risk in any form, for three reasons:

1. We don't like to look objectively at risk, as a people or a culture; it requires us to acknowledge scientific, fiscal, and human behavioral realities we prefer to forget.

2. Seeing these realities would change our actions, and from our political system on down, we resist change in response to reality.

3. It would require serious, adult prioritization of our time, money, and resources. This cuts into pork and other political deals at all levels.

4. It requires recognizing the power of the natural world and our inability to control it. This seems to be something humans as a species prefer to delude themselves about.

I believe human psychological realities trump everything, whether about risk assessment or turf battles, ego-driven power grabs or hero worship. Until we are willing to put these factors on the table and include them in our analysis, we are not dealing with reality and will make poor decisions. Ergo, the systems and world we have now.

Here's a helpful tutorial for those of you Northerners whose nipples get hard every time someone says the word "wetlands"...

"WETLANDS" = SWAMPS

Big. Nasty. Alligator and snake filled. Swamps. Lots o' biodiversity. Lots o' leeches. Great drainage, but that same drainage is already achieved through stormwater runoff permits and other, existing frameworks.

Not a very good reason to sieze hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens' lands and property (either through regulation or eminent domain), grade an entire city over, and plow one of the most vital ports in the United States into the ground.

Is this post a joke?

Oh, a different angle:

If the question is not 'should we rebuild New Orleans', then we should all be focusing on HOW TO REBUILD New Orleans in a sustainable way (i.e. with regular upkeep, not with huge infusions of money).

I've been highly disappointed in, well, everyone paying attention, that we have not even started to think outside the box on this one. What is relevant is what WILL work in New Orleans?

For instance, outlying, primarily residential parishes directly on the delta should be returned to wetlands, with provisos for human settlement that suit the local terrain. If people want to build there, it should be as they did for generations: inexpensive houses on stilts, so they can be rebuilt, again without huge investment.

Additional alternative solutions include houseboats and other floating housing and infrastructure, and creating zones of supported housing types coupled to insurance. One of the major problems, for instance, isn't rebuilding the poor 9th ward - it's paying for the completely destroyed expensive waterfront houses. Risk, land values, and approved spending for rebuilding all need to be coupled in a reasonable way.
I'm no engineer, but there are additional alternatives: for instance, raising the level of the lowest-altitude, most at-risk neighborhoods the same way they did Galveston: pump in sand dredged from Lake Ponchartrain or the river.

Rebuilding NOLA is a done deal. Since they're going to do it, let's help them do it right. Our primary tasks as citizens should be to provide oversight, ideas, and correction to a federal government whose management, spending, and cronyism are out of control. God knows leaving FEMA and Halliburton in control will only waste our money.

Disaster in most other places in the country can be privately mitigated (building stronger homes and buildings). Therefore, choices to live in those areas and how much to spend on disaster mitigation are much more efficient.

Disaster in many places is not inherently disastrous. If I’m standing around in the middle of a field, a huge earthquake will not hurt me. If I’m standing around a ditch that is below sea level and it is swallowed by the Gulf of Mexico, I will die. I will not be able to return until major cleanup has taken place.

Disaster in other places reduces the chances of future disaster. If there’s a huge earthquake, it releases a lot of energy, so the potential of another earthquake greatly decreases. Whenever New Orleans is assaulted by a hurricane, it erodes the land making future disaster more likely.

The chances of a catastrophic event occurring in other places are unrelated to disaster mitigation. The frequency and size of earthquakes is not affected by people making their homes stronger. In New Orleans, environmental modifications have made disaster more likely. Furthermore, building the levees higher and stronger may reduce the chances of flooding, but it makes the Worst Case Scenario (water flowing into the city and creating Lake New Orleans via a direct hit by a hurricane) much worse.

Alot of people here are talking about what should happen. I say wait and see what does will happen. I predict many of the evacuees are not going to return at all. There not going to wait months or years to be gainfully employed or living in a permanent residence again. They'll gain some permanent ties where they are, and many will stay there rather than risk doing this all over again sometime in the next 10 years. As for those not gainfully employed, there's not much diference between a housing project in Houston and one in NO. Meanwhile, big business and developers will be diverting and moving any big buildings or projects away from the city. Repeat this process again and again for every flood and hurricane that will come towards NO in the next 50 years, and watch the city become a ghost town.

People have been migrating like this since there have been people.