I posted my thoughts on Tuesday. I see more agreeing with me, including Mr. Hastart...
But, you got DUMBOCRATS to deal with!
Posted on 09/02/2005 7:38:04 AM PDT by cll
New Orleans is where it is for a reason: The United States needs a city right there. New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist. With that as a given, a city will return there because the alternatives are too devastating. The harvest is coming, and that means that the port will have to be opened soon. As in Iraq, premiums will be paid to people prepared to endure the hardships of working in New Orleans. But in the end, the city will return because it has to. Geopolitics is the stuff of permanent geographical realities and the way they interact with political life. Geopolitics created New Orleans. Geopolitics caused American presidents to obsess over its safety. And geopolitics will force the city's resurrection, even if it is in the worst imaginable place.
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I posted my thoughts on Tuesday. I see more agreeing with me, including Mr. Hastart...
But, you got DUMBOCRATS to deal with!
While we may not be able to build strong enough to survive everything, we can do much better than the wood buildings on flat ground that got flattened and destroyed in NO and Biloxi.
Agreed. But then again hindsight is 20/20 and that ship sailed a long time ago. What politician would have gotten away with saying. "There is a storm that could hit today, maybe in a hundred years, but we need to destroy your houses and move you out in case that happens." Yeah, right. Sounds like a winning plan to me...NOT!
Agree completely. Look at Lake Charles and Morgan City. There isn't a whole lot there but refineries, ports, and some rail head.
You don't need a ton of civilian infrastructure - just the industrial stuff and bedroom communities.
The last few times I was in Nawlins they were working on new hotels and casinos. Nowadays they're putting massive pillars down before they lay the foundation. I'm not sure if the pillars go to bedrock but tey're supposed to keep them from sinking.
I think they should just redo the port area and the French Quarter and that is it! Nobody will want to miss Mardi Gru and that is really the only reason people go to New Orleans anyway. Everyone who lived there before should be assisted by the government in finding other locations in the U.S. to live.
It is the only thought out and sensible solution, so it will never be done by our elected idiot leaders.
It may not be rocket science, but your command of earth science is well beyond mine. In some of your other posts on this subject, I've noted that you suggest the French Quarter be preserved by a smaller system of levees on relatively high ground. Since that's the area nearly everyone visits when they see New Orleans, the preservation of that district as a virtual theme park would make the move you suggest more palatable politically.
The French Quarter structures, charming though they may be, are just splinters held together by the mud the termites spit on them.
Maybe they could put all the new buildings on tallllllllll pilings nailed into the bedrock--kinda like stilts. They could elevate all the old, historic buildings onto the same sort of things. You'd have to go up an escalator to get to those bars etc., unless they made cross-walks from bar to bar. Actually, after they did all this, they could just let Lake Pontchatrain go ahead and drain and--presto! Venice!
Some great ideas here! Allow me to add my two cents worth.
Yes, move the French Quarter to higher ground and make an "attraction" of it. Yes, keep the port, but be prepared to move it when the Mississippi River does. Yes, build hurricane proof buildings where necessary to house the infrastructure for the port - but not for slums. Move all hospitals and other serious services to higher ground.
Here's my contribution - build a foundation for the necessary city. First, open the levees and let the water flow over the mess, scouring out the filth and debris. Second, build a big concrete box, fill it with crushed solid landfill (we have plenty of trash), then fill it in with concrete, sinking pylons as you go. Any buildings put on these pylons should have garages on the ground and second floor areas, with the real building starting above that level. And all should have working generators, with fuel for a week.
So how do we get these great ideas to the decision makers?
It's a place that requires a major seaport infrastructure, but there's no inherent reason there has to be a city there.
There was already one official on TV this morning - I didn't catch his name but I think he was a local and not someone from Washington - who said flat-out he expects NO to come back more as a "tourist city" than as an actual place for people to live and do business. He then noted that he knows of a number of companies that are already planning to reestablish their HQs permanently outside of New Orleans. He implied that they weren't planning to move far, but they're certainly not going back inside the city.
Speaking purely as to the political ramifications: it doesn't really matter what the citizens of NO think of Bush or anybody else, since they're no longer citizens of NO and most of them will likely not be returning. Being a New Orleanian is no longer anything but a state of mind and a membership in a vast diaspora. (Massachusetts just announced they're taking in 2500 people in the next three days.) As such, their political power has been diluted to the point of nonexistence.
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