The Hart-Miller Future of New Orleans

Special to FreeRepublic ^ | 24 September 2005 | John Armor (Congressman Billybob)

[cgk]

Rebuilding N.O. discussion.

;)

[Gondring]

One major flaw, I think... The Mississippi Delta is sinking. Isn't the rate even higher than the Atlantic coast?

[BlessedByLiberty]

I agree with much of what you say. There are many projects around the world worth looking at and adapting, such as those you mention and the Netherlands gates and locks. They were built to hold back the North Sea after flooding.

Many members of my family were wiped out in Katrina - most from St. Bernard Parish. They lost everything, one aunt, her parents, the remaining lost homes, cars, clothing, etc. They are insured against most of this lost.
They are contributing members of society - taxpayers,insurance carrying,job holding, responsible LA families. The homes in which they lived were brick middle class homes in middle class neighborhoods.

Now you say this large multi-generational LA family should just pack it in and move away so that tourists and the elites can have a nice place to work and play.

Should they move to CA where we live with earthquakes? Should they move to the Midwest and deal with tornadoes, or do you recommend those people in disaster prone areas also pack up and move?

It is easy to be cynical, cavalier and pragmatic but there is also a human element to consider here. Yes there are people who will move out and stay out, but there are others who love the land their families have settled for generations, their history.

There is also a pragmatism that says we must knock off the regulations, the endless environmental lawsuits, the unaudited government payouts that prevent improvements to the water barriers.

We are Americans, the cutting edge of science and technology and I believe we can improve on flood prevention projects as countries like the Netherlands have done.

BTW, Congressman Billybob, I do respect and admire your writings and opinions.

[Congressman Billybob]

No, I am definitely NOT saying that people who've lived all their lives in Southern Louisiana should go away, and not come back. Even with governmental help, those who can afford to come back to new homes are more likely to be those who are capable of taking and performing jobs that will be available, then.

Ir sounds like your folks are the kind of people who want to come back, and will come back, when it is safe to do so. I say more power to them. However, housing codes for new housing and new businesses may change the character of the new neighborhoods. (Building up on stilts, or concrete foundations, plus no water and electric connections on the first floor, etc.)

There are a variety of ways to make the new communities more survivable than the ones which were destroyed. But all that will have higher private as well as public costs.

John / Billybob

[Robert A Cook PE]

New thoughts to an old problem!

[Robert A Cook PE]

PS. Everything on Galveston Island to Brwonsville (outside of the seawall-protected areas itself) is up on stilts.

[BlessedByLiberty]

To the best of my knowledge the St. Bernard housing codes did require concrete slabs and stricter codes.[Nine of our family homes had slabs. Big family!]

Frankly, NOLA is in a category by itself, yet it garners the media focus as if it represents all of LA and the other ravaged southern states. NOLA is such a nightmare of grand scale corruption that there can be no doubt that the homes there were substandard. Also many of the homes are fifty years and older and probably not brought up to current codes. In that, we are in complete agreement.

What will be interesting will be the leveling out of comparable wages and cost of living expenses between LA, the southern states and the rest of the country once rebuilding begins.

A final thought as to rebuilding with private vs. federal funds. There are two groups carping that the government needs to step in and pour more money into NOLA. That the government - read taxpayers - has to be tasked with the entire burden of rebuilding.

The first are the same political hands that wasted, diverted or otherwise cannot account for monies earmarked for levee improvements.

The second are the same people who had their hands out long before Katrina struck.

Both groups are damaging any thoughtful consideration the public might give to these issues.

Both groups of people are going to be sorry for the backlash and resentment they will bring about from taxpayers.

[Congressman Billybob]

I worked for the Baltimore City Planning Department when the Charles Center Project was being completed, and the Inner Harbor Project (and ultimately the Camden Yard Stadium Project) were on the drawing boards. All of that has been wildly successful. Some principles from that will apply to the rebuilding of the new New Orleans.

Private money by the hundreds of millions, or billions, of dollars will pour into New Orleans, and the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. However, all that new private investment will hold back, and lurk in the bushes, until the bean counters are fairly certain that the reconstruction as a whole will succeed -- and tourists, fishermen, and oil industry people will all return.

As with the projects in Baltimore, it will take certain commitments of public construction and spending to create the necessary framework. And that has to come first, so the bean counters in the private sector will open their wallets.

And this, by the way, is comparable to the populating of the American West, a century and a half ago. The engine which drove all that private investment and movement of people was the Homested Law, first passed in 1805 (IIRC) under President Jefferson.

Everyone who wanted 120 acres of "free" land, could stake it and claim it under that federal law. But then came the private money and sweat equity to live there, build homes, and farm the land for at least five years. That small public investment created the greatest wave of private investment and development in the nation's history.

You are absolutely right, however, that this whole effort will be FUBARED if the present "leaders" of New Orleans and Louisiana are not cut out of the equation as fast as possible.

John / Billybob

[BlessedByLiberty]

Your assessments are correct. Private sector money follows the government lead. Your analogy of homesteading the American West is a very good one.

You wrote: "...the present "leaders" of New Orleans and Louisiana are not cut out of the equation as fast as possible."

I would add to that I want to see jail time as well as repayment, with decades of interest, of all stolen, embezzled and "misdirected funds."

Have a good evening, it was a wonderful exchange of ideas in the midst of nature's chaos.

[cpdiii]

Good post and pretty accurate. The first thing that needs to be addressed is Federal Flood Insurance. This program causes many of the flood disasters throughout the United States. It makes it economically viable for people and business to build in areas that never should have been built in. The solution is very simple but a political beast to tackle.
1. We should pay off those that have federal flood insurance but refuse to issue new insurance in New Orleans or any other flood prone area. Private insurance can be obtained on new buildings if they are elevated on cement piles or the area is filled in to a height of about 20 feet above sea level.
2. The river must be allowed to flood below New Orleans as it has in the past. (It just kills me to agree with the enviro wackos on this issue, but they are right.) The spring floods will replenish the marsh and build new land that has been eroded by the fact that the Corp of Engineers (also known as the "Ship of Fools") has leveed the river almost to its mouth. Those needed sediments now flow off the continental shelf into a huge alluvial fan at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico some several thousand feet down on the abyssal plain. This would also make the diversion of the Mississippi down the Atchafalya less likely as the gradient of the river would be greater via a shorter access to the Gulf of Mexico. The greater gradient of the Atchafalya because it is a shorter distance to the Gulf is the reason it is trying to capture the Mississippi and it will, unless something is done to the gradient of the Mississippi River.
3. As you mentioned the dredged spoils, the silt, from the river should be dumped into the ninth ward and the other portions of New Orleans that are below sea level until that land is built up 15 or 20 feet. It will take many many years but this land will become some of the most valuable property in Louisiana.

This disaster has presented an opportunity to bring jobs and commerce into New Orleans. This program could elevate the very people it hurt the most and at the same time show the way for those on government subsistence programs the way out of their dependence and poverty. The DEMONrats will fight any program that takes their voters away from them. This is the reason they want to just rebuild the levees and bring the people back as soon as possible. Louisiana could become solid Republican at the state level. The DEMONICrats fear this type of progress.

[Congressman Billybob]

Thank you. I appreciate comments from knowledgeable Freepers. Also, I agree with you about federal flood insurance. As constructed, it is a federal program which guarantees bad results.

Exactly the same basic mistake was made in the savings and loan debacle decades ago, because the FDIC insurance was 100% of covered accounts. Depositors therefore had zero incentive to pay attention to how reliable/unreliable the institutions were, before making deposits.

John / Billybob

[cpdiii]

If anyone is curious you can go to google and go to their satellite maps. Look at the mouth of the Atchafalaya River via the map function and then switch to the satellite mode. You will see the satellite mode shows more land at the mouth of that river. This is because the map they have is older than than satellite map. This shows how a healthy delta building process is occurring. This is what would be occurring out in Breton Sound except for the folly of the Corps of Engineers and their levee system. Breton Sound is the direction the water that floods New Orleans comes from. Maps of a hundred years ago show the huge amount of erosion that is occurring there. This area "was" New Orleans first line of protection against a storm surge.

[Let's Roll]

Forecasters this a.m. were pointing out that a stalled Rita was going to be dumping rain into all those tributaries - the Red River etc. that empty into the Mississippi.

So in less than a week NOLA may have flooding from the river.

[cpdiii]

The Red River no longer empties into the Mississippi. It was diverted down the Atchafalya at the Mississippi Flood Control Project. This is more folly from the "Ship of Fools" also known as the Corps of Engineers.

Actually in defense of the Corps they only do what the real "Ship of Fools, thieves and Scalawags" also known as the United States Congress, tell them to do.

[Fierce Allegiance]

ping to my Civil Engineers list (from memory, sorry if I forgot anyone, I'll get you monday!)

[Ozone34]

Actually, I believe the Red River was captured by the Atchafalaya some decades earlier and no longer flows into the Mississippi.