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Topic: New Orleans - in denial
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| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/16/2007 10:31:40 AM | show profile An interesting article in this month's National Geographic on New Orleans. The City is in denial about it's future. No amount of engineering and ingenuity can protect the city from the sinking ground, rising sea levels, and more intense storms. I can't pretend to say I know what it's like to lose your home, likely for good, but it simply doesn't make sense to allow people to rebuild (much of it using federal dollars that we all contribute to) in areas already below sea level, in areas that will undoubtedly become flooded again, perhaps very soon, and most definitely completely under water in 50 or so years. People may say mind your own business, but because federal disaster relief is something I help pay for (or more accurately that my children will be stuck with the bill for), I feel it is my business. |
| mailbag | Posted – 7/16/2007 9:15:37 PM | show profile | email poster I think this nation is in denial about N.O. ugo on more than just the issue of rebuilding. We are in total denial about maintenance. As with any natural disaster the circumstances are horrific. That alone is bad enough. Even minus our 'govts' non response -- what has taken place there since is equally as horrific (but sure as hell explains Iraq.) From what I have read of the landscape... I too do not agree with rebuilding sprawl 'as such.' However there was a proposal to at least preserve the center part of town and let the mighty river return to normal (oil companies are fighting that from what I heard.) It would become ebb/flow. Incorporate dykes, marshes, sand dunes on the outlying areas of N.O. city center. AND MAINTAIN IT. Keep the pumps, but for the most part the city would be preserved until the Gulf Coast line could be rebuilt from decades of man's erred ways. If they let the river return to normal tomorrow - count on another 100 years before it recovers? That is what I understand. They just don't know -- no such recovery of a river has been documented. However, N.O. will continue sinking until that river is allowed to disperse silt again. With the quick problem solving skills of our gov't though (the turn out 300,000 people without a pot to piss in administration) we most certainly are in winning hands. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/16/2007 10:17:05 PM | show profile Yes, there have been proposals to rebuild New Orleans with a smaller footprint (as described in the NG article) but not unexectedly politics interferes with a rational plan. When the Mayor was up for re-election he quickly abandoned that proposal when locals objected to the notion of a smaller New Orleans. This is why I say, in denial.... people are trying to provide advice on what it would take to possibly have a viable New Orleans, and people don't want to hear it. |
