Maggie's Farm

Re: New Orleans' levees, this isn't news: it's the nature of building on alluvial soil, particularly after nearly half a century of neglect. They were talking about the problem when I was in high school in Jefferson Parish, next door.

In Jefferson Parish, at that time and more-or-less continuously since, they were building and upgrading the pumps and levees. Except for one very small area near the Orleans Parish line, where they forgot to shut a backflow valve, the east bank took no water during Katrina. You can see a couple of places where the levee deflected under a Cat 5 surge; but the bottom line, as a high school buddy of mine who lately retired as a civil engineer put it, is that the water went up, and then it went down, just like it was supposed to.

In Jefferson Parish, they took care of things the way they were supposed to. Orleans Parish, on the other hand, seems to be reducing itself to a theme park, and runs the risk of ending up a lot like the last theme park they built. That's a pity, but it's their choice.

A few comments:

1.) This was a popular refrain I heard from a lot of talking heads that didn't do their basic homework on the topography of New Orleans. The oldest parts of the city, such as the Quarter, are built on ground that is actually above the 500-year floodplain. Iberville knew what he was doing, all those centuries ago, but his successors, maybe not so much.

2.) It would be more accurate - or at least more properly descriptive - to speak in terms of an opportunity to replace New Orleans on higher ground as opposed to rebuilding it. In practical terms, I think the logistics of it, particularly with respect to who would have ended up paying the bill, would have been as dubious as the similar elements of the GND lately proposed.

3.) It is difficult for me to imagine why one would have bothered with such an effort to begin with, because of a key point in your comment that most people completely miss: why does it matter what one does if it only gets rebuilt as a slum (and theme park) anyway.

4.) There's an additional reason why I find it difficult to imagine why one would have bothered: the market is already taking care of it. The vast bulk of any viable business is either gone to Metairie and Kenner (that being the east bank of Jefferson Parish), where the levees and pumps are sound and well maintained, or they've gone to Texas.

5.)There is a reason we didn't hear the "rebuild elsewhere" chorus about major parts of the Tri-State region after Sandy, or about the hills of California after a major fire or mudslide, to name only two examples. Think of the implications of another '38 Hurricane on southern New England, for example, and you'll end up with far worse. As it is, it's bad enough with a typical storm tide. The primary purpose of public policy is to preserve jurisdictions. Clearly they thought about the implications of their own power bases and very quickly thought the better of it.

Those of us who do all-hazards disaster planning (as the Feds call it, these days) for a living speak in terms of "when" rather than "whether" the next disaster happens. I foresee the day when Orleans Parish, apart from a few knots of development on naturally higher ground, consists of a handful of causeways carrying railroads and expressways through an area gradually being reclaimed by the nutrias and the gators. At that point, perhaps the theme park can add some truly creative ghost story themed swamp tours, and the jurisdictional problems will take care of themselves, as they always do when normal folks vote with their feet.

At least the rest of us won't be out a princely sun for yet another hare-brained scheme.

I can only echo your sentiments: I remember those streets well, as well as the culture that made them the way they were. I'd hoped to make my life there, but that was not to be. For the first time in my life, I'm at some peace with that. The reason is probably best summed up in the words of a former colleague, a traffic engineer by profession and a jazz musician by avocation, "They chased away all the people that made that city work." Much as it grates on me, he's quite right.

As to why they didn't relocate, the [real] answer is undoubtedly tied up in the refusal of the local elected sector to give up their turf. As another former colleague of mine said repeatedly, "Maybe the system is doing exactly what it's supposed to." In the end, the voters keep returning them to office, at least for the most part. I guess that says it all.