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Should New Orleans be rebuilt?
2005 October 11
© 2005, Libertiny Financial LLC
Now that we've all had time to reflect, the question is: Should the city of New Orleans be rebuilt in to its pre-hurricane configuration? I've been there many times and it's always interesting to see water in the canals at a significantly higher level then the road that I'm driving on. But the real thing that strikes me is the size of Lake Pontchartrain as you fly over it on approach to the New Orleans airport. It looks like a time-bomb waiting to flood New Orleans.
There have been years and years of engineering studies that have detailed the types of retaining walls and pumping stations that would be required to give the city a chance in the next hurricane. Other engineers have gone further by listing ideas such as rerouting the Mississippi river, filling in the flood plain to raise it above seal level and even draining Lake Pontchartrain so that the basin can be used as an overflow location for storm surges. That's a lot of infrastructure to be built just to return to a place that is continuously in the target zone of major storms during the June - November storm season.
I love New Orleans, the people and the history, but rebuilding on a major flood plain doesn't make sense.
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