Front » Commentary » Time to stop rebuilding a doomed city
PUBLISHED: 09-22-08
Time to stop rebuilding a doomed city
After its recent brush with Hurricane Gustav, New Orleans again sparked controversy over the debate to rebuild.
The city, still dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sustained an estimated $10 billion in damages from Gustav, according to Louisiana Economic Development. Combined with the devastation caused by Katrina, the reaction to Gustav and the billions in damages are prime examples of why New Orleans should not rebuild.
It is not logical to bring millions of people back into a city that is inevitably going to be struck again with immeasurable tragedy.
The decision to end rebuilding efforts would not be an easy one. The city has a charming history filled with jazz music, Mardi Gras, Creole food and Cajun culture. The old New Orleans was hard not to love. However, the decision to cease rebuilding efforts is the responsible one.
Geographically, New Orleans is perhaps the very worst place for a city to be located, as it sits 10 feet below sea level. But an intricate system of pumps and levees made habitation at such a low elevation possible for many years. However, climate change is causing the Earth’s oceans to rise, and New Orleans continues to sink. This means hundreds of miles of levees must be constantly maintained in order to keep the ocean out. The latticework of levees from the city to the sea leaves New Orleans on life support.
Although the levees made habitation possible, they have also kept the Mississippi River from flowing into swamps and wetlands. Channeling the Mississippi eventually destroyed much of the wetlands. This destruction has created an easy path to the city, increasing the potential for damage with each new storm.
Along with frail levees, rising ocean levels, dried-up wetlands and the geographical disadvantage of being 10 feet below sea level, New Orleans faces another major problem-the rising surface temperature of the Atlantic Ocean.
Hurricanes develop in tropical regions of the world with a sea-surface temperature of 82 degrees or warmer. But every year the sea-surface temperature is rising, which gives way to stronger, more frequent storms. The warmer the sea-surface temperature, the more powerful the storm will be.
Continuing to rebuild New Orleans is just like putting a bandage over a gaping wound. The wound is too big for the bandage, and despite best efforts, bandages do fall off.
In the end, the decision to walk away from rebuilding efforts does not come down to money or politics. It is not about ignoring a city, a demographic or a culture. The decision to end rebuilding comes down to science. It would be a much smarter decision for everyone involved if tax dollars were used to relocate the entire city instead of being wasted on rebuilding efforts. It is time for our government to make a tough and unpopular decision that will actually save lives in the end.
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Sep 23rd 2008
The ignorance in this article is unbelievable. Most of New Orleans is in fact above sea level and almost 100 miles from the Gulf. It was not the hurricane that wrecked the city. No, it was Mr Go that let the water come in and breached the levees. A man made transportation channel. Houston is closer and suffered similar damages from hurricane Ike. Would you recommend that Houston not be rebuilt too? What about Washington DC? It too is protected by levees. Is it worth preserving? What about Sacramento, Ca? her levees are in bad shape too. And more than 4 million people live there. Are they worth protecting? In purely money terms, (since that is all that seams to inform your arguments) are you aware that New Orleans is the deepest port on the Mississippi? Or that the majority of the fuel used to heat homes in the mid west comes from South Eastern Louisiana along with 70% of the nations fish? So, if you would like to right off America’s cultural heritage, fish basket, and major fuel source be my guest bit please explain what you would do to replace all those thing I mentioned and what if it was Washington DC or Sacramento? What would you say then?
Sep 23rd 2008
This speaks to the human spirit, it really does. We can overcome everything that is…wait…you DON’T support rebuilding The Big Easy?
Well, Gordon pretty much hit the nail on the head.
It’s one thing to think that you’re proving a point, it’s another to write a commentary strictly for the sake of stirring up controversy.
I think it’s called sensationalism.
Sep 23rd 2008
Don’t let this person write any more commentaries or anymore for the paper in general. I expect an apology in next week’s issue.
Sep 23rd 2008
I must say I was deeply angered by this article. It lack any compassion or consideration what so ever for the inhabitants of New Orleans. As someone who spent time in the area affected by Katrina, and met the people effected, I am offended to say the least. This glosses over the much larger issue that this commentary was just poorly researched in terms of the issue of simply maintaining the levee system to prevent this from happening again.
You know, the Mississippi floods every few years also, levees break there, flooding many cities, I guess we should just abandon those also. Many suburbs of Chicago were just under water days ago, guess we better leave those. Why not take it one step further, order every one who lives near a body of water to move. That’s gotta be cheaper than prevention, since money is the only issue here obviously.
-Disappointed Former Chronicle Employee
Sep 24th 2008
Also I feel it should be noted that your reported cost of $10 billion in damage after Gustav is still less that what we pay each month to fund the war in Iraq.
Sep 24th 2008
I also expect an apology in the next papers issue.
I really don’t feel like ranting and wasting my energy on you, but you are so ignorant. Why don’t you go there and actually see what these people have been through. Why don’t you stop writing these articles and ACTUALLY volunteer and see what you’re writing about. Because you will be proven so wrong. Science doesn’t mean anything because the government hasn’t really done anything to help. People are still living in FEMA trailers and it’s been over 3 years. People can’t claim the insurance on their homes because they’re telling these people it was an ‘ act of God’. What if that happened to your hometown, and people were like ‘f–k it’ we’re not going to keep fixing this anymore?
BETTER YET WHY DONT YOU GO SEE ‘TROUBLE THE WATER’ and write an article about that for next time. It’s a woman’s story of how she survived Hurricane Katrina and video taped all of it herself. It just came out, its at the Century theatre.
For next time, please do some more research before you offend A LOT of people here at Columbia. There is a Student Organization that devotes their entire year to fundraise for a trip to New Orleans for Disaster Relief work over spring break. Over 300 students signed up at Manifest and another 200 signed up at Convocation to get involved.
This is just another reason why a lot of people are upset with the Chronicle.
Sep 24th 2008
Haha. The Chronicle is so full of it these days. How disappointing.
Sep 25th 2008
It was very hard for me not to become over emotional in writing a response to this. However I have written a letter to the editor regarding this article. It would be tragic if it is not printed….however, I had a very hard time finding out the proper way to submit my letter.
I was deeply disturbed by this article.
Sep 27th 2008
Wow. I am from Louisiana and have so many friends in New Orleans and have spent a lot of time there pre and post Hurricane Katrina. This is a very uninformed article describing the culture of “old” New Orleans. The jazz, food, and other cultural references the author makes are often associated with the French Quarter- one of the highest points in the city and one of the least affected areas. If we are giving up on a city due to it being disadvantaged by water, we should go ahead and de-habitate the entire Gulf Coast, an area showing great coastal erosion. I do not think the author is at all personally acquainted with New Orleans, the South, or even anyone from that area. I sent a link to this article to friends back home and eagerly await their rants and offense to her writing.
Sep 27th 2008
Wow. I can understand how a situation can seem hopeless, what with the changing climate and the frequency of hurricanes recently…but abandoning a city altogether because you think it’s a losing battle? Wow. That’s like telling a group of kindergartners to just give up on their dreams, because eventually everybody dies. There has to be a better solution than just giving up.
Sep 28th 2008
Wow, where is your soul?
If geographical disadvantages and turbulent weather were enough to deem an area uninhabitable, then all of West Coast should be abandoned. Florida should be returned to the Alligators and all of the Gulf Coast rendered into a wilderness.
I took great offense to the article. My family has resided in Louisiana since the very first Spanish settlers came in the 16th century. We have weathered the storms, we tamed the marsh, and we learned to live WITH this land, the beauty and diversity of which is unique to ANY other place on Earth. New Orleans gets all of the attention. My family stretches to every corner of the state, and from Terreborne to Calcasieu Parishes we have been hit many times, always knowing that is not a matter of IF, but WHEN are we going to get hit. BTW, We never waited for FEMA to clean up what Mother Nature did. That was our responsibility. Many of our houses are on Pilings. They need to be. Our houses may be simple, that makes them cheaper to rebuild, because only a very wealthy man can build a house that can withstand a Cat 5 storm.
New Orleans and the Delta exported Jazz and Blues and Rock and Roll to the rest of the world. We are the Spiritual Breadbasket of America, as well as being the Cultural Crucible for any ORIGINAL American art form for centuries.
Lady, you need a clue.
This Cajun is a none to happy wit’ you.
Sep 28th 2008
Despite the controversy that this article has obviously started, I commend the writer for having an unpopular opinion and not being afraid to share it with everyone. Wake up people. Life isn’t all butterflies and rainbows. Sending hate mail to a student for speaking there opinion isn’t going to change the fact that Katrina really did happen and there hasn’t been much help by anybody to correct the damage. Instead of “wasting your energy” writing letters to the editor about how much you hate them, you might want to write letters to someone who can actually do something about it. Also, the statement in the article about New Orleans being 10 feet under sea level does check out, Gordon. If you look at any scientific article in a book or on the web, New Orleans is under sea level on average of 8 - 11 feet. As for apologies, I apologize for all of the hate mail this student has been receving from all of you. You may have found this article to be insensitive, but none of you would have had the courage to put it in print if it was your opinion. I look forward to more articles from the author. It’s refreshing to actaully have someone write what they believe in instead of all the crowd-pleasing, sugar coated bull that everyone else writes.
Sep 28th 2008
You’re logic is something worth mentioning, but you lack the human spirit.
Sep 29th 2008
-Take the emotion out of this issue for a minute. We all sympathize with the people living there. This columnist never once expressed any lack of sympathy for the actual citizens of New Orleans. She’s considering the facts. Many of the readers’ posted opinions are based only on emotion, or on personal ties to the region, and they are not bothering to think this through clearly. But emotions and personal ties can not change the facts. Let’s consider this issue with a long-term, big-picture perspective for a minute.
-The city will continue to sink, and some say the speed of that sinking will increase, or is increasing.
-New Orleans is an important port-city, among other things. We should recognize the economic importance of those ports. Relocating the entire city seems like a difficult thing to imagine doing, but imagine if we directed our resources towards maintaining the ports, primarily, the marshes secondarily, and then towards keeping the city-proper running safely on a much smaller scale. After all, New Orleans has LOST a lot of citizens to emigration! It’s a smaller city now. Let’s be realistic. We could probably keep it somewhat protected on a smaller scale for a reasonable period of time, maybe enough time to allow the current and future market forces inside and around New Orleans to influence our decisions about our long-term approach to the city. Maybe we shouldn’t try to “force” New Orleans into being larger than it can handle being these days. Simply “rebuilding everything” would amount to forcing a scale upon New Orleans that it might not able to support right now. But if and when it starts to happen, any NEW growth could perhaps be steered towards more easily-protected areas of the city, or towards the outer edges of the city, wherever the risk of catastrophic losses due to broken levees is smaller. Perhaps rebuilding could be done in safer areas, and the city as we know it could become “the old New Orleans”, still somewhat populated, still able to be visited, and to attract tourists. The city is not worth abandoning completely at this time, but it seems logical to allow it to transform into a smaller and slightly different city. And we should think on the scale of 100-150 years when we decide how MUCH rebuilding to do in New Orleans. What will we do when the city is 20 feet under sea level, and a medium category TWO hurricane hits it? I’d think that a New Orleans 20 feet below sea level will be more threatened by a small hurricane than the 2005 New Orleans was by Katrina! Let’s also ask ourselves what kind of bank-breaking, feasibility-challenged engineering efforts will be needed to keep the city protected when it IS INDEED 20 feet under sea level, as it WILL BE some day? How about when it becomes 30 feet under sea-level? At some point in the future, no matter how much we try to stop it, New Orleans will sink to a point at which the ocean itself will suddenly come in to claim it for good. Look at the ancient port city of Alexandria (in present-day Egypt) as an example. An earthquake allowed the ocean to claim parts of that city. We can only put SO MUCH effort into a geologically, and environmentally-dying location. Right now, I don’t believed we’ve reached the time at which we should STOP putting effort into protecting New Orleans. We win some of these battles, but mother nature will always win the larger war.
-Looking at the long record of severe corruption in Louisiana’s government and in that of our Federal government, might I ask if we can EVER trust the government to effectively tackle a job as big as the protection and maintenance of a major city that is constantly pitted up against mother nature? In the wake of the Katrina mess, NOBODY seemed to mention that the LOCAL government in New Orleans and Louisiana had ALREADY been GIVEN Federal money to strengthen their levees. This happened many times going back to the 1960’s, if I recall the information correctly. And the local corrupt politicians repeatedly sent that money towards OTHER projects, and towards sketchy entities and people, instead of towards the intended destination; its levees. Louisiana was long known to be one of our most corrupt states, until their current governor came in and has so far gone a long way towards cleaning up the corruption. But the question still is posed; can we even KEEP New Orleans safe if we have such incompetent politicians managing its maintenance? If the politicians had USED that Federal money for its INTENDED purpose, perhaps the damage from Katrina would have been much more limited. And we’d not be having this discussion. Imagine that. ANYONE who thinks the government at ANY level (municipal, county, state, federal) can manage OUR money well, can manage projects effectively, and without any corruption is a fool.
Sep 30th 2008
After reading this article, I have to agree with the author as it is logical. Building a city 10 feet below sea level while banking on levees and pumps is just as she puts it - a bandade.
First and foremost, if people want to live in the area, the government shouldn’t be the ones to pay for rebuilding should a catastrophe arise. In my opinion, heavy local taxation and elevated flood insurance premiums for those who live in the area should be responsible. Those who are fiscally irresponsible for themselves or their family should not be given a handout. I personally do not feel that my federal taxation dollars should be spent at trying to keep a city that is under sea level to sustain its levees and pumps, very similar to bailing out the financial crisis that envolopes our country. In the end, we the taxpayers, nationally, end up footing the bill.
And as the author pointed out, the humanitarian component is articulated in a sense that “when” or “if” this type of disaster happens again, it is like playing russian roulette. Granted most individuals can find transportation out of the city, but how do you address the elderly, the poor, and the homeless individuals in certainty along with the idiots that would rather stay behind out of ignorance?
Oct 1st 2008
I think everyone needs to take a step back and realize that commentaries (which have a writer’s name on them) are supposed to be the view of the writer, not the paper. That’s what editorials are for (and that’s why they don’t have author names).
Yeah, the Columbia Chronicle posted it, but if anybody picked up a print copy, you would see that the paper clearly states that commentaries are the opinion of the writer. Also, they are not “articles” or “stories.” They are “pieces” and if you know anything about journalism you know articles have are objective. Opinion pieces are not.
I do not agree with this opinion, and I do find it offensive. But I won’t ream the paper for printing a viewpoint I don’t agree with in the COMMENTARY. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way, but I’m probably the only one who has the balls to come out and say it.
P.S., Preaching to the writer is not going to change her mind. You can talk until you’re blue in the face, but people will think what they want.
Oct 6th 2008
So, if I were a writer and decided to write a commentary about how all black people LOVE watermelon, the paper, who reads these things over and over and over, should be free of criticism?
Come on David, if that is your real name, the paper has a responsibility to inform and bring well thought out opinions into the fray.
This did neither. It was a lazy and typical attempt at trying to get a response. It worked, but it doesn’t mean that it’s right.