Rebuilding New Orleans With Science 564
EccentricAnomaly writes "The New York Times has a discussion of flood control methods in use in Holland, England, and Bangladesh that could be used in the rebuilding of New Orleans. Of particular interest is the $8 billion Delta Works built by the Netherlands in response to the North Sea flood of 1953, which almost destroyed the city of Rotterdam, but for a heroic captain who plugged a breach in a dike with his ship." From the article: "While scientists hail the power of technology to thwart destructive forces, they note that flood control is a job for nature at least as much as for engineers. Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development."
after I submitted this... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/science/06lost.
Re:Learn from nature (Score:5, Interesting)
Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development.
That kind of destroys the entire point of a break island.
Re:Got To Go There (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Learn from nature (Score:5, Interesting)
Levees and floodgates, as used in the US, do not generally mitigate the damage caused by storm surges -- they are used to block flooding from inland sources like rivers.
"...some artificial barrier islands, rather than further changing the face of the earth"
Artificial barrier islands = changing the face of the earth
Barrier islands migrate into the land over time. They are really just giant versions of the sand ripples you'll see at the edge of almost any (near still) body of water. If we really want our coastlines to operate in a natural fashion, we've got to allow barrier islands to form, move to land, and respawn.
The real problem with NOLA is that the Mississippi River delta is not allowed to regenerate itself by silt deposition. Most conservationists would argue that less flood control is necessary, not more.
Re:Doing what is right (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course warmer waters contributed. The question is "did we somehow make them warmer" and the answer is, "if we did, it was by an amout too small to measure."
"Trend" is much, much too strong a word to use in conjunction with weather over the past 50 years. "Noise" is a more accurate way to describe how observed weather has changed over the course of human history.
Poor planning is 100% responsible for the loss of life and property due to Hurricane Katrina. It wasn't some unforseeable accident, or America's come-uppance for not signing on to the Kyoto Economic Suicide Pact. It was the result of building a bunch of shit in a place where several hurricanes will strike within a single person's lifetime, and having no Plan B when they do.
Me too! The war in EyeRack would have qualified. (Score:1, Interesting)
I'd have much rather spent a _fraction_ of that money shoring up New Orleans levees, even though I don't live there and have never visited. And with the money left over I could have been not watching this disaster on a nice 42" plasma.
Should've listen to the Native Americans (Score:4, Interesting)
I understand that it was the intersection of trade routes back in the day, but what is there today? I would move away from that place, I am sure so will other people. There still will be a "New Orleans" but from now on it will be known as the "Flooded New Orleans." I don't think it will ever recover completely...
New Orleans was on the top of my list of places to visit in the next couple of years, but not anymore, I think I'll wait 10 years or so.
Re:howmuch science is needed? (Score:5, Interesting)
NYC could deal with fire, because we've learned to fight fires locally. We build to prevent it, and we all pay a premium on goods and services through the system due to the costs of sprinkler systems etc in the supply chain. We spend city $$ on fire services, and emergency response capabilities.
NO couldn't deal with water, because since the 60's the Federal gov't has taken over response to floods. Local officials are reduced to writing plans that ultimately read "wait for the Feds to arrive with help".
Moreover, with an agency like FEMA, and federal subsidies for flood insurance, he makes a persuasive argument that US gov't policies have, in effect ENCOURAGED the building of homes and businesses in flood prone and coastal regions.
If those homeowners and businesses had to pay a MARKET cost for insurance, how many would have built there? And if there wasn't a FEMA (which has historically compensated flood/hurricane victims even or especially if uninsured) would people be so lasseiz-faire about their families, dwellings, and belongings in the path of destruction?
Persuasive reading.
Let's not make this a "Swamp Castle" (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's use this tragedy to move the people to some place that is safer, preferably ABOVE sea level. I can understand the "Let's rebuild it and make it stronger!" spirit, but the money it will take to rebuild and then make flood protection that we THINK is adequate ( you know, like they THOUGHT was good enough back in the late 1960's ) would be much better spent in relocation.
Bottoming Out (Score:5, Interesting)
We should expand City Park to encompass the entire Bayou area, with no development, and lots of canals. Expand the Bayou itself in the bottom to become a giant reservoir. When storms approach, pump out the reservoir. Make all drains pass through the reservoir, a giant buffer. When rain and failed seawalls allow water into the city, funnel it into the reservoir, buying time. Pump the reservoir into the Mississippi and the Lake.
The seawalls and levees themselves are not fault-tolerant. They're static, brittle, and take the whole city with them when they break. Those walls should all have rail lines along their inhabited sides, separated from the water by the wall. When a storm approaches, dumpable sandbags can be rolled into place behind risky sections, or into broken sections, or just into staging areas for delivery by helicopter, boat or amphibious vehicle, or even human "bucket brigades" when all other vehicles fail. Ahead of the storm, the rails can carry cars of evacuees out. And the other 99.5% of the time, without emergencies, they can carry cars instead of highways (most cars on I-10 are "just passing through"), passengers and freight.
Or we can just put the Dutch in charge of the city. Then they'll do all those things I mentioned, and probably something with windmills. Amsterdam and New Orleans have a lot more in common than just negative elevation - and I'm not referring just to decades of Spanish dominion
Or we can just let New Orleans rot. Along with the rest of the country. If it can happen to a city everyone loves so much, that's so important to our economy, where everyone knew it was RISK #1, why shouldn't it happen everywhere eventually - and not as slowly as in the old World Capital of Molasses.
Protection against the sea is half the story (Score:2, Interesting)
Interestingly, the answer to river flooding is not building higher dikes. It is prohibitively expensive to build them high enough and you would have an "iron curtain" in your countryside. The Netherlands now has designated certain sparsely populated areas as flood zones, and built dikes around those. In case of another imminent disaster those areas will be flooded draining water form the river. The people that live there will be reimbursed, it's much cheaper than building and maintaining higher dikes.
Why build skyscrapers? (Score:3, Interesting)
And remember, "nature" doesn't want so many people on the Earth. We're way beyond what most species' population limits. Should we just let half the human population die off?
Personally, I'm all in favor of respecting nature. But I don't think we should surrender to it.
Let the fishes have it... (Score:1, Interesting)
There is a small barrier island off of the cost where I live. Its west end gets destroyed every time a storm comes within a hundred miles. It actually erroded into several pieces this time. But, it is expensive beach front property so it will be rebuilt again - with our tax dollars.
Re:Learn from nature (Score:5, Interesting)
A similar plan was proposed this year. The New York Times hated it. Here's the quote:Hard to tell whether it was genuineely a bad plan, or the NYT hated it simply because it was Bush's proposal, but we are at least considering the ideas used in Europe.
Re:WARNING: Ignore Nature at Your Peril (Score:5, Interesting)
New Orleans is placed on a river delta. After the sediments in a delta are deposited they are guaranteed to subside. It's a consiquence of compaction, de-watering and the isostatic response of the lithosphere below the basin to the extra load. Unless more sediment is added continuously the delta will eventually (and quite quickly in geological and indeed historical terms) sink beneath the sea.
When New Orleans was founded a few hundred years ago it was above sea level. (after all, who would found a town on a salt marsh?) Since then it's subsided continuously until today a great deal of the city is now below sea level and a great deal lower than the river (which has since built up its base by depositing sediment).
When the corps of engineers stopped the river naturally switching its channel (which it does around once every 1000 years) and straightened the current channel they put in motion a set of events which meant that the delta lost its sediment load to further out in the Gulf of Mexico as the river is flowing at a greater rate. This has caused the coastline (and all the natural defences) to not be replenished and go below the sea.
You may like to see this google cached article [64.233.183.104] from a Baton Rouge newspaper in 2002. It gives a decent overview of the situation.
As a geologist, I would be in the camp which suggests that the government take this as an opportunity to move the city to higher and more stable ground and abandon the old city to be an archaeological curiosity and tourist attraction. Rebuilding it would merely prime the charge for an even bigger loss of life when, not if, the river breaks its banks. This time only the low-level lake to the north broke through which soon equalised its level.. this wouldn't happen with the great river.
How long do you want to fight a losing battle with the planet? How high do you eventually want the levees to be before you give up? When the city's subsided to the point where it's an isolated bowl in the ocean?
I know it's not going to be abandoned, there are too many politicians who have staked their carreer on the "we will rebuild it" bravardo and a King Kanute attitude.
(Before anyone corrects me about King Kanute, I know that the popular story is wrong, the King was trying to show how impotent he was rather than believing that he could actually stop the sea.)
Is technology the answer as TFA claims? (Score:2, Interesting)
IMO, the real problem with inhabited wetlands is not storm surge, but subsidence, which is what allows storm surge to inundate inhabited land. We populate the wetlands, pumping out the water which would normally bring along with it silt, which accretes, contributing the the land mass that will naturally buffer storm surge. Once inhabited, the land mass gradually subsides (sinks), making vulnerability to flooding worse. I believe that no technology will stop this.
If my opinion is a correct one, there is no prevention of such disasters, only preparedness and remediation. I live in the Los Angeles metro area, and I have the same problem. The best thing I can do is buy property on land out here that the USGS has not identified as prone to liquefaction or heavy shaking and hope for the best. I do not expect my government to build an $8 billion gadget to protect me, because there is no way for sure to know that it will even work!
What I am left wondering is whether or not the people of NO expect to be protected, and would it even be worth it to try. These people live in a dangerous area, just like me, and I think that money spent on disaster education and readiness would probably be well spent, as opposed to wasting billions fighting nature in a losing battle. Our arms are too short to box with God, so perhaps it would be better to spend money on learning to roll with the punches. Based on the chaos and loss of life I saw, I don't think anyone down there was even the least bit prepared. I see the same indolence here in L.A. where I live, and a lot of people are going to die some day because of it.
Low tech solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In this case it wouldn't have helped. (Score:5, Interesting)
For Pete's sake, this kind of thing is exactly FEMA's mandate: provide resources to avert and mitigate emergencies. In other words, FEMA should have had the place crawling with responders and National Guardsmen the moment the state of emergency was declared on August 26th. I'll bet you 25 bucks that the head of the agency not only keeps his job but gets a raise. Seriously, I'll make that bet.
I say this and I'm one of the people who thinks that FEMA is way too quick to offer people money to rebuild their waterfront condos every time a flood or hurricane happens. But when push comes to shove, it is our nation and our government's responsibility to avoid the kind of human tragedy that happened in New Orleans, and that job primarily belongs to FEMA.
Re:Rebuild? There's a Bright Idea. (Score:2, Interesting)
In 1986, the area where my former employer is located was under 10 feet of water (hence, they never occupy building space on the 1st floor) when the levee system failed. Just over 10 years later, in 1997, we had similar record rainfall and the levees were again taxed to the brink of failure. I lived right near the river and the water was running damned near the top of the berms. We were under constant evacuation notices (not mandatory orders, but voluntary ones) I was lucky: Some of the levee system did fail in various areas of Sacramento and caused some X millions of dollars in damage.
The ACE then came in and did a fair bit of retrofit work to the existing levees by cutting them open in the centerline of the berm, trenching all the way down below the waterline, and backfilling the cut with slurry, since many of the earthen berms were weakened not by nature or or design flaw, but by burrowing animals like moles. Supposedly the digging critters could not tunnel through the slurry wall. Unfortunately, most of this work was done AFTER levee breaks during the 1997 floods.
I would wholeheartedly agree that shortsighted developers can be to blame in building up infrastructure where it shouldn't be, but if you protect it well enough (which it sounds like NO was not) it *should* stay up - but with unforseen weather patterns that the system was not designed to handle, you will end up swimming sooner or later.
Re:Bottoming Out (Score:3, Interesting)
I've already heard that Halliburton is getting the contracts to rebuild "Baghdad by the Bayou", which is a crime itself. These people look at disaster mitigation neglect as marketing. And our lives (now undeniably) hang in the balance. We've got to get as many incumbents out of Congress in a year as possible. If the Democrats (who have their share of blood on their hands) take the House (where every seat is in an election) by greater than 10%, they could impeach Bush. Maybe force him out, if they take the Senate (where 30 seats are in an election) by greater than 10%. But at least keep Bush bottled up in defense, where he can do less damage. Then the cleanup in 2008. By then, they'll probably have pumped out New Orleans.
Re:Learn from nature (Score:4, Interesting)
It wasn't "Bush's Proposal", it was a Corps proposal. The article was actually critical of Bush ("He fired (and has yet to replace) Mike Parker, the agency's civilian chief, mainly because Mr. Parker asked for too much money."). The article wasn't critical about the money, but about the environmental impact of the chosen designs. The article didn't even discuss actions on the Mississippi River or flood prevention - their big faulting of the corps was on the subject of Delaware dredging.
Re:Learn from nature (Score:3, Interesting)
Specifically the Lake Ponchatrain Levee was finished some time ago, and 2005 funding was irrelevent.
Sure the Commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers [defenselink.mil] says funding levels were fine, but what does he know? He's just some engineer, uneducated in the overriding requirement to hate Smirchimply McHitlerBurton and all of his actions.
our road-building boom of the past few decades created a car culture that leads to more driving, thus more traffic congestion, thus more demand for roads.
Our desire for freedom created a car culture. The ability to travel where you like is a significant element of freedom. The road building boom may have enabled this desire for freedom, but it didn't create it.
People want to drive because they want to get to their destination. Building more roads always reduces traffic congestion. People with an irrational hatred of cars and/or freedom will of course hate roads for what they represent.
Re:Bottoming Out (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that reclaiming the old Back of Town from the Lake was executed in an unsustainable way. I think you misunderstand what I'm talking about: Bayou St. John isn't the source of the water flooding the neighborhoods. It's where the water goes. Rather than pretend we can fight the vast power of nature head-on, we must learn from our mistakes to do what we actually can, to get what we want. Like allow the water to enter the city when we can't prevent it, and spend our energy on making those floods controlled and manageable.
New Orleans once was already compartmentalized with neighborhood levees, as you suggest, in the wake of an earlier flood. When the next flood came through, people broke holes in the levees keeping the water in their neighborhoods (which was keeping downhill neighborhoods dry). So the next neighborhood flooded, and those levees were broken, and so on. These strategies that merely meet the force of Nature with force of engineering show how powerful ins Nature: a 90MPH/40mi-wide hurricane contains 200x the global electrical generation power; Katrina was many times bigger.
So I suggest we plan for "failover". That means sacrificing some land areas in populated New Orleans while it's manageable, rather than all of it when the crisis hits. Many of those areas we can't keep are really desireable property now: quiet, modern neighborhoods near the Park. And of course it's easy for me to say, since I already said my tearful goodbyes to the city when I moved back to NYC. But whose neighborhood should go? Just the poor people, even if their neighborhood isn't as useful a sacrifice in the engineering to protect the city?
I know what it means to miss New Orleans. I've cried often this past week, screamed at the set, sent money, helped find people, helped find people places to stay. I didn't think I could be more furious with Bush and Congress than the past 5 years, but this storm surprised even me - in revealing just how through was their failure. I've got other wheels in motion here in NYC that hopefully will have immediate and longterm benefits to saving the city - in my own relatively puny way. I hope every one of us is also doing what we can - together we can save the coolest, most unique city in America. But we have to accept that we might have to amputate to save this patient. No one's going to like it. Until I hear about a better operation, that's at least as likely to preserve her life, I'm sticking with this one, painful as it is.
Re:wetlands don't replace levees (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, at it's basic level, it's really mostly a volume calculation. Just integrate over the landscape and you can tell how much additional water it can take, then factor in the influx. I believe the models that they use are more complex to accurately calculate the influx and uneven water levels at different points, but the result is that a single square mile of restoration equals a reduced surge of one foot.
In short, yes, the models already exist [sfgate.com].
and then broke
Do you not know the meaning of "just", as in "The levee didn't just break"?
Adapt! (Score:3, Interesting)
New Orleans as it is should be adandoned. The high ground of the french quarter might be preserved. The deep water port and industrial areas like Michoud are restored. These areas have proper seawalls built with regard to natural silt flows, the rest of the city becomes Delta again. People that live in the area live the way you're supposed to in a swamp: in boats and house-barges. The swamp dwellers seem to have faired well, and came out of the woods to help evacuate the city. If the population was competent enough to live in the swamp instead of against it, they could flourish. As it is, they have probably crippled the shrimping and subsidence issues doom much of the city. Imagine a million houseboats stretching through a restored river system. People commute to work by boat, work in hi-tech, shipping and restored shrimp industries. Let the Mississippi wander as it needs, build the deep-water port out in the ocean and have lighter barges for carrying containers and oil in-shore. If people want to live there, they should adapt to life on the water.
I want to see a JMOB/SeaHub container facility in the Gulf of Mexico. This technology can be applied to housing, shipping, huge mobile hospitals, etc. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/01/07/wo
Josh
Re:Learn from nature (Score:2, Interesting)
In any engineering project, you never ask top management how things are going, you ask the guys on the ground [tpmcafe.com]. June 8, 2004 Times-Picayune:
Re:howmuch science is needed? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure. Who would issue a mortgage on a home in an area prone to flooding if they knew the Feds wouldn't pay them off if there was a flood? Who would build a business there?
The disaster wasn't the flood - there have been floods there for the past several million years. It is only a disaster when you have a million people living in a spot that has severe flooding every 50 years or so.
You can try to move the water, or you can just move the people. Or, you can point out that anybody who builds their home there will have to rebuild it every few decades and then when the flood comes just stand and say "I told you so."
Human life is valuable. I'd support free bussing to get people out of danger even if they were idiots for being there in the first place. However, their homes are less valuable. If they're dependant on government assistance for having someplace to live, the government should at least find someplace cheaper to put them...
Re:Should've listen to the Native Americans (Score:3, Interesting)
But of course you know history so well, you know that back in the day the steamboats on Mississippi where just about _the only_ reliable way to travel inland until the railroads were built, so the trade wasn't just oil, lumber and such things it was _everything_: food, consumer goods, and besides there was a large passenger transport. When is the last time you bought a ticket to travel from Ohio to New Orleans by river? That is why there was a city built there. Today there would be a small town where people who service the docks would live and not a big metropolis...
Good idea listen to the people who sold Manhattan island for some beads. -- Even better don't listen to them and build in the path of a hurricane and below sea level. You can go either way with that "Indians are stupid. -No French are the stupid ones" argument... Anyway, slashbots might have modded my post at 4, but you didn't even make past 1 last time I checked...