wrote in message
...
Why was New Orleans built below sea level? That's just plain stupid.
Apparently what they call the "bowl" must have been a lake or
something at one time. I can understand the original part of the city
was built long ago, and probably before they knew what they were
doing, but you'd think someone would have stopped development long
ago. The stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me. From
what I have seen on the news, the entire city is or will be destroyed.
But they will probably rebuild it and all of us will have to pay for
the rebuilding with our taxes. Dont get me wrong, I feel very sorry
for the people that lived there, but who allowed this stupidity to
occur? It seems that the government is adding new laws almost daily
to protect us from ourselves, yet they did nothing to stop the
development in that city, knowing that sooner or later it would fail.
It dont take a genious to know what dangers existed. its pretty much
basic science. I am just searching the web to find out how many feet
they are below
sea level, but you'd think they would have used fill to at least bring
buildings at or above sea level. Maybe thats not possible, which is
why I am trying to find the depth. They said that even that dome which
was used for shelter during the
hurricane is filling with water today. That appears to be a fairly
new building, yet that too is below sea level. STUPID !!!!

Mark

N.O. was settled by the French about 300 yrs ago, and was the furthest
upriver they could sail against the current before the river turned south,
using the prevailing SE winds, so they made a port and settlement there. In
the 1700's, this river was a key and perfect port, so a town started.
The real mess began when the Army Core of Engineers in the 1920's built up
and extended the natural levees and smaller manmade levees around the french
quarter, so that the greater n.o. area was less prone to annual river
flooding.
Unintended consequence: without the annual overflooding of the levees, with
attendant silting up of the adjacent farm lands, those lands continued to
sink due to crustal sagging, compressing the 60,000+ feet of young water
saturated sediment that lies below the city. Once you isolate the backswamps
and protect the city, the subsidence that has been going on for 30 million
yrs, in response to sediment loading, continues, sucking the city deeper,
without any compensating sediment infill. On top of that, the sealevel
swamps south of N.O. used to greatly slow the winds of incoming storms. Now
that those swamps are also protected from sediment spilling, they are mostly
gone, below sealevel, leaving the city even more exposed to very high,
undiminished winds. There is really no solution to further disasters, short
of abandoning the area, which I favor. Also,building up the area before
building on it would have done no good at all, except for perhaps a half
century, as the forever-continuing subsindence rate is so high.
Bottom Line - you are right, building there was idiocy. But the same can be
said of coastal Miss, Alabama, Florida, and much of the east coast, where
millions of people live in ignorant bliss. Building locations in the nation
as a whole have never been planned at all. As a result, we all pay for this
idiocy thru our exorbitant taxes to fund recovery, aide, rebuilding, and
insurance bankruptcies. Capital Development incentive determines everything,
and logic simply seems not to apply.
There! I feel better already..................

Another significant component in New Orleans' development was the
deepening of the channel(s) at the Gulf, by a northener in 1879. :')
A fascinating story: http://www.nps.gov/vick/visctr/sitebltn/eads.htm

Meanwhile, a MAJOR grain transshipment port is down. Ditto the area
railroads, etc.

May the area redevelop intelligently. First, though, to alleviate the
impact on the people.

HTH,
J

clipped

Hmmmmmmm

This is fascinating. So the land keeps sinking and the buildings just
go down too. So th whole city is just built on washed down junk
(mostly sand I suppose). So, adding fill only compresses the silt
more. This is most interesting. I dont think it should be rebuilt
either, at least not at that location.

Well, we need to abandon a few other cities, using that logic. I admit
I don't care for the idea of living below sea level on a coast, but I'm
only about 6 feet above where I live. Katrina would have drowned my
upstairs neighbor.

Anyone remember the Mississippi River floods of a few years ago? Anyone
know a city older than 200 years that wasn't established on a waterway?


One news article I was reading said there were people in N.O. that
were trying to fly (in the wind) during the hurricane. Not to cut
down the people in that city, but that sort of fits. The whole city
was trying to fly (achieve the impossible)....

Mark


Folks in Florida, who HATE big gov't tellin' 'em what to do, like to cut
down mangroves to save their cherished million-dollar views. But, soon
as they do that, M.N. comes along and washes away their million-dollar
beach. All of a sudden, the same folks want big gov't and my tax money
to put the sand back on their beach because it left and went to some new
barrier island. Mangroves are funny looking plants that hold islands
and shorelines together and give little fishes a place to hide. Little
fishes become big fishes that fill our tummies at fast food restaurants.
Some of those fishies used to be luxuries because they were hard to
catch and transport. Now we can coat them with grease and eat all we
care to if we are willing to get into our gas guzzlers and drive over to
a restaurant. Of course, if the price of gas goes to $5, I can't drive
as much and I sure as heck am not going to get on a bike )

Like many things, "damn, it made sense at the time".

Hell, if Venice can do it, why not New Orleans? Go for the ol' "lived-in lake"
look.

This is fascinating. So the land keeps sinking and the buildings just
go down too. So th whole city is just built on washed down junk
(mostly sand I suppose). So, adding fill only compresses the silt
more. This is most interesting. I dont think it should be rebuilt
either, at least not at that location.
Mark

What is facinating is to see how they deal with it. For the
construction of large buildings, they drive pilings into the ground
until they reach solid subsoil. At the New Orleans airport, I've seen a
pile driver drive a 30' telephone pole flush into the ground in 3
licks! They tie on a new pole and keep driving, continuing the process
until they get to about 1ft per lick. There may be 50-100 of these
piling stacks under each foundation.
So if a treated piling has a 50-70 year life span, all these buildings
are eventually going to sink into the muck.
And don't forget about New Orlean's cemetaries. They have to use above
ground crypts because being below sea level, the water table will float
caskets out of the ground.

Bob S.

Excellent description of the problem, thanks for the research and
history. Very well articulated.

"Bob S." wrote:


This is fascinating. So the land keeps sinking and the buildings just
go down too. So th whole city is just built on washed down junk
(mostly sand I suppose). So, adding fill only compresses the silt
more. This is most interesting. I dont think it should be rebuilt
either, at least not at that location.
Mark

What is facinating is to see how they deal with it. For the
construction of large buildings, they drive pilings into the ground
until they reach solid subsoil. At the New Orleans airport, I've seen a
pile driver drive a 30' telephone pole flush into the ground in 3
licks! They tie on a new pole and keep driving, continuing the process
until they get to about 1ft per lick. There may be 50-100 of these
piling stacks under each foundation.
So if a treated piling has a 50-70 year life span, all these buildings
are eventually going to sink into the muck.
And don't forget about New Orlean's cemetaries. They have to use above
ground crypts because being below sea level, the water table will float
caskets out of the ground.

Really nothing all that fundamentally different than in many locations
where buildings are on loamy or other non-loadbearing soils over solid
subsoils. And, there are other locations where water tables are so high
as to preclude below ground artifices of many sorts. It's just that NO
is a more extreme example than the rest of us are used to.