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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..................