News from Louisiana

[An Onymus (imported)]

Flo--

As far as the value of the city as a port is concerned, the Mississippi River is navigable for over a thousand miles upstream, and a port a few miles farther north wouldn't be substantially more difficult to get to from the Gulf, than New Orleans is. It might take some additional channel dredging, but that is not very difficult or expensive, in terms of how it would affect shipping costs.

I understand what you mean about a city being an organic entity--but the things for which New Orleans is famous, developed when the city and its metro area were much smaller than they are now, probably when the population was not much more than a hundred thousand. What makes resort areas Disneyland-like, is more in the way they are developed, than in any intrinsic problem with developing cities or other areas as resorts. Keeping the atmosphere of an area, should be something that zoning and other restrictions can be designed to do. And, after all, a lot of the neighborhoods of New Orleans, outside the historically significant parts of the city, are slums.

In any case, as noted in my other post, the government will most likely try to fix up the city to be more or less the same as it was before the hurricane.

[Blaise (imported)]

Uncle Flo,

I think that you misunderstand my intention. For New Orleans to have a future, we must protect the wetlands that surround the city. The city exists because of the wetlands.

Protecting wetlands means, in part, controlling suburban development. We cannot continue to build into the wetlands. Another and related vital part of protecting the city involves extension of the water diversion programs for the Mississippi River. That would restore marshland. Scientists have already demonstrated that fact.

I struggle for nuance. Like you, I love the city. I lived in New Orleans for 12 years. I lived near Tulane University in the historic community of the Black Pearl. I worked for the City of New Orleans for seven of those years. My former wife worked for the school board. I love the city. Its unique history makes it a precious entity. My favorite congregation is in the city. However, I know that we cannot continue our current path. Gosh, I adore the place and celebrate its cultures.

Bedrock lies about 90 feet below the city. Houston is built over 400 feet of mud. The large buildings in the city are floating structures. They float on concrete sufficient to displace the weight of the visible buildings. Houston has the same kind of construction.

Sufficient pilling will support smaller buildings. I lived in a stable three-story apartment that never had a crack in it.

Unfortunately, in many ways, New Orleans is already a strange melding of amusement park and historic city. This is especially true of the Vieux Carre. Regrettably, shops that sell cheap tee shirts are not a cultural heritage. The Hard Rock Café is good but it is not part of our cultural uniqueness. Of course, Galatoires, the Acme Oyster Bar, and the Camellia Grill are.

Little suburband houses do not make sense in New Orleans any more than they would make sense in San Francisco.

I am not advocating destroying the city but suggesting ways to save it.

I do not expect a city as small as 100,000 people. I do not know what the limitations on pouplation growth are. San Francisco has about 750,000 inhabitants. I quess that Kenner, Metarie, and New Orleans can handle that many people and more.

The smaller parishs east and south of New Orleans can substain people, but I do not know what the limitations are. There are people who live and work in New Orlreans who have thought deeply about how to realize the goal of saving this wonderful city.

Please, the issue is not whether or not we can save the city. The quesiton is how to save it.

Ted

[Blaise (imported)]

Anyone who has visited San Francisco in recent years understands how tourism alters the pervasive tone of city. New Orleans has changed in the same way. Watching New Orleans change during the past 20 years amazes me. The tone of the many places or neighborhoods is different from what it was. Thank about how medium income people moved to Kenner and (new) Metaire during the 70s and 80s. Now other people are forced into the suburbs by gentrification of Uptown and the City Park area.

My father, who knew the city from the 30s, and I explored the city during the late 70s. He found it amazing how little change he saw in the old areas around the Vieux Carre. That would not be his experience now were he alive to explore the place.

New Orleans these days is always in change. Sometimes, it looks like Las Vegas. Sometimes it looks like Los Angeles. What worries me is how we turn wetlands into shopping centers that come right out of a Southern California nightmare. Walker Percy wrote beautiful ironic novels about his process.

I am watching WWL from New Orleans. They are broadcasting from the PBS station in Baton Rouge.

Reporters keep talking about higher levees. Scientists are talking about the loss of coastal weltand and our need to restore--not preserve--but restore them. We must protect this city.

[Riverwind (imported)]

You know, Man is not killing the planet we are killing ourselves. The earth has been here for a long long time, there is nothing we can do to kill it, it will kill us. Then in 1 or 10 or 100 million years from now it will be that green lush world like before man came along.

River

OH and all you white guys, there Native Americans.

[Blaise (imported)]

You know, Man is not killing the planet we are killing ourselves. The earth has been here for a long long time, there is nothing we can do to kill it, it will kill us. Then in 1 or 10 or 100 million years from now it will be that green lush world like before man came along.

River

OH and all you white guys, there Native Americans.

Though this may be cruel, your thought often gives me comfort. Thanks.

[A-1 (imported)]

You know, Man is not killing the planet we are killing ourselves. The earth has been here for a long long time, there is nothing we can do to kill it, it will kill us. Then in 1 or 10 or 100 million years from now it will be that green lush world like before man came along.

River

OH and all you white guys, there Native Americans.

River,

Long ago the Red Man ruled America.

There were no taxes. There were no jobs. The men hunted and fished all day while the women stayed at home, raised all the children, sewed all of the clothes, cleaned all of the fish, prepared the meal and did all of the work.

Then the White Man came and tried to improve on this system... :-\



A-1

[n3rf (imported)]

Old-Softee,

So when the land dries up a bit, are the people allowed to return home to start clean up their stuff ?? How soon are those lots dry enough to walk on???

I guess inside the City the pumping will take quite a while longer .

All those bridges flopped like cards in some places.

So what about the next few hurricanes landing again this year.

I am told that "planent X" - does effect the earth by "heating"

at its closest approach. Just ignore this - it is not on TOPIC here.

Regards Johan-in-Washington N3RF@earthlink.net

[An Onymus (imported)]

Softee--

If I understand it correctly, water from the wetlands recharges ground water in the New Orleans area, and that keeps the ground surface from settling futher. But will the restoration of wetlands only arrest the subsidence of the city, or will the addition of ground water actually cause the ground surface to rise back toward sea level?

Surprising that there is a stable rock layer at the depth of ninty feet. As you probably know, the whole lower Mississippi Valley is a collection of deltas produced by the river as its course has changed over the last few million years. I wouldn't have thought the conditions existed to produce well lithified layers near the surface, but perhaps the area subsided enough to generate a lot of sediment, the weight of which would lithify the lower layers, and then the upper layers were eroded off. According to a web page I read, the site of New Orleans was actually offshore in the Gulf, as recently as the time of the early Pharaohs in Egypt. A whole lot of topsoil comes down the Mississippi from upstream.

[Blaise (imported)]

I attempted to do a quote of An Onymus but the system failed. This is a response to his post:

My knowledge of these matters is fragmentary. I have not read about the geology of the area since the seventies, when I worked as a mudlogger in oil exploration. Put simply, the Mississippi River carries alluvium. It deposits this material as the velocity of the flow slows. Two factors come into play.

First, the river slowly rises as it builds natural levees. Further, its own bed rises. The river changes course as better gradients develop. That is why the river changes course. Natural flooding in the delta region slowly builds the delta.

The modern channel of the river is a natural system physically but not ecologically. Modern channeling resulted in the river dumping alluvium into deep water. The channel takes the water there. Once, the natural distribution of river water deposited alluvium in shallow waters. Water diverted from the Mississippi River at the Old River Control Structure to the Atchafalaya River does deposit soil that is building new wetlands and islands south of Morgan City.

In reality, the natural course of the river would be the gradient of the Atchafalaya River were nature left to itself. There is a technology to discharge Mississippi River water with its content into wetlands. I know of only one place where this happens. PBS Now had a good report on this this past Friday evening.

The course of the Mississippi River changes over time. Once it flowed through the middle of what is now Lake Ponchatrain. The island east of the city were formerly part of an earlier delta of the river.

My impression is that nothing will stop subsidence. I do not what the rate of subsidence is. I do not think that this happens, as it does in Venice, because of ground water loss.

I do not know what lies below the city. I have read that bedrock is only a few feet below tha north shore of Lake Ponchatrain and then tills downward under the lake to about 90 feet on the New Orleans side. Still, I doubt that lithified layers are close to the service west of New Orleans. The structures under Lake Ponchatrain are part of a vast reserve of natural gas rich sandstones. Good questions.

[Blaise (imported)]

The chief of police of Kenner, Louisisna, understands that some looting involved people simply getting bread and water. It did not involves stealing television sets or guns. That was an on camera report on WAFB in Baton Rouge.

The Air National Gurad, according to a news report on the same channel, was not armed at the Superdome and was unable to protect people from thugs.

The Army Corps of Engineers reports that some of its engineers have been gunned down. We do not know what happened.