Is it time to give up on NOLA? Move people inland?

[True Dough]

This sounds grim, but history is very likely to repeat itself. Perhaps with worse consequences...


After a $14-Billion Upgrade, New Orleans' Levees Are Sinking

Sea level rise and ground subsidence will render the flood barriers inadequate in just four years

The $14 billion network of levees and floodwalls that was built to protect greater New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was a seemingly invincible bulwark against flooding.

But now, 11 months after the Army Corps of Engineers completed one of the largest public works projects in world history, the agency says the system will stop providing adequate protection in as little as four years because of rising sea levels and shrinking levees.

The growing vulnerability of the New Orleans area is forcing the Army Corps to begin assessing repair work, including raising hundreds of miles of levees and floodwalls that form a meandering earth and concrete fortress around the city and its adjacent suburbs.

“These systems that maybe were protecting us before are no longer going to be able to protect us without adjustments,” said Emily Vuxton, policy director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, an environmental group. She said repair costs could be “hundreds of millions” of dollars, with 75% paid by federal taxpayers.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/after-a-14-billion-upgrade-new-orleans-levees-are-sinking/

[TexasTowelie]

1. Since subsidence is a major problem in the NOLA area,

have they ruled out fracking disposal wells to alleviate the problem?

Since this is a case of something moving when it isn't supposed to be moving, I thought that the flowchart said that they should be using duct tape? more

[Hortensis]

2. Many homeowners there are already uninsured or underinsured,

with costs rising prohibitively or coverage not available.

[JustAnotherGen]

3. Where do you move

417,000 people?

[bluecollar2]

4. Mar-a-lago...n/t

[JustAnotherGen]

5. Love it!

[SaintLouisBlues]

14. 1.5 million in Metropolitan New Orleans.

[JustAnotherGen]

15. Yep

Was down there during New Years. It's as silly to me as building huge water pipe lines from Lake Ontario to Georgia.

[rampartc]

6. i am not moving

i will die here before or during the next flood, but i am not dying anywhere else.

[snpsmom]

7. Don't blame you

If I could find a way to get my husband to relocate, I would be back there in a hot minute.

[rampartc]

13. mom, i understand that

but if you are someplace else and happy stay there and grow roots.

this place has changed since katrina, a lot, and i sometimes wish we could have settled somewhere else.

[Thekaspervote]

8. I'm sure there are people who love you and hope you do not mean what you say. It would be a waste

[Thekaspervote]

9. Yes

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127111061

[Wounded Bear]

10. NOLA is one of many cities world wide that have to face this question...

NOLA is built on sediment, miles deep, that has been deposited over many thousand years by the Mississippi River.

It is soft. When you build large buildings on it, no matter how well the foundations are, they sink, especially when people are drawing ground water out for drinking and watering crops, etc. So, the ground is sinking and the sea is rising. One thing is certain, when Mother Nature acts, mankind better watch out. Now, we're amping up Mother Nature's strength by fueling global warming.

Millions are at risk world wide by sea level rise, from NOLA to London to Shanghai ad nauseum.

[Pope George Ringo II]

11. There are a lot of good arguments against putting a city there.

But as long as the mouth of the Mississippi remains an important port, it's probably just going to override them.

[NCjack]

12. Another risk: River cities and villages from the beginning of the Atchafalay to NOLA

are one big, wet storm away from another kind of flood disaster. At the confluence of the Mississippi, Atchafalaya, and Red River, the US Corp of Engineers has constructed levees and gates to control and distribute the rivers' water flow volume. The Atchafalaya gets 100% of the Red's water and 30% of the Mississippi's water. While performing very well now, global change may send a super wet storm up the Mississippi Valley and overwhelm the distribution system. The Atchafalaya's water level there is 12 feet below that of the Mississippi's. If the Mississippi rises and flows across its bank into the Atchafalaya, it will cut a connection because of the 12-ft drop, and within hours the Mississippi would change its course. The results would be the Atchafalaya would become the New Mississippi, and between the Red River to the Gulf of Mexico, that zone -- including Baton Rouge and New Orleans -- would become bayou cities, cut-off without Mississippi water to make depth for commercial traffic. That risk has been recognized at least since the late 1800s. But, there was never a policy to limit exposure to the risk.

The US government should immediately begin a program to save what we can from loss of the Mississippi River cutting a channel to the Atchafalaya.

[link:https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/environment/article_d5a29f26-06a9-11e8-abde-8b9660c81021.html|]