"Rebuilding New Orleans Doesnt Make Sense"

[MisterMark]

By Patrick Waldron
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Thursday, September 01, 2005

Lawmakers have to ask themselves if it’s worth sinking possibly billions of federal dollars into rebuilding New Orleans, a low-lying city which would remain a vulnerable hurricane target even after clean up, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Wednesday.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” said Hastert during an interview with the Daily Herald editorial board. “And it’s a question that certainly we should ask.”

http://www.dailyherald.com/search/searchstory.asp?id=89228

 

[madame_zora]

Why the fuck would we spend potentially billions of dollar here at home when it might detract from a day or two of the war we could be spending it on?

 

[headbang8]

He's right. It doesn't make sense.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

hb8

 

[blackwood]

Originally posted by MisterMark@Sep 1 2005, 09:28 PM
By Patrick Waldron
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Thursday, September 01, 2005 

Lawmakers have to ask themselves if it’s worth sinking possibly billions of federal dollars into rebuilding New Orleans, a low-lying city which would remain a vulnerable hurricane target even after clean up, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Wednesday.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” said Hastert during an interview with the Daily Herald editorial board. “And it’s a question that certainly we should ask.”

http://www.dailyherald.com/search/searchstory.asp?id=89228

[post=339913]Quoted post[/post]​

--------------------------------------

I'm not an expert here but...............

The reclamation project (dredging Ponchatraine and laying the recovered earth behind a berm or levy increased the size of the the "outlying areas" if N-O.

When stationed down there I was told that to buy the lot (of reclaimed surface) cost in excess of $$100.00 per cubic foot. Many folks have 50 60 year loans (some even longer)which enabeled the purchase of the land and building an appropriate dwellling.

IF the above is true?????? and.not somephoney shit, People like you and I are invested, IT'S HOME FOR GOD'S SAKE AND... :nopity:

damn......IS this another example of the religious rights humanity..,...Re-build a shit hole filled with the like of the Iraqis and trash a U.S. City caus taint practicle. How many time have tax dollars rebuilt the Outerbanks of North Carolina, how many repairs have we made in Kirkuit or Bagdahad or other arab shit hole.

REPUBLICANS?????? CHRISTIANS???? HOLY COW????? SHOOTING DOWN RESCUE HELIOCOPTEERS, BUSH HAS DESTROYED US NOT DIVIDED ----DESTROYED. uke:

I know I have offended and I am so sorry but it is more than I can handle.

blackwood :evilgrin:

 

[jay_too]

"It doesn't make sense." Huh? How lame!

NOLA is the largest U.S. port in terms of tonnage. I guess the Speaker never heard of the Mississippi River or thought of all the midwest grain and soybeans that ship out through NOLA.....and the steel, sugar, coffee, and...well you get the picture.

Why the Mississippi? Well Goofus, barge transportation is the cheapest. Port facilities are expensive to build. The economic impact of not having a NOLA would be far greater than the cost to rebuild...probably, even in the short run. Surely, the former economics teacher [high school] remembers about price elasticity of commodities. K, probably not.

Do we deserve leadership like this?

jay

 

[Rikter8]

It just goes to show how truly fucked up US leaders are, and what theyre being allowed to get away with.
All they look at is MONEY, and GREED.
They have no clue what part the states play in the economy.
All they know is Oil, Money, and Greed.

The president "Warned" about price gouging. Didn't say much about penaltys.
We have 3 more years of this crooked S.O.B. I pray for us real americans, caught up in this mess.

There needs to be an American Revolution.

 

[hippyscum]

Originally posted by Rikter8@Sep 1 2005, 10:58 PM
We have 3 more years of this crooked S.O.B.

[post=339943]Quoted post[/post]​

But once he gets kicked out, that's him gone forever. Let's all keep our schedules clear for for December 2008 :toast:

 

[Synergistic]

Originally posted by Rikter8@Sep 1 2005, 05:58 PM
The president "Warned" about price gouging. Didn't say much about penaltys.

That's because there really is no such thing as price gouging, there is only the market, supply, demand and what people are willing to pay.

But as to rebuilding Nawlins, we should probably fill it in first. If you're gonna waste the money to rebuild something that will get destroyed again, might as well waste the money to fill up the hole with dirt.

 

[blackwood]

Originally posted by nlatimer+Sep 2 2005, 12:21 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(nlatimer &#064; Sep 2 2005, 12:21 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteBegin-Rikter8@Sep 1 2005, 05:58 PM
The president "Warned" about price gouging. Didn&#39;t say much about penaltys.

That&#39;s because there really is no such thing as price gouging, there is only the market, supply, demand and what people are willing to pay.

But as to rebuilding Nawlins, we should probably fill it in first. If you&#39;re gonna waste the money to rebuild something that will get destroyed again, might as well waste the money to fill up the hole with dirt.

[post=339963]Quoted post[/post]​

[/b][/quote]

PLUG THE BREACH WITH THE CABINET

You are CORRECT - Hindsight = Had they done it from the git go, No Probs today, But more money in residences than city property.

blackwood

 

[MisterMark]

Originally posted by nlatimer@Sep 1 2005, 05:21 PM
That&#39;s because there really is no such thing as price gouging, there is only the market, supply, demand and what people are willing to pay.

[post=339963]Quoted post[/post]​

I agree with this.

Regarding the rebuilding of New Orleans, does technology exist that would be able to hold the water back if another hurricane of this magnitude struck the area? (poor sentence structure, I know)

 

[Dr Rock]

Originally posted by MisterMark@Sep 2 2005, 12:57 AM
Regarding the rebuilding of New Orleans, does technology exist that would be able to hold the water back if another hurricane of this magnitude struck the area? (poor sentence structure, I know)

[post=339972]Quoted post[/post]​

nope - if the city is below sea level, it really doesn&#39;t stand a chance against anything stronger than category 3, and even that would be pushing its luck.

it didn&#39;t make sense, from a long-term perspective, to site the city there in the first place - but since its inhabitants are now stuck with the location, not rebuilding it at this point in time is probably even less sensible than doing so. either way, the place is fucked, cos sooner or later shit like this happens.

 

[KinkGuy]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bush administration funding cuts forced federal engineers to delay improvements on the levees, floodgates and pumping stations that failed to protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina&#39;s floodwaters, agency documents showed on Thursday.

The former head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that handles the infrastructure of the nation&#39;s waterways, said the damage in New Orleans probably would have been much less extensive had flood-control efforts been fully funded over the years.

"Levees would have been higher, levees would have been bigger, there would have been other pumps put in," said Mike Parker, a former Mississippi congressman who headed the engineering agency from 2001 to 2002.
"I&#39;m not saying it would have been totally alleviated but it would have been less than the damage that we have got now."

 

[jay_too]

I know that for years engineers have been warning that a 500-yr precipitation event upstream of New Orleans would wipe out the levees that were built in the 1930s and 1940s for flood prevention. There have been specials on PBS on this in the past decade. These levees also are responsible for the loss of more than a million acres of wetlands due to the encroachment of the gulf; the annual floods renewed the wetlands with silt.

I think replacing the Port of New Orleans with Natchez is not an option. Ports require ocean going vessels. I grant that NOLA is not located ideally; but it is the port for the Mississippi. I tend to believe that engineering could make NOLA a viable and safer port and place to live. There are several possible alternatives that I can imagine....and I am not a civil engineer. Holland has been fighting the sea for hundreds of years. Some years there are breaches and flooding, but generally, the system works.

The solution will be neither simple or inexpensive. It might require that money be appropriated for massive domestic projects and not for foreign mis-adventures. Personally, I would rather spend &#036;300 billion in the southern U.S. than in Iraq.

jay

 

[BobLeeSwagger]

Originally posted by MisterMark+Sep 1 2005, 05:57 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MisterMark &#064; Sep 1 2005, 05:57 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteBegin-nlatimer@Sep 1 2005, 05:21 PM
That&#39;s because there really is no such thing as price gouging, there is only the market, supply, demand and what people are willing to pay.

[post=339963]Quoted post[/post]​

I agree with this.

Regarding the rebuilding of New Orleans, does technology exist that would be able to hold the water back if another hurricane of this magnitude struck the area? (poor sentence structure, I know)

[post=339972]Quoted post[/post]​

[/b][/quote]

I think it does, but the cost would be enormous. The Dutch have extensive experience with this, holding back the oceans with a massive system of dikes, levees, and pumps. My gut feeling -- and this is in light of very recent events and the really dire current situation -- is that it would be a lot easier to rebuild the port than it would be for commercial and residential land.

The geography of New Orleans has been drastically changed, even after the water is pumped out. Who knows how long it will even take to drain that area until it can be built on again? This isn&#39;t like most floods, where things are washed away and within a day or so things can dry off. The city is submerged and the topsoil will be basically reverting to swampland. I wonder who even has experience rebuilding a city after something like this.

 

[Altairion]

I&#39;m with you jay. Spending the cash here where we can see the effects truly work are worth it.

From a civil engineer&#39;s standpoint, I don&#39;t have the knowledge or the experience to understand what would even go into rebuilding New Orleans, but it would be massive. I&#39;m thinking that it would be one of the biggest projects of the century to say the least. While New Orleans could be raised in elevation, that would require leveling large portions of the city. Until the structures are all evaluated, there is no way to know which sections are salvagable and which aren&#39;t. The sheer power of what has transpired may give way to having large sections of the cit which are salavable being cleared, but that is a huge political matter which will slow the entire process of rebuilding down in a few months after the cleanup beings.

Something cool to me would be a huge system that would keep the water out, but this would seriously be expensive, and the factor of safety on such a project would be huge if the city would be protected while not raising the elevation of the ground. No matter what path of rebuilding is followed, the result will be something that can resist (at the very least) a low level Category 5 storm.

 

[Ralexx]

WHAT ?&#33;?&#33;?&#33;? :alert: :alert: :alert:
How does that come : not rebuilding New Orleans ?????
... Geez, my brain stopped for minutes &#33; This is the most idiot thing I heard in years. It&#39;s not even a joke &#33; And what are the future plans of this "most illustrious" US regime (for it&#39;s not an administration anymore, but a regime) ? Leave the place empty ? say to some wild tourists adventuring there : "In these marshes, New Orleans used to lay only 6 months ago..." ???
... I can certainly call this "barbarian"... for Christ&#39;s sake...

 

[Philly05]

I haven&#39;t heard a rational reason yet for rebuilding New Orleans. It makes no sense to rebuild it as it was, and the costs of building the city up or a complex system of levees and drainage is not truly realistic. Let the market work and dictate what is rebuilt by those who have an direct interest in NO.

 

[Synergistic]

For the displaced residents, would it be possible to rebuild a suburban area along the outskirts, while rebuilding New Orleans solely for the port purpose. And just as a question, what is on the other side of the river there? Is the land above that delta too far north for a port?

 

[MisterMark]

I don&#39;t think it makes sense to rebuild in the same location. Throughout history, cities come and cities go. The spirit and lifestyle of New Orleans isn&#39;t simply about a location, it&#39;s about the people.

 

[Sabln7]

Originally posted by MisterMark@Sep 1 2005, 09:28 PM
By Patrick Waldron
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Thursday, September 01, 2005

Lawmakers have to ask themselves if it’s worth sinking possibly billions of federal dollars into rebuilding New Orleans, a low-lying city which would remain a vulnerable hurricane target even after clean up, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Wednesday.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” said Hastert during an interview with the Daily Herald editorial board. “And it’s a question that certainly we should ask.”

http://www.dailyherald.com/search/searchstory.asp?id=89228

[post=339913]Quoted post[/post]​

It costs too much to rebuild our city destroyed by nature. But we can bomb and destroy Baghdad and Iraq and rebuild them....SOmething is wrong here.