Rebuilding Big Easy Won’t Be Easy

Few would disagree with the argument that New Orleans, whatever form it ultimately takes, must be rebuilt. After all, in addition to its status as a tourist mecca, “New Orleans is the focal point for an area that in providing oil products, vital port facilities and much more for the rest of the country is crucial to our welfare,” contends a Chicago Sun-Times editorial.

Yet, as Diane Suchetka observes in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the issue raises a whole host of questions, all of which inevitably will ignite a raging debate --- not to mention the sweltering emotion, vitriol and recrimination that typically accompany such heated discussions.

For example, Suchetka asks, “What do we salvage? What do we raze?”

For that matter, should New Orleans be rebuilt in the same place? Many experts believe it’s a question worth asking.

“Moving the city is clearly going to be an option,” says John Copenhaver, a former southeast regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “It would be an unbelievably expensive and difficult proposition, but it has to be on the table.”

Moving towns is one thing. It’s even been attempted in some flood-prone communities throughout the U.S., though with mixed results. Moving megalopolises like New Orleans, on the other hand, is quite a different matter.

Less radical, albeit costly measures, call for mass buyouts in the city’s worst-hit areas, replacing these flood-ravaged sections with wetlands and green spaces. Others suggest replacing these buildings with manufactured homes that can be easily rebuilt following storm damage.

Levees will have to be built higher, though this will contribute to another major problem --- the fact that New Orleans is sinking an inch a year due to levees channeling sediment into the Gulf that otherwise would replenish lost ground in the city.

There’s the added challenge of reversing the environmental decline that has been years in the making, notably the loss of coastal wetlands that once acted as vital buffers against the furious storm wrath --- a process that could take 20 years to correct, according to some estimates. It’s a problem, critics contend, that has been complicated in recent years by irresponsible environmental policies, including the Vitter Amendment to the Water Resources Development Act, which removed a key provision in the law that enabled the Army Corp of Engineers to regulate activities contributing to wetland degradation.

Posted by Jim Langcuster at September 9, 2005 02:52 PM | TrackBack