Rebuilding New Orleans

Via Evangelical Outpost, Gerry Phelps is asking the question that everyone is thinking but no one has been saying: How should we rebuild New Orleans?

As everyone with access to cable news knows, New Orleans is located in a bowl-shaped depression. Most of the city is several feet below sea level. It lies between two major sources of water, the Mississippi river and Lake Pontchartrain. Both the river and the lake are slightly above sea level. As many have noted and Katrina has now proved, this is a very stupid place to put a city. Even the French had the common sense to build on the relatively high ground for fear of flooding.

Now it may be too expensive to move the city outright. There will certainly be a lot of steel and concrete commercial buildings that will come through this without major structural damage. However calls to rebuild exactly as it was, should not be heeded. If you are going to rebuild a city inside a bowl between two major bodies of water, at least put in systems that are capable of localizing the flooding in the case of severe weather. Redundant levee walls around the perimeter would be a good start. Running additional flood walls within the city would also be a great idea. This way when there is flooding of this nature next time, we won't lose the entire city.