Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Baron
It sounds more like stupidity than being "cold hearted""
The city is there for a reason and if Louisiana wasn't getting *****ed out of their oil and gas revenues, they'd build their own levees. If you were more concerned that your "tax dollars" were wasted in digging a canal (the MRGO) that the people living there said would cause this, you might have a clue. This City had natural protection that is being destroyed because of MRGO. And if you have a problem with your tax dollars going there, just imagine paying twice as much as you do now for gas every time you fill up, because that is what would happen if New Orleans is not or was not built right where it is.
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BINGO.
The original explorers attempted to build elsewhere but could not. The first high ground is the bluffs at Baton Rouge (where the Choctaw had set up a big red stick, hence the name).
New Orleans was and is THE major trans-shipment point that links the heartland of this entire continent with ocean freight. That was true during the time of the keel boats. It was true during the time of the steam boats. It is still true, even after the huge movements of freight to trains and later to highway trucks.
There is just no place to get river freight to the Gulf that is any better.
Then there is the oil, the refineries, and the chemical plants (that use oil) that Red baron mentioned.
NoLA is much more easily defended than much of Japan and almost all of the Netherlands. We simply have not invested like they did to protect the low lying areas. Instead, we allowed oil exploration to chop the protecting wetlands up into little pieces that wash away, we channelized the Miss. River and prevented it from depositing silt and sand below the city and a lot of other mistakes.
There are certainly areas (E. NO) that are pretty problematical but were urbanized anyway (they are generally the last parts of the city to be urbanized, dating from the 1960s not the 1760s...). The City needs to contract its footprint a bit and that is highly likely.
If we are smart, we will also protect the culture of this unique place too.
Better look at the history of your own locale and see if it has any natural dangers. Nearly everyplace I know of does.