Republican Leaders not sure NO is worth rebuilding - Compassionate Conservatism

House Speaker: Rebuilding N.O. doesn't make sense
Thursday, 2:55 p.m.

By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Dennis Hastert dropped a bombshell on flood-ravaged New Orleans on Thursday by suggesting that it isn’t sensible to rebuild the city.

"It doesn't make sense to me," Hastert told the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago in editions published today. "And it's a question that certainly we should ask."

Hastert's comments came as Congress cut short its summer recess and raced back to Washington to take up an emergency aid package expected to be $10 billion or more. Details of the legislation are still emerging, but it is expected to target critical items such as buses to evacuate the city, reinforcing existing flood protection and providing food and shelter for a growing population of refugees.

The Illinois Republican’s comments drew an immediate rebuke from Louisiana officials.

“That’s like saying we should shut down Los Angeles because it’s built in an earthquake zone,” former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., said. “Or like saying that after the Great Chicago fire of 1871, the U.S. government should have just abandoned the city.”

Hastert said that he supports an emergency bailout, but raised questions about a long-term rebuilding effort. As the most powerful voice in the Republican-controlled House, Hastert is in a position to block any legislation that he opposes.

"We help replace, we help relieve disaster," Hastert said. "But I think federal insurance and everything that goes along with it... we ought to take a second look at that."

The speaker’s comments were in stark contrast to those delivered by President Bush during an appearance this morning on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“I want the people of New Orleans to know that after rescuing them and stabilizing the situation, there will be plans in place to help this great city get back on its feet,” Bush said. “There is no doubt in my mind that New Orleans is going to rise up again as a great city.”

Insurance industry executives estimated that claims from the storm could range up to $19 billion. Rebuilding the city, which is more than 80 percent submerged, could cost tens of billions of dollars more, experts projected.

Hastert questioned the wisdom of rebuilding a city below sea level that will continue to be in the path of powerful hurricanes.

"You know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake issures and they rebuild, too. Stubbornness," he said.

Hastert wasn't the only one questioning the rebuilding of New Orleans. The Waterbury, Conn., Republican-American newspaper wrote an editorial Wednesday entitled, "Is New Orleans worth reclaiming?"

"Americans' hearts go out to the people in Katrina's path," it said. "But if the people of New Orleans and other low-lying areas insist on living in harm's way, they ought to accept responsibility for what happens to them and their property.

It would be foolish to rebuild....NO is a bowl surrounded by water ...the warnings have been around for decades that this would happen. The army core of engineers recently started surveying the levee's and have no clue what could be done to them to make NO any safer.

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'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'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'm not saying it would have been totally alleviated but it would have been less than the damage that we have got now."

Eighty percent of New Orleans was under water after Katrina blew through with much of the flooding coming after two levees broke.

A May 2005 Corps memo said that funding levels for fiscal years 2005 and 2006 would not be enough to pay for new construction on the levees.

Couldn't they relocate NO a ways north, out of the swamp? They were just asking to get flooded for a long time.

Couldn't they relocate NO a ways north, out of the swamp? They were just asking to get flooded for a long time.

They could, but it would never be as prosperous as it once was.

Outside of the bowl-shape, the reason why New Orleans is situated were it is/was is because it gave easy access to the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico. It's easier and cheaper to ship freight up the Mississippi on a barge than send it by rail from, say, Houston.

You have to remember cities get built where they are for a reason, and usually that reason is economics.

This is heresay, but I also understand that NO is sinking. 300 years ago, or so, when the French colonized that area, I remember hearing that the city was above sea level (or at least higher than it is, now). Given the shoreline erosion problems and the sinking phenomenon, I can't help but wonder what the geography will be like in 100 years...

This is heresay, but I also understand that NO is sinking. 300 years ago, or so, when the French colonized that area, I remember hearing that the city was above sea level (or at least higher than it is, now). Given the shoreline erosion problems and the sinking phenomenon, I can't help but wonder what the geography will be like in 100 years...

This is fairly true. The entire area is flood-prone, but that spot was at the time the highest bit of ground in the area. But it was also the major contact point between the French traders on the Gulf Coast and the Indian trade routes up the Mississippi. It holds the almost the same significance now, as it's the major access point for oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and the rest of the country.

Also, I doubt the Houston Ship Channel goes all the way to Minnesota.

Why couldn't ships travel another 10 or 20 miles (or whatever is feasible) further up river to offload their goods?

I'm not saying that the Mississippi isn't an important trade route, but we do have road and rail now, as compared to back then.

Port facilities aren't just docks. New Orleans has a dozens of canals that run through it that connect ocean traffic to the Mississippi, the shortest and widest being 5 miles in length (the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal). Ships don't even have to offload, they go straight through to the Mississippi. In fact, the main port facilities are on the Mississippi River.

Assuming Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas are joined permamently, the closest-built city would be Baton Rouge, and you're talking about having to build a 30-40 mile canal at least 200m wide. The Houston Ship Channel is about the same length, but was a pre-existing water mass, a tributary of the San Jacinto river. That wouldn't be the case here.

And if you build a new city on the shores of Lake Maurepas, it'll have the same problems New Orleans did, because the land leaked like a sponge during Katrina, too.



Yes, but container transport by ship is more cost-effective. It takes only 10%-20% of the energy to transport by road. 1 ship with 25,000 metric tons of freight equals to about 225 rail cars or 870 trucks. By ship, 1 ton of freight can be travel 500miles/gallon of diesel. A train, per 1 ton, has a fuel economy of 250miles/gallon, while a truck, per tonnage, has much lower fuel efficiency, around 75miles/gallon per 1 ton of frieght (and I think that's optimistic). And we're not even getting into air freight which is more like an inverse of the above. Unless people in the Midwest, the Great Lakes region, and Canada are willing to pay five times as much just to cover shipping costs, I don't see sea travel up and down the Mississippi going away any time soon. That is unless somebody invents point-2-point teleporting.

I can't believe I'm having to argue this point, considering how much death is going on.