Let's only rebuild if it makes sense
"We must take the time to redesign the city to function as an island, with an island infrastructure, including relocated streets, highways and utilities. The island will need higher, stronger seawalls and levees sufficient to withstand new threats, including the rising sea levels and bigger hurricanes spawned in warming Atlantic waters." [LINK]Must??? And if it only made sense to redesign it with a giant trillion-dollar dome, would that be something we "must" do? All sentiment aside, it's not at all clear that New Orleans should be rebuilt. Let's figure out what it will cost first and then decide what "must" be done. If, indeed, "[t]here is not enough money in the gross national product of the United States to dispose of the amount of hazardous material in the area," [LINK] and if a sober look at the regional geography shows us it's a lousy place to build a city, why spend hundreds and hundreds of billions to clean it up to residential standards and rebuild? For sentimental reasons? I don't think we can justify spending that much money for sentimental reasons.
If the city weren't already called "New Orleans," we could consider building "New [City Name]" in some sensible location. Then we would not have to spend hundreds of billions to remediate a city-sized Superfund site to residential standards and rebuild it as an island redoubt. Maybe we could still rebuild it in a sensible location and just call it New Orleans. I suspect transporting the French Quarter brick by brick to the sensible location will end up looking cheap.
Note that I am not suggesting that the French Quarter is the only thing worth saving, or that it definitely won't make sense to fix up New Orleans. But we need to weigh the costs and the benefits both as they relate to each other and as they relate to all of our other national priorities.
posted at 11:13 PM
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