WASHINGTON — Even before the evacuation of flooded New Orleans has
been completed, hurricane scientists, disaster experts and
reconstruction officials are raising the question of whether the city
should be rebuilt at all.
President Bush has promised to help the city “get back on its feet,”
and few people can imagine an America without New Orleans.
“I can tell you that someday there will people playing jazz in the
riverfront,” said Hassan Mashriqui, a Louisiana State University
engineer who used a supercomputer to model flooding from Hurricane
Katrina.
But others say the idea of rebuilding a below-sea-level city next to
a large lake in a hurricane-prone area makes little sense, especially
with the prospect of taxpayers having to foot repeated bills for aid
and reconstruction.
“Moving the city is clearly going to be an option,” said 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.”
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Commanding Gen. Carl Strock on Thursday
agreed that “a discussion will have to take place,” and House Speaker
Dennis Hastert, R.-Ill., told a suburban Chicago newspaper: “There are
some real tough questions to ask about how you go about rebuilding this
city. I think federal insurance and everything goes along with it, and
we ought to take a second look at it.”
“Can the country afford to rebuild in this high-risk area, where
there is no means of mitigating the losses?” asked Eric Tolbert, who
until February was FEMA’s disaster response chief. “We could finish
rebuilding, put the levee back where it was and five years from now we
could be facing the identical scenario.”
Federal officials have relocated disaster-prone towns before, but
never on the scale of New Orleans, one of the country’s oldest urban
areas, home to a half-million people, a major transportation hub and a
tourist mecca.
After a killer 1993 flood on the Mississippi River devastated the
Illinois town of Valmeyer, 35 miles south of St. Louis, the federal
government agreed to move the town 1.5 miles to land that was 400 feet
higher and out of the flood plain.
But Valmeyer had a population of only 900 people, nearly all of whom
agreed to the move. The town has thrived in its new location.
But relocating a city the size of New Orleans has never been
attempted, and an attempt would be not only expensive — little
Valmeyer cost $65 million to move, New Orleans, at the same rate, would
be well over $50 billion — but also have even higher political costs.
What, for example, would be done with New Orleans’ many historic
buildings?
“We’re talking about New Orleans. There’s never been a successful
relocation of a large city,” said Kathleen Tierney, director of the
Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center at the
University of Colorado.
That sentiment is echoed by George Haddow, who when he was deputy
chief of staff at FEMA, was a big proponent of moving towns out of
harm’s way. But New Orleans is his hometown.
“It’s a treasure and it’s going to have to be rebuilt,” Haddow said.
“There are ways to rebuild this city that can reduce the impact and
damage that’s occurring now.”
Even if New Orleans is rebuilt, few people advocate that the
reconstruction simply mirror the way the city has grown to date.
Experts suggested that a wide range of changes be incorporated into
reconstruction, including raising the city from several feet below sea
level to five or 10 feet above sea level.
Hastert on rebuilding
Notes huge cost, flood probabilities
WASHINGTON — It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to
rebuild a city that’s 7 feet under sea level, House Speaker Dennis
Hastert said of federal assistance for hurricane-devastated New
Orleans.
Details
“It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed,” the Illinois
Republican said in an interview with the Daily Herald of Arlington
Heights, Ill.
Hastert , in a transcript supplied by the newspaper, said there was
no question that the people of New Orleans would rebuild their city,
but noted that federal insurance and other federal aid was
involved.
“We ought to take a second look at it. But you know we build Los
Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake fissures and they
rebuild too.”
Hastert later issued a statement saying he was not “advocating that
the city be abandoned or relocated.”
– Associated Press
