[Mb-civic] New Orleans - closer to the truth

[Gerald Gerald]

The following is extremely informative for decision
making.  It is also attached for other
reading/printing options.

Unfeasibility of Rebuilding New Orleans

By Paul Noel and Mary -Sue Haliburton

From:
http://pesn.com/2005/09/23/9600175_Rebuild_Energy_Systems_Not_NewOrleans

[ Friends - this is one of the most informative
articles I've read recently; it goes into so much
detail that I feel like I've really learned a lot.
Much of it is on a subject that I've been hearing
about for quite a while, but this one article seems to
cover the whole "waterfront" better than other things
I've read. READ ABOUT THE FAST SINKING OF PARTS OF
LOUISIANA, TEXAS AND ALABAMA -- as has happened to
other areas of our country. ALAN ]
 ----------------------

  Sun, 25 Sep 2005 

* * * * * * *

Unfeasibility of Rebuilding New Orleans The river is
moving away from the city. The city is sinking because
of its weight, because no upbuilding by new muck for
many decades, because of being cut off from the fresh
water, because it is sliding off a cliff (the
Continental Shelf), and because the Oil and Gas
Industry is extracting oil out from under it. It is a
city that for all intents and purposes is now Sea
domain. Spend the money on developing alternative
energy solutions instead. 

 Pure Energy Systems News - 

 The President of the United States of America has
announced in a theatrically heroic manner that New
Orleans will be rebuilt. At first blush, what he has
proposed seems like a nice idea. 

 That is the best that can be said of it. 

 A wise evaluation of the facts tells us that the
horrendously expensive project he has proposed is a
fool's errand. The city is doomed. There is absolutely
no hope for it in the long term. Emotionally pleasing
as it may be, rebuilding New Orleans prophesies an
even worse disaster than what we have just seen.
Hurricanes are only a small part of the threats
destroying the city.

Historical Compromise Location 

 To understand the City of New Orleans one must first
understand the massive Mississippi River delta. New
Orleans was built at the site of the old "French
Quarter" on the high ground adjacent to the
Mississippi river. This location was picked because
the Mississippi River didn't have a mouth into the
ocean. The river simply went into the "Black Swamp"
and disappeared. This was where ships headed down
river had to stop and unload their goods to be
transshipped across Lake Pontchartrain to the sea.
This was done by unloading the goods at the docks and
then hauling them to the lake where shallow draft
boats would take the goods to the seagoing ships.

Mississippi River delta. Source: ibiblio 

 By using some ingenious methods, Henry Shreve --
after whom Shreveport, La., is named -- forced the
river to dig its own channel out to the sea where it
now goes. This allowed the ocean-going boats access to
the enormous Mississippi river. This, together with
the work of the US Army Corps of Engineers, produced
what is functionally the largest ocean port on earth.
The Mississippi River is ocean draft in the channel
half way to Memphis Tennessee even at the lowest water
times. In normal water times, it is ocean draft depth
all the way to Memphis. No other nation on earth can
boast such a treasure. The value of this port is
fantastic on a world scale.

Mississippi River: A Rebellious Monster 

 Few people understand just how big the Mississippi
River Delta is. The delta begins at Cairo, Illinois.
It in times past has seen the big river move east and
west across the delta from what is now the Pearl River
in Mississippi to the Sabine River on the Border of
Texas. This river never sits still. It is a powerful
monster that at best can be somewhat handled. Managing
it is the largest existing construction project on the
planet. 

 There was a fatal problem known from the days of
Henry Shreve. The Atchafalaya River has a steep
gradient leading into the sea. In the old times, this
was a small leakage stream off of the looping Red
River. With the work of Henry Shreve and the US Army
Corps of Engineers, the Red River was opened for
navigation to the Mississippi and inadvertently this
opened the Atchafalaya to draw water off from the
Mississippi River, and to begin cutting a larger and
wider channel for itself. Certain to steal the whole
Mississippi River in time, this process is well under
way now.

Source: Mississippi/Atchafalaya Project at Penn State
University 

 During a powerful flood in the late 1950s, the
Mississippi River forced its way into the Atchafalaya
River and the main channel began to go far to the west
of New Orleans. With this flood the City of New
Orleans and the ports there were threatened with being
cut off from the river. The US Army Corps of Engineers
was tasked with attempting to keep the Mississippi
River controlled and in its old channel. The "Old
River Control Structur" (ORCS) was completed in 1963
to keep 70% of the river in the old channel.

How a Port Becomes a Backwater 

 This set of dams worked for a while. In 1973 the
river threw another enormous flood and undermined a
large section of the ORCS. Since that time the river
has progressively become more and more uncontrolled as
the ORCS is further and further undermined. The status
at this time is that another event on the river will
probably cause a large part of the ORCS to disappear
without a trace and the Mississippi River will finish
moving west to Morgan City. This is probably going to
happen within the next 20 years or so. It is probably
unwise to even consider trying to stop this event
which natural forces are working to bring about. 

 The Mississippi River is moving westward. The City of
New Orleans will be cut off from fresh water, and be
attached to a silted-in port of no value, attached to
water that doesn't go anywhere. This is a certainty.
The only issue with this event is when. The event is
going to happen shortly. If the events occur as a
result of a flood rather than by deliberately managed
processes, the USA may find that its precious
Mississippi River port area is worthless. Even before
Hurricane Katrina, the city was living on borrowed
time. Its dance with the Mississippi River is soon to
end. 

 The swamp in which New Orleans sits can only be
supported by a continual influx of fresh water from
the Mississippi River. The US Army Corps of Engineers
damaged this process severely with canals and channels
as well as by putting up dikes. The city is sinking
for lack of this water. Mud deposited by floods would
have rebuilt the naturally sinking land. This became
painfully apparent when the city dikes broke. 

 In fact, as reliably reported in the Hunstville Times
on Sunday September 11, 2005, breakage of the levees
occurred two days before the arrival of Katrina. (Ref.
) It may have been due to seismic activity, the
rhythmic pounding of resonant waves whipped up by
hurricanes which precede landfall by up to two days.
These resonant waves reached a solid point and cracked
it. It was the new segments, made of concrete
reinforced with steel, which failed. 

 Thus it could have been human error that flooded New
Orleans. In assuming that rigidity means strength in
every circumstance, did engineers fail to recognize
that the whole region is more like jello than strong
rock and soil? If so, the planners didnâ?Tt grasp that
the barrier would have to flex along with the soft
muck beneath it. Any reinforcing would have to be
flexible as well, such as a fibrous or woven-link
Kevlar, or some such material. In such a location,
rigid reinforcing would inevitably result in breakage,


 Whatever the reason for the failure, the dikes broke
more than 18 hours before the storm came ashore. The
US Army Corps of Engineers and the New Orleans and
Lousiana Authorities all knew there was already
serious flooding one day before the storm. The whole
issue was that the bureaucrats argued over who was in
charge and nobody did anything. Officials passed the
buck back and forth until the Big Excuse arrived, both
completing the flooding and distracting everyone from
the issue of legal responsibility. If engineering
mistakes were involved, no one in authority would
announce them, as no one in charge would want to be
sued for the astronomical level of financial damages,
not counting loss of life. 

 What had been predicted to be 4 to 6 feet of
floodwater was nearly 20 feet in places. The city is
sinking faster than anyone believed.

Subsidence Speeding Up 

 With its dance with the river over, the city of New
Orleans will begin to sink even faster into the ocean.
This sinking is not only because of the lack of water.
New Orleans is on a cliff over a mile high, part of
the underlying structure of the continental shelf.
Nobody can see the cliff because the ocean covers it
up. New Orleans is a city on the edge of a cliff and
it is oozing off the edge.

Continental Shelf along Louisiana, Mississippi,
Alabama, Florida coast line Source: Ocean Fiber 

 The edge of the cliff may be generally seen on a map
where the river ends. The fall from this point is into
the deep abyss. The taller the city builds the more it
will squish the muck that supports it into the ocean
depths. Its very success dooms New Orleans.

Oil and Gas Industry Literally Undermines America 

 All these factors --the river leaving, the muck
sinking, the US Army Corps of Engineers cutting off
the muck supply -- would be enough to doom the city.
On top of these, a newer and more damaging force has
arrived on the scene that is likely to sink most of
the State of Louisiana. It also promises to sink parts
of Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama too. Given half a
chance it will sink Florida as well. This is the Oil
and Gas industry. 

 Due to successful planning and market control by this
industry, American appetites for Oil and Gas are
enormous. The country needs lots of the stuff, and the
events surrounding Katrina have threatened the supply.
For someone to suggest that this mining be stopped
isn't going to be looked upon lightly. The USA has
been set up to be strangled without its supply of Oil
and Gas. From the Texas "Black Giant" to the Petronius
Oil/Gas field in Alabama's offshore waters, this isn't
just big business. It is colossal business on a scale
that even astounds those who work in the industry. It
is the biggest business on the planet.

Biggest Cost of Oil: Land-Mass Destruction 

 The dirty secret of the Oil and Gas business is that
in order to get it out of the ground, you have to do
things that are messing up the structure of the
planet. When you pump the stuff out, the land
subsides. It goes down not only from the volume of
fuel removed, but also from the volume of all of the
other stuff removed as well. A typical oil or gas well
will extract 100 to 200 times more brine than oil or
gas. This really sinks land. In California at Oak
Hills, this lowered the land over 70 feet. In Alabama
near Tuscaloosa, this has lowered mountains as much as
20 feet in one year of natural gas extraction
operations. (Ref: Alabama Oil and Gas board website
and the University of Alabama papers on Coal Gas
extraction and CO2 sequestration) The deeper the
recovery site, the more certainly these effects are
seen, but over wider areas involving hundreds of
miles. 

 This is causing the earth to slide. The Norphlet
structure which dives below the surface at Tuscaloosa
Alabama and across to about Shreveport, La, and well
into Texas is 50,000 feet down at the lowest end of
Petronius. Petronius, 65 miles south of the opening of
Mobile Bay, is an old river delta that is now sliding
into the ocean because of Oil and Gas Extraction. The
slide is about 1 foot a year and accelerating, taking
the whole region -- an area of about 100,000 square
miles -- into the deep Gulf of Mexico. 

 This slide has caused the failure of one third of all
of the wells drilled in Alabama in 1988 to 1990 early
developments. The industry is very familiar with this
problem although they have not publicized it. There is
considerable directional technology going into
drilling wells now to compensate for this slide. . 

 The Oil and Gas operations which are just getting
going in the area are also pumping down the coastal
areas at about 1 to 2 feet a year. They are sinking --
never to rise again. So New Orleans is both sinking
and sliding -- caused by the Oil and Gas Industry. By
the time this plays out, the New Orleans area will
have sunk some 30 to 60 feet! For a city already
several feet below sea level this is impossible to
sustain. The effect of this sinking has already
resulted in loss of the Chandelier Islands, and about
2000 square miles of coastal marshes and land in the
New Orleans area after Katrina's landfall.

Hurricanes are Seismic Events 

 It is during Hurricanes that this land loss becomes
apparent to the public. Hurricanes settle the land by
seismic effects of their waves together with washing
action. The force of hurricane-driven waves can easily
reach seismic values of a 3.0 on the Richter scale --
repeated every few moments for many hours. This causes
liquefaction, settling, erosion and triggers slides. A
hurricane the size of Katrina is a Geologic event as
much as it is a weather event. 

 At this time the City of New Orleans is effectively a
ringed, sinking island 10 feet or more below sea
level, and something close to 20 miles off shore of
the USA. In about 50 years, it will be nearly 60 miles
off shore and will be at least 40 feet below sea
level. To keep the city the dikes will have to be so
high as to stagger the imagination and our national
budget. 

 To summarize: The river is leaving the city. The city
is sinking because of its weight, because no
upbuilding by new muck for many decades, because of
being cut off from the fresh water, because it is
falling off a cliff (the Continental Shelf), and
because the Oil and Gas Industry is sucking it down
like a kid slurping a root beer float.

Rational Alternative to Insanity of Rebuilding 

 Would any sane person put more money into this
failing operation? It is foolish. This only leaves one
question. Is our President just an ignorant fool, or
is he insane? Either prospect is most unsettling. 

 The logical and much cheaper solution is to use this
Hurricane Katrina disaster as an opportunity. 

Here is what should be done. 

 The Mississippi River should be with all deliberate
speed aimed down the Atchafalaya, and an appropriate
new port built in that river mouth, with other
management issues taken into account. 

 A key challenge will be the seven percent gradient,
which may require construction of locks like those in
the Panama Canal to lift ships to the new level of the
river. Another will be to keep silt buildup out of the
shipping channel and direct it to build up the soil in
areas where it is needed. 

 The City of New Orleans should be abandoned to the
sea that is going to take it anyway. The dikes on the
river and throughout the city should be deliberately
and completely destroyed to allow buildup of whatever
wetlands we can keep for as long as possible. 

 The persons displaced should be assimilated into the
rest of the USA. This should be made as painless as
possible for all concerned. Give the displaced people
vouchers that are payable for building at any location
at least 30 feet above sea level. Let them find their
own locations. This will be far less complex than the
current system of keeping them penned in large
buildings, and much less expensive. 

 This all requires people to see the colossal problems
coming and to confront them head on. For those who
think that the USA has a problem with energy now, they
have no imagination as to what the problem will be
when there are 
 300,000,000 more people in just 35 years. 

The solution cannot be to ignore the natural forces of
the earth. 

 It also cannot be to sink the precious country into
the sea. Continuing to watch the oil industry slurp
down an area of about 40,000 square miles along the
southern coast of the USA is not an option. 

An Emergency Re-Tooling of Our Civilization 

 The Oil and Gas Industry, still necessary, should be
considered a problematic industry. If the true cost of
land subsidence were being factored in to the price of
oil, we would all soon see that it is uneconomic to
continue to deplete this resource at this pace. This,
in addition to the problems from accelerated Global
Warming due to greenhouse gas emissions from the
burning of fossil fuels. Subsidence due to oil and gas
extraction is historically documented and ongoing
damage can be confidently declared to be fact. The
damage these guys are doing is horrid. The price of
oil is much higher than just the pump price. 

 Maybe if we were publicly discussing oil's true cost
-- destruction of cities and whole land areas -- a
rational decision will be possible. We as a whole
society would then see that the only viable choice is
to get out of the Oil Economy with all deliberate
speed. 

 As a corollary to that decision, it then becomes
urgent to discover and build new energy generation
methods and sources, and to press ahead with retooling
our infrastructure at an emergency pace. Many new
principles and technologies have already been
proposed, researched, designed, and in some cases even
patented, but have been held back by lack of funding. 

 Alternatives must be found -- and funded. The money
that this U.S. Administration plans to waste on
"reconstructing" a doomed city should be redirected
promptly into the development of the many technologies
and alternative sources of energy.
 
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