Never Should Have Built it There -- New York
After four years of hearing, from commenters on the New Orleans disaster, that "they never should have built it there... they should just move it inland/upstream/away", comes this report on a conference suggesting the dire future that may await New York City if (or, as one expert puts it, "when") a hurricane generates serious storm surge.
The proposed solution: a set of barriers ringing the city to protect it from inundation. The proposed cost: billions of (supposedly federal) dollars. The alternative: there is none, because, says one of the designers of the proposed barriers:
"We're going to have to do something," Bowman said. "Or else you retreat, and that's inconceivable. How are you going to retreat from New York City?"
Well, the same way people do each summer: everybody to the Hamptons.
Here's a suggestion: for the sake of every city surrounded by water (much of Chicago, which I recently visited, actually sits nestled very tightly between a lake and a river), let's fix what the shoddily designed and constructed federal levees did to New Orleans first, and see if that works as a successful model. The Dutch have been doing this for hundreds of years, they may even have something to teach us. Even though they're -- ugh -- Europeans.
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Like all things hindsight, I'd like to point out that building a seaport center of commerce on the ocean makes sense on some level. All things have their risks. Capitalism, with its emphasis on money-trum
Obviously a comparison to New Orleans.
New York was built above sea level.
I'll admit to ignorance of New Orleans construction history.
But, at what point was New Orleans above sea level?
When the ships go by on the River above your view, what do you think will happen should the man-made structures fail? And, don't man-made structures always eventually fail?
Finally, as a Californian, who lives with earthquakes and fires as a regular occurance - and has the New York Times telling us that we shouldn't build houses where we do - I really don't have much sympathy. Each of us in California must build our homes with earthquakes and fire in mind - and we have to pay for it.
If the people want to live below sea level that's entirely up to them. New Orleans is a great city. Just stop asking us to pay for your lifestyle. Build your own levees and stop asking us to pay for your choices. I would say the same to New York or any other place - like bridges to nowhere in Alaska.
See Harry Shearer's Profile
Just a fact slightly inconvenient to your argument: more than 50% of populated New Orleans, as of the last survey in 2007, is at or above sea level.
Then 50% have nothing to worry about.
No levees for N.Y. with Federal money either. I think it is safe to say, they recently received trillions in one form or another. Spend it how you like, just don't come asking for more.
There is plenty of money in NYC to tax and pay for a levee system.
No to NYC too Harry!
Keep trying.
Nothing inconvenient to that. Not all of the city was flooded.
Sacramento is a California city that is still very prone to flooding, has levees. And, the rivers there are certainly no match for the mighy Mississippi. And, only 25 ft. above sea level.
Yet, when they built out old parts of the city, they used landfill to fill in those portions close to sea level - in Old Sacramento the old first floors became the new basements.
That was, of course, in the mid-1800's.
New Orleans purposely built below sea level after WWII.
What is it, do you think, that Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, Collis Huntington and the rest of the Sacramento city fathers knew that New Orleans city planners don't?
That water and gravity mixed together are not good for people who build next to big rivers and below sea level?
No man made structure can be expected to overcome the long term effect of water and gravity.
The levees are the federal government's responsibility. Not Ray Nagin's. Not Bobby Jindal's. Not the good people of New Orleans.
The feds are the ones who have to rebuild them, and you and I will be paying for them. Do you want your tax dollars spent wisely on safe and secure levees, or do you want them wasted on levees built to inferior specs?
Don't say you don't want them built at all, or that they should abandon New Orleans. New Orleans is a major port, and it's not going anywhere. The feds have a responsibility to rebuild those levees to safe standards. As tax payers, we must demand that those flood protection structures be built to the correct specs.
Uh....you might want to point out that the site of Manhattan was picked out by Europeans.
lets not rewrite history to manipulate thought.
it could be the real fear is an island just across the ocean a bit. -as was shown in a TV documentary.
it seems the island is a mountain with a huge fault line .if the fault releases and the top on the mountain falls into the ocean an enormous tidal wave will sweep across the atlantic ,innundating the entire east coast.
There must be a way to overlap different functions into a newly designed city.
I know this is pie-in-the-sky, near-trill
NOLA could be the birthplace of the new green American city - since obviously water encroachment is only going to be a developing problem for cities as the century progresses
And then I took another sip of coffee and woke up.
Thank you again, Harry, for another great post, and for my son's discovery of sarcasm. Now, I'll introduce him to irony. "The Dutch have been doing this for hundreds of years. . . " Since they founded NY, why didn't they think about this in the beginning?
"Since they founded NY, why didn't they think about this in the beginning?"
You tell us.
Hmmm guess Obama doesn't read the huffpo. Considering how many of these Harry has written.
New York City will do it right. NY's politicians don't stuff money in their freezers.
My recommendation; lets do New York City first and then we'll worry about how to deal with New Orleans (and their elected clowns). I know I know, the people of New Orleans suffer.
We should dismantle the army corp of engineers (outdated make work agency) and let third parties build the levees. Then let the feds hold the companies accountable. New Orleans ear-mark specialists can't be trusted with money (sorry) they just end up steering the money to worthless projects.
"NY's politicians don't stuff money in their freezers." Did you ever hear of a Mayor by the name of Jimmy Walker? You should you might get a quick education.
Harry, here's the difference: none of the other cities have yet been destroyed.
The argument I always here isn't necessarily that they shouldn't have built New Orleans there. It's that they shouldn't build it there AGAIN.
The guy's point about retreating from New York is valid, and your Hamptons response doesn't come close to addressing it. There are hundreds of thousands of people in New York City who do not perform voices on the Simpsons, or anything remotely in that income bracket, so they do not have the Hamptons option. Also, the Hamptons are not safe from hurricanes either. I know your Hamptons suggestion was a joke, but when you answer a serious point with a joke, you haven't actually answered it at all.
I have to tell you, your shrill and petulant articles about New Orleans lately have actually had the opposite effect on me that I think you were looking for. Hurricane Katrina was a huge tragedy, handled horrribly by the Bush Administration, but it doesn't make New Orleans the center of the universe. There's an awful lot going on out here.
Also, Chicago might be nestled between a river and a lake, but it's not going to be getting a hurricane. You know that, right?
See Harry Shearer's Profile
Apparently you haven't been reading my shrillness and petulance too closely. Please read at least the executive summary of the ILIT report (from UC Berkeley), and you'll see the problem wasn't a hurricane, it wasn't a city below sea level, it was the shoddy design and construction of a "hurricane protection system" mandated by Congress and paid for by US taxpayers. In short, you paid to flood New Orleans. The same thing could happen to any city "protected" by Corps-designed and built structures, and that includes Los Angeles, if not Chicago. It certainly includes Sacramento, which doesn't get hurricanes, either.
Okay, I just read it. It says exactly what you said, and in even clearer terms than I expected.
I guess I'm still not crazy about the tone you use when you make these points - I think you're kind of belittling, and it appeals only to those who aleady agree with you. But reading this report, I can kind of get a better understanding of how frustrated you must be getting on this point. I can see that this report has been around a while. It's pretty shocking how something so easily summarized rarely makes a lot of time in the news, even with 24 hours of it a day.
My next response, though, is a sense of doubt that even if everyone were to read and integrate this report, and understand exactly what you're saying, that enough people could be convinced that the job actually would get done correctly this time. 99% wouldn't be good enough, and one thing all of us are probably sharing right now is a lack of confidence in the efficiency of our government.
Whatever the answer to this, I think part of it is going to be elevating the discussion. If it feels like a partisan screaming match, people are going to treat it that way. But you certainly tossed me the information, when I was just mouthing off and you didn't really have to, so I appreciate it. I'll try to take my own advice from now on.
Uniformed rubbish.
Uniformed??
What has Chicago done to deflect hurricanes like the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, http://www
If Chicago has figured out how to deflect hurricanes, they should share the technique with the rest of us.
Chicago and Toronto and the Great Lakes region rarely get hurricanes, but rarely is not never.
Great post, Harry. I don't imagine there will be too many people calling for the abandonment of NY, although there's sure to be a few.
I just got an email from Levees.org about the trip "Levees" founder, Sandy Rosenthal, along with Sen. Mary Landrieu, took to the Netherlands. It seems like Sen. Landrieu was pretty impressed by the way the Dutch approach levee construction, as opposed to our Army Corps of Engineers way of building them.
Ideas like making the levees multi-purpose, serving as parks as well as protection for example, sound just like what the doctor ordered for a "shovel ready" public works project.
Hopefully the ideas you've been advocating all along, such as rebuilding NO's levees using Dutch techniques, and providing an example of how it's done for future cities in peril, are finally being looked at by your local government reps.
I hope Sen. Landrieu is serious, and can convince the Obama administration to make good on it's committment and responsibility to build those flood protection systems correctly.
Do you hold out any hope that this might be a turning point, Harry?
How do you feel about Levees.org founder Sandy Rosenthal and Sen. Mary Landrieu's visit to Rotterdam, Harry? I completey agree with you on the levees issue, and I'm very interested in your take on this development.
Are things looking better, or was the trip just more political smoke and mirrors?
See Harry Shearer's Profile
This wasn't Sen. Landrieu's first trip there, she met with the Dutch shortly after the flooding. One Senator cannot reorient the federal government's approach to water (and wetlands) issues alone. She needs serious backing from the Executive Branch.
Please....
See Harry Shearer's Profile
Please yourself..
Here's the sort of foolish things the Corps did. I challenge you to document how "graft and corruption inherent in LA politics" had anything to do with it.
* They used the wrong design storm,
* They used the wrong elevation datum,
* They used the wrong safety factor,
* They ignored the results of their own tests,
* They used too little sheetpile,
* They used too much sand and too little clay.
The Corps, not locals, controls federal money allocated by Congress for levee construction. Their original estimate was 13 years and $80 million to complete the "system" (ahem). On August 29, 2005, 40 years later, they had spent almost $800 million and the "system" (ahem) was still unfinished.
It could use a good flushing out.
People who refuse to build barriers around coastal cities don't take the cities' protection seriously.
"Well, the same way people do each summer: everybody to the Hamptons."
Funny yes. But, um, I have to point out that the Hamptons are CLOSER to open water.
Post Katrina we New Orleanians we told Americans won't pay to protect our city and to abandon our homes and move to higher ground. I'm hoping the same standard applies to NewYorkers.
As a New Yorker, let me say I fault the previous administration for a) taking my tax dollars - for both levee work AND reconstruction, and yet b) NOT KEEPING THE NATION'S PLEDGE to you.
marignymitch,
I hope no other American has to experience what we New Orleanians went through. I hope this country learned something from our suffering.
Did somebody perhaps watch that ABC anime special "Earth:2100" this week that had NYC flooded and abandoned despite the barriers circa 2070 or so? I detect a note of shadenfreude in Mr. Shearer's commentary.
The Barriers wouldn't be Dutch dikes (lots of mention of the Dutch here) but more like the Thames barriers, also built to protect from surge flooding. But events may be overtaking all such plans, if you're a believer in worst case scenarios.
Just worst case federal contracting. ;-)
I saw the show - and at least it spared us the detail of animating hundreds of thousands of people trying to sand-bag the boroughs. Now THAT would have been funny.
Of course, Harry knows that what the 8+ million occupants of NYC will require completely eclipses New Orleans needs. In so many ways, the two cities are not comparable. But with all that's going on, it is a shame more efforts will not be made to save New Orleans. It is bound to flood again - it's a bowl below sea level, so it's unavoidable - so the better question should really hinge on changing the building standards, like what has been done over the decades in California. If New Orleans is rebuilt the way it was, then catastrophe will befall it again. The city cannot drain by itself, so no sea wall or levee system will withstand a direct hit by a large enough storm.
Less than half of the City is below sea level.
Most of it had never been flooded by a hurricane before August 29, 2005.
The "system" (ahem) built by the Corps didn't even withstand the design storm Congress mandated.
Doesn't the cost of something determine our purchases.
As soon as it becomes too expensive to insure a building in New York, won't companies move out anyway?
The problem would be catastrophic if there indeed was a tsunami on the east coast before the city moves.
Such events are probably the sort that ended some civilizations.
Like Scarlet O'Hara said, I'll worry about it tomorrow.
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