Just Do It: My blog calendar indicated this morning that there are no entries yet for November, and we are three days into the month. If we can’t depend on the daily and verbose nature of VatulBlog, what can we count on? The truth of the matter is that there is so much going on in New Orleans right now and it has come time to DO rather than TALK. Activity in New Orleans is at an all-time high since the hurricane hit two months ago – residents and evacuees have reached Acceptance, at least when it comes to making decisions on businesses and homes. They are going about the gruesome matter and all it entails – dealing with building contractors, roofers, insurance adjusters, surveyors, realtors, trash removal, Entergy, water, appliance stores, moving trucks, dump trucks, and the horribly time-consuming yet unavoidable chore of remaining on hold on the telephone for all of these services.
This is how a city rebuilds, not in a loud flurry of everyday activity, but in punctuated equilibrium, fits and starts followed by long lulls of interminably slow progress. Moving forward will not and cannot happen at the same pace for everyone in New Orleans given each individual’s personal situation and that different parts of the city were impacted in different ways. Also keep in mind that New Orleans is not like Grand Forks, ND, for instance, in that our socioeconomic demographics are all over the place. New Orleanians will rebuild (or not) how they can.
This isn’t to say that today’s post is devoid of interesting discoveries. Read on …
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Flawed Walls Led To Flooding: Aha! So, the soil underlying the levees and floodwalls wasn’t the only culprit. In a previous post, I begged to differ with the results of a study that pinpointed the soil under key water barriers as the cause of levee failure. Given that almost all of Orleans Parish is underlain by (surprise, surprise) swamp peat and clay, why did the levees fail where they did?
Large portions of western New Orleans would have remained dry but for poorly-conceived and poorly-built levees. Four teams of engineers independently concluded and testified as such before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, as per an NPR report. The research by each of these engineering teams yields a two-fold problem:
1) Pockets Of Ancient Swamp – The construction of levees over pockets of “unsteady ground,” e.g. a portion of the 17th Street Canal where stumps of cypress trees, indicative of ancient marsh, were discovered. Again, I don’t believe it’s very easy to find soil devoid of organics and clays in most of New Orleans, but if people knew the real risks of living where they did, the loss may not have been as widespread. While humans end up living where they wish, full disclosure is only ethical.
2) Levee Pilings – Water did not top levees, but went under them. Why? It wasn’t the soil. One study shows that pilings went down to only 11 feet at the London Ave. Canal where it failed, while in an unbreached area, similar pilings went down to 26 feet. At this time, it is unclear whether specifications were inadequate (“different documents give different specifications for how deep the wall of the 17th St. Canal was to go”) or it was “human malfeasance” in the form of dishonest contractors cutting corners.
This brings up yet another question: Is a difference in piling height the sole reason for failure? The Army Corps of Engineers, who built some and contracted out others of New Orleans’ levees and floodwalls, will spend the next 8 months exploring scenarios and will “rationally test various hypotheses” for levee failure. The results will come out in July, right on time for the next round of hurricanes.
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Real Estate Transactions: A point of clarification – The fact that not a single real-estate transaction has taken place in Orleans Parish in the last two months does not indicate the lack of interest and/or activity. Titles have to be researched before such a transaction is considered legal and this service will resume very soon. Until then, verbal and written agreements abound. As a resident informed me recently, the Lakeview Civic Improvement Association is very strong and actively interested in rejuvenating their neighborhood. Even if a few individual homeowners lack the requisite motivation, the association on a whole prefers redevelopment.
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The Wisdom Of Our Ancestors: Today’s Times Picayune contains a population map of New Orleans in 1878. If the map of flooded New Orleans ca. 2005 is emblazoned inside your head as it is in mine, you will notice that very little of today’s flooded zones was inhabited back then.
“… the storm served up an unwelcome reminder that the city“s expansive interior, pumped dry in the first few decades of the 20th century, is mostly reclaimed swampland. The killer storm essentially re-created what was here when Bienville founded the city in 1718.”
I urge readers to look at the comparison maps in the article. Now, does anyone wish to argue with me over over the wholesale blame of “pockets of swamp material” under Lakeview and Ninth Ward levees?
Are we getting smarter as we move into tomorrow? Maybe our intelligence should not be called into question as much as being cocky, running roughshod over nature and failing to synthesize the lessons of science and history to construct a better future. Brilliant fools are we.
The subtext of today’s post: Do not build on low-lying swampland. Are you taking notes, kids?
