Quote:
Originally Posted by Holladay
I kind of figured that was the case. It is hard to raise a 150 yro historical building. I am assuming most of the flood pictures are either in historical districts or poor areas of the city.
I am glad to hear that they making new structures raised. Of course we won't see those pictures because there is no damage and doesn't "make" the photo op.
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Yeah, nobody writes stories about houses that aren’t on fire.
The one thing I will tell you though is that (similar to all the developing going on here in Houston), with all the development of levees and flood walls, that water has to go somewhere, and since we are protecting areas that were constantly being flooded the water is going to new areas. So you have areas now flooding that hadn’t flooded before. It’s a real mess.
The people who originally settled New Orleans settled in the French Quarter because that was the only place that wasn’t swamp area (New Orleans is predominantly built on swamp). Look up any map of New Orleans pre 1800, and put it up next to a map of places that flooded during Katrina, and you will see that only the areas developed post 1800 are the ones that flooded. It’s pretty wild.
The issue now is what to do about electricity. I’m not sure what you have in your area (monopoly or open competition), but here in New Orleans the Company (Entergy) is a regulated monopoly, and their transformers went down, so now the city has to a) rebuild or fix transformers and b) price out the value of putting lines underground (it’s not cheap). So those costs will roll downhill, and if citizens wants sustainable power (outside of AE) they will have to pony up the cash. We have powerlines underground in the French Quarter, but elsewhere it’s too expensive to justify the cost.