Fill Dirt!

I've only got two words for the government of New Orleans, "fill dirt." I come from Seattle where most of the central part of the city, and all of the industrial area was once tide flats, flood plains where sea water invaded at high tide. North of there houses were once built on a hill. Almost 100 years ago now, using machines crude and labor intensive by today's standards, the city regraded itself. Vast acreage of tide flats were raised 12 to 30 feet The regrade was begun after a fire destroyed much of downtown Seattle. Regrading and filling continued for a couple of decades, and in fact many of the building downtown had been rebuilt on the original level before the grades were changed.. Tourists visiting Seattle today can take a tour of the "underground" where downtown old store fronts still exist two stories below street level.

In New Orleans, large sections of the city were destroyed by the recent floods after the levee broke during a storm. Almost all of the houses in these areas have to be torn down and rebuilt. Rebuilding them below sea level, paid for by taxes taken from hard working Americans, is really, really stupid. Along the Mississippi river there are always dredges working, loading barges with mud. The Corps of Engineers who runs the dredges is always looking for good places to dump the vast amounts of dirt dredged to keep navigation open. Fixing the current levees and rebuilding homes below sea level is a disaster waiting to happen. Everyone has always known that New Orleans would someday be destroyed by a flood. Living behind a levee is really stupid. Instead, responsible government of the city, state, and nation needs to aggressively fill the area between levees with FILL DIRT! Raise the level of the streets and houses to a few feet ABOVE sea level, as was done in Seattle 100 years ago.

So far, I have heard nobody in the media or from the government talking about a real solution in New Orleans. For all of them Bob has just two words, "FILL DIRT!"

Bob