
Louisiana, Sinking Fast, Prepares to Empty Out Its Coastal Plain - pulisse
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-22/louisiana-sinking-fast-prepares-to-empty-out-its-coastal-plain
======
_red
No mention of the cause: Diverting the Mississippi River. In the 20's / 30's
The Army Core of Engineers built a series of levees to redirect the
Mississippi to flow east of its natural course. Before then, the river would
seasonally shift back and forth (think of the end of a garden house spraying
left and right).

It naturally wanted to flow into the Atchafalaya Basin, instead all the silt
and sand that would've gone into building the wetlands is being diverted and
dumped directly into Gulf.

Look at a map sometime and you can clearly see it, the "toe" of Louisiana
(south of New Orleans) is growing out into the gulf, this is the trillions of
tons of silt and sand. Meanwhile the "heel" is shrinking, as the Gulf slowly
erodes it.

 _Note_ : This is not an anti ACoE diatribe. Its just that anytime this story
gets national coverage they fail to mention the cause, which is locally well
known and well understood.

~~~
cossatot
Geologist here: while overly managing of the Mississippi does make a
difference, that only controls where new sediment gets deposited. Even if new
sediment was deposited in sinking urban areas, it wouldn’t ameliorate the
problem of subsidence because it would be deposited on existing
infrastructure, burying it.

The real reason for the subsidence is that the sediment that makes up river
deltas slowly compacts under its own weight, expelling pore water and becoming
more dense. This is natural and unavoidable, although it might be marginally
enhanced by oil and gas extraction (it is a bigger problem with groundwater
withdrawal in other areas).

~~~
specialist
You’re the expert, but I thought subsidence (land sinking because of fossil
fuel extraction) and compaction were two different phenomemons. Plus erosion
(loss of coastline) and rising ocean, there’s multiple factors involved.

~~~
cossatot
They are related phenomena. Basically, sand and mud have pore space in between
the grains that is filled with fluids (water, oil or gas). When those fluids
are extracted, the rock contracts because the pore pressure decreases, causing
an increase in density (compaction) and a decrease in volume, which leads to
subsidence. Some of this is recoverable, and some of it isn't, because the
grains will find a more efficient packing arrangement.

You are completely correct in that there are many different factors involved
that are all causing problems; unfortunately they are all interrelated.

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Animats
This is a classic river delta problem. Look at the Nile delta. Just can't
build long-term on low ground.

Objections from the right can be answered with this:

 _Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice
is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the
streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not
fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these
words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who
built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds
blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash._

Matthew 7:24-27

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blinkingled
The article says federal government is funding ($40M so far) the program that
in part educates people on climate change and rising waters and people are
appreciating the honesty.

It also talks about oil and gas exploration as one of the reasons for coastal
erosion. Lastly they'll force people and their properties out but still allow
commercial development on the property(I guess more oily and gassy things?).

I am not sure what to make of it all but at least they're doing something
about it.

~~~
toomuchtodo
“Commercial development would still be allowed, but developers would need to
put up bonds to pay for those buildings’ eventual demolition.”

This is actually an extremely sound policy Louisiana has put forth for
handling a situation they have little control over. I’d expect it to become a
model for other coastal states who will be facing similar issues as sea level
rises (with exceptions for very wealthy communities, such as Miami Beach,
where they can fund hundreds of millions of dollars in preventative measures
for the moment).

~~~
bilbo0s
"...preventative measures for the moment..." doesn't sound particularly
reassuring when making long term real estate investment decisions. But I
suppose people who buy property in Miami Beach don't really care about losing
the 10 million they put into that condo or whatever. That's probably a
rounding error for those people. And I'm pretty sure there is no critical
infrastructure in Miami, so it wouldn't matter to the rest of us anyway.

Places like New Orleans, Norfolk, Portland, Houston, New York etc should
probably take priority. Those are the places where if they disappeared
tomorrow, people in other places in the US would definitely feel a pinch. Not
just the US either... if some of those ports disappeared, it would directly
affect the nutritional intake of children in other parts of the world.

~~~
scoggs
After what has happened in recent years with Katrina (even if it's a 100 year
storm in an area that gets them yearly), Houston (more familiar with
hurricanes but not as clueless as New Jersey) and Sandy (hitting a totally
unprepared area in the worst way we've had in my lifetime) I'm surprised there
isn't so much more emphasis on prep for future natural disasters. I,
obviously, worry that climate change denial and other science denial is
preventing the masses from believing that these types of storms won't become
more frequent or scarily the norm. I say that it can't hurt to better prepare
if not over prepare and I scratch my head wondering why it barely seems like
steps are being taken to do so.

I can only speak for my local area but New York City and New Jersey were not
prepared at all. I was in a pretty good physical location when the storm hit,
all things considered, but we were without power for 10 days. Luckily we had a
gas station within walking distance and they gave priority to people who
walked up with gas cans over cars in the mile long line idling around our
neighborhood.

There were a bunch of news stories about people stealing generators.
Necessities were sold out basically everywhere with little chance of
restocking. Things got hairy, for sure.

The amount of people who scoffed at warnings were most likely the ones
depending on a handy neighbor who was better prepared and better suited to
calming down and making the best of the bad situation. I think it was a much
needed, although terrible, wake up call for unprepared folks.

It was really nice to see so many people band together but the main takeaway I
got from it was that I've never seen my area so close to complete breakdown
and eventually mass chaos.

Why we aren't doing more to prevent that exact type of fallout from something
we _KNOW_ is coming? It feels like the definition of insanity to do otherwise.
After witnessing it first hand and having no idea what it would be like to
live in a hurricane or natural disaster-prone area, having to deal with it
yearly, I NEVER want to deal with that again. Since I really have no say in
what mother nature does, all I can do is say I NEVER want to be as unprepared
for another disaster as I was before.

I also realize it's not so simple to pack your entire life up and move to a
"more safe" location but there has to be some sort of graph where the cost of
paying out insurance, cleaning up the mess, restoring supply chains, and all
the other costs that come with a natural disaster equalizes with the cost of
preparing as best as possible.

~~~
clebio
Thank you. Living in a successful metro area as I do, I'm fairly sure that the
_entire area_ is one or two failures away from Mad Max-level hysteria. It
doesn't take much (a few days without potable water or gasoline, say). And
yet, we're balls-to-the-wall consumer capitalism all the way, baby. A bit of
planning would make months of difference.

~~~
scoggs
Sorry for the delayed response but:

>the _entire area_ is one or two failures away from Mad Max-level hysteria

That hits the nail on the head about what I was trying to say. Thank you for
saying it much more succinctly!

New Jersey got hit in striations of severity so while 1/2 of the state was in
maximum emergency mode the other 1/2 of the populous wasn't affected what so
ever. They were awake Monday morning competing with all of the folks
struggling to survive except they were on their normal routine of heading to
work. They acted as if everyone else experiencing trouble were inconveniencing
them, also. It was really shocking to see the cognitive dissonance of that
group of people during Sandy.

That striation of severity was odd although not impossible to conceive. It
caused a sort of suspicion that things really couldn't have been that bad for
"neighbors" considering the unaffected people had no damage, no flooding, no
power outages, and no felled trees in their yard or local roadways.

My area, on the other hand, was an utter disaster. I was living a bit away
from my parents but my first thought after securing my home was to head to my
parents house and ensure they were warm and taken care of. There are about 15
different routes I could have taken to get from my area to my parents area.
Two were main roads and the other ~13 were back roads and other arteries that
cut through the main routes I'd usually take. It took me 9 tries to find a
route that wasn't completely blocked off by fallen trees. Once I finally did
find a route to make it to my destination it was, of course, the steepest
route. The entire roadway was covered in a thin layer of black ice and my poor
front wheel drive Honda Civic was barely gripping that ice to get me to the
top.

Of course it was my luck to get behind a big SUV. That SUV had no trouble
climbing the hill but the real problem was that SUV's decision to brake -- for
no reason at all -- before the top of the hill. The slow down in momentum for
me killed my climb and I wound up having to pull off onto the shoulder. I
slammed on my horn out of fury but I doubt the SUV driver realized what
trouble they caused me. It took me 15 minutes of dropping my automatic car
into "1st gear" and slamming the gas pedal until my hot tires melted some
black ice which gained me the traction needed to gain my momentum back. I was
all but 75 feet from the top of a .75 mile hill. It was really shitty, for
lack of better words.

That scenario was playing out all over New Jersey since 1/2 of everybody was
locked indoors and the other 1/2 was "free" to act normally. Quite an odd
scenario. I hope I never have to live through another storm so wicked with a
fallout so near Max Max-level, as you said.

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DocFeind
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aJZ9Ul...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aJZ9UlL1pvIJ:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-22/louisiana-
sinking-fast-prepares-to-empty-out-its-coastal-
plain+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

Solution to being assumed a ddos attack agent

------
inthewoods
Waiting for this to hit other costal areas. Can’t imagine how much it would
cost to empty out Cape Cod if required

~~~
junkscience2017
one thing is for sure, no one is going to relocate at a loss if they can wait
a year and then pass the bill to the government

the dangling incentive will artificially sustain coastal developments

frankly if we are going to bail out home owners on coasts, why not home owners
near fire risk areas?

~~~
hinkley
We send people to risk their lives to save homes in fire risk areas. That’s
already a pretty profound bailout on the part of the government and her
citizens.

------
MechEStudent
Says "terms of service violation", no article. Is there a second source?

~~~
DocFeind
same happened to me

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igravious
Probably a very dumb question but here goes … why do the people have to move,
can dykes/floodbanks/levees not be built?

~~~
maxerickson
The buyout for one family in the article is about $25,000 per person and the
article talks about ~60,000 people.

That family is probably on the lower end of the buyout cost, but it puts the
total cost of a buyout in the range of $1 billion or $10 billion.

So then the question is how much flood protection can be built for a similar
cost.

I think there's also issues with flood controls for one area making flood
control in other areas more difficult. So drawing a line can help with that.

~~~
igravious
But isn't the land valuable (or potentially valuable) and won't its loss be
irrecoverable?

Of course they are allowing commercial developments to continue, check this
out:

Louisiana – Other Oil & Gas Infrastructure:
[http://www.dnr.louisiana.gov/assets/images/oilgas/refineries...](http://www.dnr.louisiana.gov/assets/images/oilgas/refineries/LA_Other_Facilities_rev031808.jpg)

Louisiana – pipelines and platforms:
[http://www.dnr.louisiana.gov/assets/images/oilgas/refineries...](http://www.dnr.louisiana.gov/assets/images/oilgas/refineries/LA_pipelines_2008.jpg)

~~~
clebio
For some definition of "value". The reality seems to be that much of Louisiana
is terribly polluted. People are stuck in homes which have lost much of their
value due to both encroaching industrial plants and (thus) poor environmental
quality. I just finished reading Strangers in Their Own Land, and the author
goes into a lot of detail about this.

I had never heard of salt dome storage until reading this book. Scary stuff.

[https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-
land](https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land)

