
After a $14B Upgrade, New Orleans’ Levees Are Sinking - selimthegrim
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/after-a-14-billion-upgrade-new-orleans-levees-are-sinking/
======
apo
> The agency’s projection that the system will “no longer provide [required]
> risk reduction as early as 2023” illustrates the rapidly changing conditions
> being experienced both globally as sea levels rise faster than expected and
> locally as erosion wipes out protective barrier islands and marshlands in
> southeastern Louisiana.

The article repeatedly refers to sea level rise without noting the
contribution of this factor relative to erosion. Equal? Highly tilted toward
sea level rise? Does erosion account for most of the problem, and if so how
does one separate this factor from seal level increase?

Neither the article nor the source document offer much insight:

[https://www.eenews.net/assets/2019/04/11/document_ew_01.pdf](https://www.eenews.net/assets/2019/04/11/document_ew_01.pdf)

Also from the article:

> “I think this work is necessary. We have to protect the population of New
> Orleans,” Vuxton said.

I'm not so sure, especially because the full costs of doing so appear to be so
uncertain.

How much money will people living in other states be willing to dump into a
cause with cost increases as far as the eye can see? It's not like sea level
rise is expected to suddenly stop dead in its tracks.

Ever-greater engineering efforts are one option. Mass evacuation of the most
vulnerable areas is another. There may be options in-between.

~~~
tropo
It's neither. Erosion and sea level changes are not at all the problem here.

The problem is that keeping the lowest point dry causes subsurface water to be
removed from the area. Also, that water doesn't get replenished. Things tend
to shrink when they dry out, and the land under New Orleans is no exception.
It's becoming like a shriveled up raisin or sponge.

The more you pump the place dry, the more the place sinks lower.

~~~
mirimir
Thanks. So is it basically the same dynamic that's causing subsidence in parts
of California's Central Valley?

~~~
tropo
Yes, exactly so.

------
apexalpha
As a Dutchman it's weird to see people discuss if the ROI on this investment
makes it worth it.

1/3 of our country is below sea-level or around 0m NAP. Levees and flood
protection are like fashion or politics: they're never finished, not really.

I'm glad we do this out ourselves in stead of the EU deciding whether they
want to subsidies a bunch of people living in a delta.

~~~
telesilla
As I understand it, the Netherlands pays for this maintenance themselves, and
not from EU funding? If it were relying on EU funds then I'd expect some kind
of European benefit analysis would be required.

~~~
apexalpha
We have a seperate branch of government called Water Boards[0]. They are some
of the oldest forms of government in the world dating back to 1255.[1]

The water boards raise their own taxes, and we elect officials for it in
separate elections.

Basically we don't want regular politicians to make budget trade offs between
long term safety and short term <whatever they campaign for>. I'm sure we're
all familiar with long term planning capabilities of regular politicians.

To answer your question: yes. We do fund this our selves. I was saying I'm
glad we do it this way in stead of begging the EU for funds.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_(Netherlands)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_\(Netherlands\))
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoogheemraadschap_van_Rijnland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoogheemraadschap_van_Rijnland)

~~~
selimthegrim
The Sewerage and Water Board in Orleans Parish is autonomous and exempt from
certain civil service rules for much the same reason (although the Mayor
appoints the director and can chair meetings). This is not to be confused with
the Orleans Parish Levee District, which rightly or wrongly was perceived as
having its fingers in too many pots after Katrina so had many of its
responsibilities taken over by regional agencies controlled by state
government (SLFPA-E and W)

------
chucksmash
It's just a headline, but this title makes me sigh.

For this thread, it's the title; for others today, it has been the "dose of
realism" cynical first comment. It's probably just bad luck, but it feels like
the first comment on every thread I've read today has been some variation of
"here are the clouds to this silver lining."

In this case, it's amazing that we give enough of a damn about each other to
allocate the money in the first place. How many people say caring for the less
fortunate should be a matter for charities but then don't donate a dime
themselves? How many in an honest moment would reply, "that's tough, move to
Houston." Yet some among us cares enough to try instead of just rolling their
eyes at building below sea level. I'm happy to take more trying and failing if
it's in exchange for "serves them right" hindsight or abject cynicism.

Proceeding to read the article, over a decade the Army Corps of Engineers
raised hundreds of miles of levees. If this were a thread about how the US
can't complete big projects any more, that alone would be a ray of sunshine.

There are real problems in the world, folks. There's no denying that. But when
the people with the ability and the inclination to be doers spend their time
wringing their hands or giving themselves over to "the constipation of
bittersweet philosophy" that's when there's really a problem.

Instead of worrying about the state of the world, spend an hour of your social
media/fuck around time a day/week/month doing something for someone else.
It'll do some actual good.

~~~
hueving
I would rather we spent tax dollars on fixable problems with much more social
good per dollar. I'm tired of subsidizing flood insurance for idiots that keep
building in areas that flood every 10 years. Subsidizing someone to have a
nice home on a Miami beech is not "actual good". L

~~~
perfmode
Take a hard look at the subsidies you are benefiting from. Be ready to give
them up if you’re going to take the holier than thou route.

~~~
stickfigure
Maybe the whole country would be better if everyone was willing to give up
these sorts of unsustainable subsidies?

We (society as a whole) have an economic mechanism for protecting against risk
- insurance. In places where insurance is too expensive or not available at
all, perhaps we should consider letting nature take over.

~~~
smallnamespace
One persons's 'unsustainable subsidy' is another person's 'showing compassion
for those who are less fortunate'. It's not like New Orleans is a particularly
affluent area either, and people have lived there for a very long time.

Take health insurance—one view could be that it forces people who are
healthier to subsidize those who are less healthy.

While some people are unhealthy due to factors outside of control, others are
unhealthy because they do unhealthy things. Would you consider the latter an
'unsustainable subsidy'?

~~~
pm90
Wait what? You're comparing healthcare, which is a necessity, to choosing to
live in a particular city. People that need healthcare don't have a choice,
people _do_ have a choice to relocate to a more sustainable city though.

I agree with you that NOLA isn't just the wealthy. But, that doesn't change
the fact that its not a sustainable city to live in.

~~~
smallnamespace
I'm reacting to the harsh, judgmental attitude towards people in NOLA and
using health care insurance to point out that the world is _complicated_.

Some people are certainly unhealthy because of choices they made (yet there's
still broad support for universal risk sharing), while some people in NOLA
certainly _aren 't_ there by choice.

The poverty rate there is about twice the US average, and something like 40%
of Americans don't have any substantial savings. Many people aren't able to
uproot themselves and move even if they wanted to without outside financial
assistance, at which point I'm sure someone will be asking 'why should we pay
to move people when they made a bad choice of where to live?', forgetting that
these people may have lived there for generations.

~~~
stickfigure
You can be poor anywhere in the US, it doesn't have to be in a flood zone.

The main argument for rebuilding these areas seems to be "these people have
lived there for generations". People move, and _catastrophic flooding_ seems
like a better reason than most.

------
dfee
> Emily Vuxton, policy director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana,
> an environmental group ... said repair costs could be “hundreds of millions”
> of dollars, with 75% paid by federal taxpayers. “I think this work is
> necessary. We have to protect the population of New Orleans,” Vuxton said.

Summed up as: “I think our unsustainable way of life should be subsidized by
the rest of the country at a 3:1 rate”.

I enjoy NOLA, but how are we going to deal with this at any kind of scale?

~~~
fwip
Hundreds of millions of dollars is barely a blip on the federal government's
budget.

Federal dollars subsidize all kinds of local and regional infrastructure.

~~~
dfee
The key to my comment was the last clause “at any kind of scale”.

If the community living there can’t support the costs of environmental
maintenance, at a certain point it becomes like a superfund site: people will
need to move to higher ground. In NOLA, in Houston, in Miami and beyond.

~~~
js2
What about the forest fires in the West and even places like NC? Overflowing
rivers throughout the US? Tornadoes from the mid-West to the mid-Atlantic?
Hurricanes? Where in the US is safe as climate change induces more frequent
and more extreme weather-related disasters?

~~~
sliken
Fighting the entire USA coastline against rising oceans is batshit crazy and
would bankrupt the country if we tried.

I always found it crazy that flood insurance would pay people to rebuild... on
a flood plain. I've read stories where people rebuild once a decade or so.
Seems clearly irrational and people living outside of floodplains should
subsidize those that don't.

Similarly if you are high risk of fires or earthquakes you should pay a
premium on insurance and that insurance should depend on reasonable
mitigations. A friend moved into high risk area and they required a clear area
near the house and a rooftop watering system to get the insurance that was
required to get the home loan.

So yes, the country should either pay for mitigation (levees, fire control,
earthquake resistant building costs etc) where it makes sense or ban
developments in high risk areas. Paying for people to live below ocean level
makes no sense.

~~~
inflatableDodo
>Paying for people to live below ocean level makes no sense.

Well, Amsterdam is currently 2 meters below sea level already and it will be
pretty interesting to see what happens to New Amsterdam, I mean, York. For one
thing, Manhatten is essentially floating already, they have to pump it out
continuously otherwise it sinks.

edit - ok, around sea level, it isn't at 2 meters below. I stupidly thought
google would be correct.

~~~
sliken
Amsterdam is an interesting example. Is Amsterdam asking anyone else to
subsidize them? From what I've read they made a conscious decision that the
pumping, levees and related was worth the cost of the extra acres of land they
provided.

New Orleans seems to be arguing that it only makes sense if 75% of it is paid
by someone else... forever.

~~~
inflatableDodo
>Is Amsterdam asking anyone else to subsidize them?

Depending on your point of view maybe half the world did, one way or another.
Though I really shouldn't point fingers, being British.

------
Johnny555
If the federal government would just do what North Carolina did and pass a law
prohibiting basing coastal policies on the latest scientific predictions of
how much the sea level will rise, these levees would last indefinitely.

[https://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-
science...](https://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-bans-latest-science-
rising-sea-level/story?id=16913782)

------
jingalings
As a non-American, can someone explain to me why the army was responsible for
this work? When does the normal tender/contractor process not occur? Is it a
scale or political decision?

~~~
onalark
It's complicated. The Army Corps of Engineers has had a civilian mandate to
support flood control prevention since 1917 [1]. Beyond that, they are also
involved in large public works projects such as the building of roads and
bridges, and Superfund clean-up sites. On top of this, they regularly receive
large pork barrel grants from Congress that can siphon money into a senator's
state or a congressperson's district. They do have a large contracting arm and
are actually pretty well-regarded for their comprehensive procurement and
management process for these large public works projects.

So it's scale, politics, and history/momentum at this point.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_civil_works_controversies)

~~~
sonnyblarney
A little pork aside, I wonder if they could be leveraged into a lot more.

Wherever infrastructure is done responsibly, it makes sense to invest it'd
seem ...

------
alexilliamson
Y'all questioning whether it's worth saving should stay in New Orleans for a
month. There is so much joy there, such a rich culture and long history that
we all stand to lose.

~~~
ChoGGi
With 14 billion dollars you could move a lot of that culture and history to
somewhere with less need for swimming lessons.

~~~
caiocaiocaio
Better stock up on picture postcards and souvenirs.

------
mukundmr
I saw a program on Netflix or Prime Video about how rising sea levels are
changing the lives of people living in a community in coastal California as
the tides flood the streets more and more. People are emotionally bonded to
their homes and are unable to decide to move away.

This is a new type of problem that is going to happen more and more globally.
Maldives is going to be among the first to sink. However, their government has
sobered up to that fact and are making plans. These type of events cannot be
handled at the local level and government leaders need to coax and guide
people to relocate.

Then again, we have deniers of climate change and rising sea levels...

~~~
jfoutz
Is it a new problem? The dustbowl hit, and some people were completely
unwilling to move, even though their way of life was unsustainable.

Change is inherently hard to deal with. I think one of the big roles of
government, and perhaps culture, is to temper the peaks and valleys. Some of
us are going to face hard hard choices. Some of those choices are very rapid,
like an earthquake. Some of those choices are very slow, like rising sea
levels.

We pretty much know that there will be earthquakes and rising sea levels. How
do we influence people to minimize that impact today?

I'm a fan of big cash payouts for flood insurance in exchange for losing the
land, ever increasing taxes on the sale of costal properties and converting
coastline to national park.

When folks homes are inevitably destroyed, make sure they have plenty of money
to move. Make it harder and harder to sell property on the risky coasts, and
finally when enough homes have been destroyed (50%? 95%? doesn't really matter
the higher the fraction, the more painful the change will be), take the land
and turn it into parks for everyone to use.

I'm not exactly opposed to the very wealthy hanging on to a cabin or a
mansion, but there needs to be a clear line that they are living on public
land. People can camp in their yard.

Maybe it's a stupid idea. We do have an opportunity to unwind the massive,
massive risk incurred by allowing, even encouraging, people to live in places
where they will fail miserably, eventually.

Right now, the risks are low. So the stakes should be low. I have no problems
with my tax dollars giving a small bonus for them to move away, and turn that
land into national park. In 50 years when they are well and truly fucked - who
cares? Maybe stop issuing flood insurance in 40 years. Plenty of time to
figure out a plan.

But where they are living is increasingly risky. Slowly, gradually make it
clear that we as a culture and government aren't going to subsidize that. It's
ok if they are super-rich, and can afford to rebuild every few years. but the
land will be nationalized eventually. And no one is going to subsidize
rebuilding efforts in the very long run.

~~~
Kim_Bruning
I think this is an unsustainable strategy in the long term. Many of America's
biggest most profitable cities are on the coasts. With rising sea levels many
will be at risk. Some (eg. New Orleans) already are.

On the other hand, investing a little money in terraforming never hurt anyone
and has a proven track record.

~~~
jfoutz
there are high and low density locations. The dutch have proven that very
little technology can protect land from the sea. I'm not opposed to special
cases, but the coastline is _huge_. I don't believe we can protect all of it
anymore.

Perhaps it was an option at one point, but we're past that point (in my humble
opinion. i'm not a climatologist or an economist, i'm likely full of shit).

i think it's too late to reduce carbon emissions, and that requires global buy
in. I think it's too late to build a wall along the whole coast. I think there
are obvious places for exceptions, but 99% of the coast is going to sink.
let's just own that and make the change as painless as possible.

~~~
Kim_Bruning
The Netherlands - being situated in a delta- once had a disproportionately
long natural coastline. One of the strategies employed is to shorten that
coastline dramatically by strategic placement of walls. Of course, in a
country like the USA, not even all of the coast requires additional
protection; only parts of it.

I do agree with you that certain cities (like Miami) might be difficult-to-
impossible to protect with current technology. Other cities (like New Orleans)
have well-known challenges with well known solutions, and there is absolutely
no reason why people couldn't protect them.

What is needed is for people to put together the political will, attitude and
organization required to survive and thrive in those kinds of conditions (with
a strong push towards prevention rather than recovery).

That too has already been done many times over the centuries; and there's no
reason to believe that Americans (or Louisianans) are in any way inferior to
other peoples.

Which is not to say I agree or disagree with you completely:

See also perhaps something like this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ6tbIJAuYk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ6tbIJAuYk)
( How cities can prevent flood disasters | A Dutch water expert weighs in )

------
zilliam
Harry Shearer has been pointing out the problem for years on his podcast "Le
Show", the movie "The Big Uneasy", and other sites. He calls out the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers for incompetence, making past and future disasters
inevitable:

"Those bad floodwalls, of course, are the ones that failed so catastrophically
in 2005. The Corps’ plan calls for keeping rainfall outflow in those canals at
a set level, above which, the agency believes, the walls might fail. Again.
The Corps should know. It designed and supervised the construction of those
floodwalls." [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ill-consider-it-
criminal_b_17...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ill-consider-it-
criminal_b_174920)

~~~
selimthegrim
A thousand times this. Sandy Rosenthal and levees.org have kept the drumbeat
going.

~~~
zilliam
Thanks for the info. I'll check 'em out.

Once, a long time ago, during an extended drought in the South East, I met the
Corps's commander general. I asked him if they could use their vast water
reservoirs to help alleviate the problem. He explained how this would
adversely affect their Byzantine obligations to the power grid, which
apparently had a higher priority.

I'm not informed or smart enough to criticize his position. But it did shift
my perspective on what counts as "a higher priority" for the Corps. And I
suspect this is the sort of thing that is at the core of their failures when
dealing with the levees.

Then again maybe $14 billion dollars just ain't enough.

------
gerbilly
Thre's a type of shoreline protection that is free and self maintaining.

It's called mangroves.

But people know better I guess, so we better keep throwing money at the
problem we created.

------
GeekyBear
The levees along the Mississippi are one of the big reasons why the land
around New Orleans is sinking.

>When Bienville founded New Orleans in 1718, the delta was more than 400 feet
deep at the river's mouth and extended northward on top of that Pleistocene
foundation to midway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. It continued growing
southward until the late 1800s, when construction of flood-control levees
prevented the river from resupplying the delta with new sediment.

And that's when subsidence became a serious problem.

[https://www.nola.com/coastal/2008/12/part_2_southeast_louisi...](https://www.nola.com/coastal/2008/12/part_2_southeast_louisiana_is.html)

------
ausbah
what should be done for cities like new orleans as sea levels continue to
rise? trying to save them feels like a losing, expensive battle - but "moving
a whole city" feels even harder

~~~
redorb
There is proper technology for places below sea level. We should learn from
the Netherlands - they're masters of reclaiming land from the ocean.

~~~
treis
Perhaps they can teach us how they drove off the hurricanes.

~~~
rasz
Its called stop building paper/wooden panel houses.

------
jayess
New Orleans is sinking at a rate of up to 2 inches per year:

[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6513](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6513)

~~~
selimthegrim
1) They certainly don’t blame lack of silt 2) There’s a new power plant going
up at Michoud (albeit a bad idea for other reasons)

------
doggydogs94
I do not see why the rest of the country needs to pay for this. I can
understand why Holland has to resort to this sort of civil engineering,
otherwise their country would cease to exist. For the US, keeping New Orleans
afloat is just an unnecessary expense.

~~~
mises
Yes, much of it is below sea level and stupidly expensive to quite literally
keep afloat. It's quite the expense, and it's probably best to move. It's not
the job of the feds to take money from one state to cover the expenses of
another.

------
subpixel
I was in Algiers Point recently and the river was about 6 feet higher than the
ground on the dry side of the earthen levee. All I could think was 'the people
who built this levee were not Dutch, this cannot be even remotely safe'.

~~~
selimthegrim
In a AP neighborhood Facebook group old timers say they’ve seen seepage since
the 70s and can’t report any significant raising

------
pcurve
It's not just the levees. The whole damn city is sinking according to article
from 2016.

[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6513](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6513)

"The highest rates of sinking were observed upriver along the Mississippi
River around major industrial areas in Norco, and in Michoud, with up to 2
inches (50 millimeters) a year of sinking."

------
rocqua
It is crazy they build the system to a 100 year standard. The Dutch delta
works are build to a 2000 4000 or 10000 year standard, depending on the area
being protected.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Stealing a line from others, but: That's the difference between the US and
Europe. In Europe, 100 miles is a long distance. In the US, 100 years is a
long time.

------
jellicle
Coastal cities will only be saved if lots and lots of money is spent on them.
New York City will almost certainly survive for the foreseeable future
(they've already got sea wall plans...). New Orleans, highly vulnerable and
lacking money, will not survive.

~~~
CuriouslyC
I think new orleans will in part survive as a bit of a disneyland city. I
can't imagine that there aren't some parts that are worth saving.

------
soulofmischief
This is New Orleans we're talking about. Everyone there knows the government
is corrupt from top to bottom. This isn't news to anyone inside the city.

Some of them can't leave for various reasons. The rest of them just won't. You
have to spend time there to understand it.

The question is do we want to save them.

~~~
selimthegrim
This is the Feds we’re talking about here, not our sainted Orleans Parish
Levee board

------
spyckie2
Hard facts are hard facts. If New Orleans is going to be under water in 4
years, they will have to do something about it.

Actually, we should probably treat New Orleans as a case study and learn from
it since due to rising sea levels, a lot of cities may have to evacuate in
10-20 years.

------
modzu
...and i don't wana swim (sorry, had to, im canadian)

------
exabrial
I know sarcasm never goes well on hn, but perhaps it's time we stop 'giving'
the government $14b dollars... ?

