"cjcampbell" writes:
[snip]
Speaking of which, Seattle once was below sea level like New Orleans.
Instead of levees to keep water out, though, early Seattlites just used
boats to navigate streets when the tide was in. After the great Seattle
Fire, though, the rubble and material from some neighboring hills was
used to raise the level of the whole city. I wonder how much of the
rubble from Katrina could be used for that in New Orleans, assuming it
is not all too contaminated to be useful? Biloxi, Slidell, and several
smaller towns have an awful lot of garbage they are going to have to
find a home for.

I was thinking about the recovery/restoration effort for
New Orleans and realized that using NO as a landfill site
would solve several problems at once.

Trying to restore NO to the way it was before Katrina
makes no sense and expending copious resources to try to
"improve" things will only move the same basic problems
to the next time. If you build a city in a hole in the
ocean, you have to expect major problems from time to
time. Building bans are in place in other parts of the
Mississippi River floodplain...