New Orleans - The Lessons of Atlantis Begin to Sink In - 2011

 

 

New Orleans - The Lessons of Atlantis Begin to Sink In

In the early 1980s, then President Ronald Reagan endorsed the idea of creating an International Space Station (ISS). At the time, it appeared to be a make-work project designed to keep the aerospace industry alive during a period of relative peace. As early as 1969, during the Apollo Program, Americans had walked on the Moon, 238,000 miles from Earth. With a planned orbit of only 173 miles above the Earth, the ISS had no such lofty goals. Instead, the solar-powered pressure-vessels of the ISS offered only slow and steady progress toward long-term human habitation in space. Commensurate with its low-key goals, was a bargain price, estimated at less than $10 billion. A lot has changed over the past thirty years. At a current running cost of $150+ billion, the ISS is now the most expensive human engineered structure, either on or above the Earth.

 

As it passes overhead 15.7 times each day, most Americans think little about the ISS mission or its cost. If they knew more about it, many would say, “Who needs an ISS?” All these years later, I now believe that the ISS program is worth its cost. Even though its useful life may be less than ten more years, the ISS serves us as a microcosmic reflection of Earth. There, on a human-created, Earth-orbiting satellite, the ever-rotating crew conducts experiments in biology, chemistry, human biology, astronomy and meteorology.

 

Back on Earth, we find the Mississippi River available for similar, if unplanned experiments. Looking 135 nautical miles upriver from New Orleans, Louisiana, we find the Old River Control Structure. Only the static backpressure of its levees and control gates maintains a precarious balance of life downstream in New Orleans. In allegorical fashion, joints and fasteners connect the various ISS modules. Stressed by the unrelenting vacuum of space, gas leaks on the ISS are potentially deadly to the crew. While the ISS relies on constant atmospheric pressure within its structure, the Old River Control Structure relies on gravity and friction to hold back the kinetic energy of the Mississippi River. Both structures experience unrelenting energy, while entropy assures their ultimate demise and destruction.

 

As Katrina approached the Louisiana coast in August 2005, the hasty evacuation of New Orleans was a debacle. At the time, each city, state and federal official assumed that someone else had called for buses to provide evacuation of a poor and vulnerable population. The public evacuation plan turned out to be a myth. Hundreds of unused school buses later sat ruined by the flood. As affluent and able citizens evacuated structures to the North, a monumental traffic jam ensued. If each bus had carried a full load that day, more people could have evacuated in far less time. As it was, no one remained to assist the most vulnerable and helpless residents. Leaving the sickest in their beds, a hospital physician may have ordered lethal injections for forty-five non-ambulatory patients, prior to abandonment of the hospital.

 

One major difference between the International Space Station and New Orleans is that NASA and the ISS crew cannot afford to employ mythical thinking. If they ran the ISS in similar fashion to pre-Katrina New Orleans, something as simple as a coolant-pump failure could result in loss of both the crew and their quarters. Effective engineering, planning and resupply are essential to maintaining human habitation in space. New Orleans, on the other hand, currently sits in a dry bowl, free from flooding. Since simulations do not work well on a grand scale, we cannot properly assess the efficacy of defenses at New Orleans. Instead, we must wait for the next great storm in order to find out. By then it might be too late for both New Orleans and the federal deficit. Yet today, we maintain the fiction that New Orleans can continue its long-term defiance of the laws of Nature.

 

NASA provided the ISS with spare coolant pumps beyond the number of anticipated failures. Will their planning be sufficient? I believe that the ISS has a better chance of surviving intact for the next ten years than does the City of New Orleans. If New Orleans, Louisiana were to flood again, the cost to revive the city would easily surpass the estimated $160 billion lifetime cost of the ISS.

 

This is not a personal prediction of death, doom and despair, but floods, fire an famine are not out of the question. Humankind has the ability use both its collective memory and its collective consciousness. If we allow a shift in consciousness, newly awakened humankind could change the future of Planet Earth. With both the profit motive and politics at play, it is hard to determine if our current plans are sound. If each stakeholder could reflect upon our overall relationship with the laws of Nature, they might see themselves as part of a larger whole. With a touch of gnost, we can understand Nature and help guide humanity’s relationship with Gaia, our Mother Earth.

 

Centuries ago, at a bend in the Mississippi River, settlers created New Orleans. From that time, forward, humans continued to build structures there with little regard for attendant environmental consequences. As hard and fast as many stakeholder positions seem to be, Nature can lift those stakes and carry them away like driftwood, to the Gulf of Mexico. Since Earth is the only permanent habitat known to humans, it behooves us to acknowledge and accommodate the laws of Nature as supreme to any laws of our own making.

 

Taking the laws of Nature into account, we should study alternate weather and flood scenarios for New Orleans and its environs. Without regard for corporate profits, property values or political gain, independent studies and their recommendations should again see the light of day. Once we understand the likelihood of various weather events, we can then proceed with plans to protect only that which is reasonable to protect. If the hubris and ignorance of our ancestors continues in New Orleans, we risk human-aided devastation and destruction unlike any seen on Earth since the last days of Atlantis.

 

 

 

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By James McGillis at 11:38 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

Sea of Atlantis - The Future City of New Orleans - 2011

 

 

Sea of Atlantis

The Future City of New Orleans 

A characteristic lesson from the fall of Atlantis is that humans can manipulate matter. Furthermore, humans can appear to bend Nature to their needs. However, neither the Atlantean culture nor our own can control the laws of Nature.

 

To demonstrate that human control of nature is an illusion, look no further than the perceived permanence of the Old River Control Structure, 135 miles upriver from New Orleans, Louisiana. Atlantean elite labels and slogans are often so audacious, that their unrealistic goals sound heroic or mythical. Imagine the audacity of using poles stuck in the mud to control the largest river in North America. In anticipation that their designated mounds of earth would stay where expected, the Army Core of Engineers (COE) named it a “river control structure”. Prefacing that moniker, should be the word “temporary”.

 

After the experiences of Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 flooding in Pakistan, it is reasonable to believe that New Orleans might yet experience simultaneous floods of each type. The scenario goes like this:

 

• When a Katrinaesque hurricane makes landfall at New Orleans, resultant storm surge and overflow from Lake Pontchartrain floods much of the city.
• As the storm travels north, it stalls and dumps unprecedented rainfall on the Middle and Upper Mississippi River Valleys.
• When the resulting flood crests at the Old River Control Structure, catastrophic failure ensues, sending one uncontrolled torrent down the Mississippi River Channel and another down the Atchafalaya River.
• As an unprecedented flow reaches New Orleans, the city floods yet again, only this time there are few if any levees still standing to protect it.

 

In the aftermath of a simultaneous Katrina-style storm surge and a Pakistan-style river flood, New Orleans could well be unsalvageable. After such a super flood, the Mississippi River Channel through New Orleans would become a silt-clogged riverbed, rather than the deep channel of today. Unless stakeholders plan now for decreased reliance on river and port traffic for economic vitality, New Orleans faces the possibility of a flood-induced economic collapse.

 

Have we learned our Atlantean lessons? For the most part, the answer is, “No”. We prefer the nostalgia of the French Quarter; a streetcar named Desire and a wonderful cultural history to prudent post-Atlantean and post-Katrina planning. Mythical thinking will not end global warming, higher sea levels or stronger storm surges. Regardless of who or what caused global warming, reputable scientists agree that future weather trends include higher average surface temperatures. From Venice, Italy to Bangladesh, to the Seychelles Islands, the accelerated pace of coastal and island flooding worldwide shows no signs of abating. If the Greenland ice shelf melts away, we may not be discussing the prospects of saving any of those places, as they may already be slipping beneath the waves.

 

Since Katrina in 2005, the federal government has spent an estimated $125 billion in and around New Orleans. As a citizenry, we should now determine how much we plan to spend on any flood prone region. More important, what we wish to accomplish with those funds? As long as the option for rebuilding a full-sized, old style New Orleans is on the table, the cost may well be too high to bear. Currently, few of the local, state or federal stakeholders are willing to downscale their ambitions. Instead, they attempt to resolve the issue with public proclamations, featuring new and soon to be inadequate levees. Dubbed “The Great Wall”, one new storm surge barrier reminds me of the original Great Wall of China. Astronauts report that the original Great Wall is the only manmade structure easily visible from the International Space Station. History showed that those massive bulwarks did little to prevent nomadic groups from entering the Chinese Empire. Likewise, the new Great Walls will not fully protect New Orleans from category-five hurricanes.

 

Extensive dredging and reworking of the watercourses throughout the Mississippi River Delta have made defending New Orleans more difficult. After it snakes through the city, the Mississippi River deposits almost none of its silt in shallow water. Instead, the river rushes past New Orleans on a fast trip to the Gulf of Mexico. Bypassing any remaining wetlands, the silt plunges deep into the Gulf. On its descent to the seafloor, the silt releases a toxic mixture of fertilizer and chemicals. Suspended in the water column above the silt beds is a vast hypoxic dead zone. Not even bacteria can survive in its oxygen-depleted environment.

 

In June 2010, the federal government dedicated over $14 billion to rehabilitation of Louisiana wetlands. At the same time, rumor had it that President Obama supported a redirection of the Mississippi River as a mechanism for providing silt to those wetlands. To accomplish that goal, he might order the COE to flip-flop the water delivery ratios at the Old River Control Structure. New Orleans would henceforth receive huge amounts of silt, but far less water. Concurrently, the Atchafalaya River would take its place as the terminal distributary of the Mississippi River. Upon settling downstream from New Orleans, the newly redirected silt would naturally rebuild fisheries, bayous and marshes. In turn, the larger wetlands would form a natural storm surge barrier for the city.

 

Only the Mississippi River can discharge the silt volume required to rebuild the wetlands. If humans or Nature can slow the velocity of the river, soils from more than a dozen states might begin to precipitate out near New Orleans. Only then would the river become a useful tool for rebuilding the wetlands of the Mississippi River Delta. If ever there was a good argument for letting Nature take her course, this may be it.

 

As a cultural landmark and a great historical city, I love New Orleans. Sadly, it has now become a poster child for Atlantean mythical thinking. As a society, we must be willing to create an infrastructure and investment strategy for New Orleans that has finite goals and limits. What budgetary amount we agree upon is less important than being realistic about our attempts to control Nature. Once realism returns to the process, scientists and engineers can combine efforts and create appropriate defenses for core locations and critical functions throughout the region.

 

Although almost no one wants to hear it, New Orleans should utilize its lowest lying and most vulnerable areas as storm surge basins. After relocating low-income residents to safer areas, the city could afford to sacrifice low-lying areas to flooding, while protecting and preserving a more defensible city core. Ultimately, it will be less expensive to provide a Brad Pitt House in a new neighborhood for each low-lying family than to leave entire neighborhoods in peril. Once the lowest lying residents move out, those areas could become parks or urban farms. With no fulltime residents in harm’s way, the cost of future flood protection and reconstruction would be far lower.

 

Any legitimate plan for New Orleans must recognize the near inevitability of storm surge and river related flooding. Even with a pragmatic plan, rather than a political one, there is no guarantee that a great flood will not inundate New Orleans. The strategy that I suggest would allow a smaller city to survive longer than the current “full city” strategy, while saving both money and the environment in the process.

 

 Read Chapter One

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By James McGillis at 01:43 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

New Orleans - The New Atlantis - 2011

 

New Orleans - The New Atlantis

In America, the profit motive, mythical thinking and political imperative unite to defeat many of our best plans. Realistic assessment of risks and costs associated with our critical programs rarely engender serious discussion in society. The bigger the issue, such as universal healthcare or financial industry reform, the more likely that politics and the profit motive will combine to obscure the underlying issues at stake. In our current political climate, many politicians continue to propose projects and policies that defy the laws of Nature. The liberal politician might make popular promises to fix everything that is wrong. Conservatives, as a group, might promise to obstruct legitimate change. Meanwhile, accumulation of power and attainment of elite status are the real goals of most politicians.

 

Likewise, the profit motive can blind unprincipled business people. Why else would we see a high-pressure natural gas transmission line snaking through the residential neighborhoods of San Bruno, California? In a cost saving measure, the pipeline’s owner skipped a previously funded retrofit of a nearby line. Is it too much to ask that retrofits of high-pressure gas lines running through residential neighborhoods include automatic or remote control shut-off valves? When it ruptured, the thirty-inch San Bruno pipeline ejected explosive natural gas into a peaceful residential neighborhood.

 

As with the Deepwater Horizon Rig, once the gas ignited, a massive explosion was only the start of the catastrophe. Built without automatic shutoff valves, the San Bruno line took almost two hours to close. By that time, the area adjacent to the rupture had burned so hot that four missing persons appear to have vaporized, without a trace. The heat generated was so intense that more than a day later, rescue workers could not enter several former residences.

 

As if struck by mass amnesia, operators, regulators and legislators responsible for the San Bruno gas transmission line ignored the safety needs of thousands of residents. Displaying mythical thinking in their “It cannot happen here” attitude, ignorance and the profit motive combined to allow another human-caused catastrophe. Owner and operator of the gas line, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has only $1 billion in its insurance fund. If recent human-created disaster payouts are any indicator, PG&E’s losses in upcoming litigation could bankrupt the company. For lack of foresight, PG&E now faces downward price pressure on its stock value. Inevitably, the ratepayers whose community went up in flames will pay the price to fix the problem.

 

Five years after Hurricane Katrina battered and flooded New Orleans, Louisiana, conflicting plans, pledges and promises to rebuild the city and wetlands abound. When mythical thinking emanates from so many stakeholders at once, the result is an onslaught of Atlantean elite thinking, right here in the United States.

 

Only 180 of New Orleans’s 350 square miles consist of dry land. Originally built on a knoll surrounded by wetlands and the Mississippi River, decades of groundwater pumping left most of New Orleans below sea level. With a 10,000-mile long hodgepodge of channels, dikes, levees and pumping stations, it is amazing that New Orleans survived intact until Hurricane Katrina flooded it in 2005.

 

Post-Katrina, independent environmental and engineering studies concluded that a pre-Katrina size New Orleans could not stand forever against rising oceans and hurricane-driven storms. In addition to storm surge, the prospect of simultaneous flooding from the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain add to the city’s woes. Despite the thoroughness of the studies, self-serving politicians, leading a complicit citizenry, ignored those uncomfortable findings. As we learned from the Lost City of Atlantis, perceived human needs, political fealty and an incipient profit motive can later manifest as both human and ecological catastrophes.

 

Over five years after Katrina, stakeholders ignore the imperative to create a smaller New Orleans, opting for a more costly “full city” approach. Government agencies have bought few, if any of the most vulnerable parcels as buffers to future flooding. Today, costly and incomplete levees only partially protect the city from category five hurricanes. Almost all of us wish to save New Orleans, yet few Americans are aware of its perilous geographic perch. No one knows how much money it might take to fully protect the larger city, let alone rebuild after another flood.

 

In August 2010, the country of Pakistan received unprecedented rainfall in its highlands. A month later, at the peak of flooding, over 62,000 square miles of low-lying countryside were impassible. That inundated area could hold 177 cities the size of New Orleans. Only extreme optimists see Pakistan returning to its pre-flood level of economic activity within five years. With huge losses of natural habitat and farmland, skeptics say that Pakistan may never fully recover. In both size and destructive power, the recent flood in Pakistan represented a quantum leap of destruction in an already troubled economy.

 

Likewise, until Katrina, New Orleans residents had never seen floodwater cover ninety percent of their city’s geographical boundaries. At the time of the city’s founding, vast wetlands defended New Orleans from hurricane-related storm surges. Potential flooding from the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain were then unknown. Of paramount importance to early settlers was the ability to defend the city against other humans. Using the river like a moat, early settlers built a town deemed defensible against marauders. To this day, the Mississippi River surrounds a portion of New Orleans on three sides. Now the most likely potential marauder is the river itself.

 

Since 1963, the U.S. Army Core of Engineers (COE) has used the Old River Control Structure to control the flow of the Mississippi River as it approaches the delta. Located 335 nautical miles upriver from the Mississippi River's Gulf outfall, the Old River Control Structure employs floodgates to fix the ratio of water flowing down the Mississippi River and to the Atchafalaya River at 70/30. After an unsuccessful nineteenth century attempt to straighten the flow of the Mississippi River, the Old River's steeper gradient to the sea favored stronger flow into the Atchafalaya River. Over time, siltation blocked more of the Mississippi River flow, resulting in a predicted permanent capture of the Mississippi River by the Atchafalaya River. The “old river” that the Old River Control Structure attempts to thwart is the cutoff to the Atchafalaya River.

 

Siltation, dredging and a lesser gradient to the sea combine to threaten ocean and river navigation in and around New Orleans. At the Old River Control Structure, the COE diverts seventy percent of available Mississippi River water down through New Orleans. Without the combined effects of higher water levels and increased flushing action, New Orleans would no longer remain viable as a deep water port. Without the constant scouring of the Mississippi River Channel at New Orleans, ships entering port might run aground on sandbars or snags, as did the steamboats of olden days.

 

If for any reason, or no reason, the Mississippi River were to retake its natural course, New Orleans would soon become a backwater. A permanent new channel would cut its way through the Atchafalaya Swamp. By permanent, I mean that eons might pass before siltation along Atchafalaya River would block its flow and thus send the main flow back again through New Orleans. Upon losing its unnatural share of river flow, New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana would lose their status as deep water ports.

 

What is there to prevent this natural change from happening? Only the Old River Control Structure, built on poles sunk deep into primordial river mud, stands against the flow. Having outlived its expected service life, some sections of the Old River Control Structure vibrate at ever-higher frequencies. If river-induced vibration were to rise, agitation of the support poles might liquefy the underlying mud. Once loosened from its moorings, gravity might not hold the structure firmly in place. Relentlessly, the river seeks its natural course. At a time unknown, the weakness of structure and the power of Nature shall combine to destroy both the floodgates and levees.

 

Read Chapter One

Read Chapter Three

Read Chapter Four

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By James McGillis at 05:40 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link