Open letter to Steve Chapman

Peris Brodsky alerted me to this Steve Chapman 'editorial' in the Chicago Tribune today. 

The Democratic presidential candidates are fluent in the language of politics and policy, which means they can expound at length on what the government can do for you. It also means they have great difficulty saying the word "no."

When they assembled in New Orleans this week to note the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, they were in an affirmative mood. Yes, they told locals, your problems are the fault of President Bush's disgraceful inaction, and yes, we should spend whatever it takes to restore the city to what it used to be.

But there are worse policies than inaction. Before the nation undertakes the extravagant project of rebuilding New Orleans and securing it from the elements, we might ask if there isn't a better option, not only for the nation, but also for the flood victims.

The Democratic debate over the future of New Orleans somehow passed over the instructive example of Valmeyer, Ill. In 1993, the town of 900 was swamped, not for the first time, by a rain-swollen Mississippi River. It hasn't been swamped since, because it's not there anymore. Rather than remain in a vulnerable spot, the residents voted to relocate their village to a bluff 400 feet above the river. But no one wants to suggest similar discretion in Louisiana.

New Orleans, like Valmeyer, had long been a natural disaster waiting to happen. Most of the city lies below sea level, surrounded by water on three sides, and it's sinking. On top of that, it's steadily grown more exposed to hurricanes, thanks to the loss of coastal wetlands that once served as a buffer. It's a bathtub waiting to be filled.

As one scientist said after Katrina, "A city should never have been built there in the first place." Now that we have a chance to correct the mistake, why repeat it? Theoretically, it's possible to keep New Orleans dry. All you have to do is surround it with levees designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane. That's what Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton urges.

As she said in New Orleans, "Other countries have figured out how to protect their low-lying cities. Japan has done it. Europe has done it." Shirking that obligation, she insisted, reflects a "fatalistic attitude" that suggests "we can't do the things that great countries should do."

You may not have thought of the Netherlands as a great country until now. But what makes sense on the Zuider Zee doesn't necessarily make sense here. One-fourth of the Netherlands is downhill from the ocean, which means that if the Dutch fail to protect it, they don't have a lot of other places to go. In the United States, by contrast, there are vast open spaces for settlement, most of them beyond the reach of hurricanes.

The cost of the levee system envisioned by Sen. Clinton is tabbed at $40 billion. Restoring other infrastructure would increase the cost. The question is whether that's the best use of our resources. For $40 billion, you could give more than $61,000 to every Louisianian displaced by Katrina, nearly a quarter of a million dollars for a family of four.

Here's the question that ought to be considered: Would those people prefer that the money be spent shoring up dikes around a natural lake? Or would they rather get the money themselves and decide whether to stay or migrate to less soggy terrain?

Many, if not most, would choose the cash. That option may be especially appealing since the new levee system can't be completed before 2015, which means that over the next eight years, anyone living in New Orleans has a good chance of being washed away again. A lot of locals have already voted with their feet, decamping to Baton Rouge, La., Houston, Atlanta and Memphis, with no intention of coming back.

Historian Douglas Brinkley, writing in The Washington Post, fears the Bush administration is trying to do to New Orleans what was done to Galveston, Texas, after a terrible 1900 hurricane. "Galveston, which had been a thriving port, was essentially abandoned for Houston, transforming that then-sleepy backwater into the financial center for the entire Gulf South," he says. "Galveston devolved into a smallish port-tourist center, one easy to evacuate when hurricanes rear their ugly heads."

Looking back, that actually sounds like a brilliant choice. If they were given the means to start over wherever they choose, a lot of people displaced by Katrina would embrace it.

Here is my reply

Mr Chapman, First of all, let me correct some of your errors in your editorial "Relocating may be better than rebuilding"

1) Valmeyer was a town of 900, New Orleans is a city of about half a million.  Relocating it would be impractical, and a tremendous expense.

2) Over half of the inhabited parts of New Orleans are above sea level.  Yes, over half is above sea level.

3) The loss of wetlands is directly related to America's appetite for oil, and the midwest farmer's appetite for dumping nitrogen into the Mississippi.  Perhaps if the country treated the Mississippi river as a resource instead of a toilet, then Louisiana's wetlands wouldn't be in such sorry shape.

4) According to Thomas Jefferson and others, New Orleans is the key city in the United States, due to its geographic location.  Don't call it a mistake to build there.

5) New Orleans can and should be protected by levees and other flood protection.  Perhaps you forgot Czar Donald Powells promise to America: "The Federal Government is committed to building the best levee system known in the world."

6) "In the United States, by contrast, there are vast open spaces for settlement, most of them beyond the reach of hurricanes." Fine, then they will have floods, blizzards, earthquakes, tornados, or locusts.  Pick your poison.

7) When you are talking about the Dutch flood protection system, which is designed to protect homes from a 1 in 10,000 year flood, you might not have known that the United States Army Corps of Engineers admitted that they improperly designed the levees, that the levees were not built to their own specifications, and that they were responsible for the failure of the levees.  So, personally, I'm all for having the Dutch come to New Orleans.

Now, onto facts you may not have known.

1) The New Orleans port system is, by gross tonnage, the largest port in the world.  In. The. World.   There is a reason that New Orleans is located where it is -- and moving it would not only be impractical, but a business folly.

2) $40 billion is a small cost to keep the Mississippi's port alive, and to keep America's refinery coast alive.  Refineries in South Louisiana provide over 25% of America's fuel.  South Louisiana provides over 40% of America's seafood, and most of America's coffee is shipped and roasted in South Louisiana.  Also, this is a tiny cost compared to a few days fighting in Iraq.

3) By the way, New Orleanians pay taxes too.

4) Finally, the food, culture, music, and joie de vivre of New Orleans cannot be replaced anywhere.  I work in Chicago, but I choose to live in New Orleans, the greatest city in America.  And don't forget, we *are* in America.

Sincerely,

Ashley Morris, Ph.D.

Professor, Name Redacted University

Comments

[aaron]

I would like to hit him in the face with a rock. Articles like piss me off so much. Quoting some unnamed scientist, making a blanket assumption the average New Orleanian would sell his city for $61,000.00, I sure as hell would NOT, and then comparing a city of half a million to some BSE hamlet of 900 people...it just incenses me. I'd turn down a million dollars if it meant saving this city, I don't want that blood money touching my hands. Some other Judas in Houston might pick that silver their soulless town, but not me.

[celcus]

Of course, if you are "relocating" New Orleans, it makes no sense to leave Jefferson Parish, which is built on the same alluvial swampland, and just as vunerable...and St. Bernard Parish flooded for the same reasons as the lower 9, you can't leave it if your razing the lower 9 and NO east...and then there's Plaquemines Parish, that will have to go, too. Anyone else?

[Sophmom]

Plus, it's a bogus premise to begin with. It's not either/or. It's more like either spend the money on levees or fix highways in Arizona (or dump it into an endless pit in Iraq). No one is being offered cash instead of fixin' the levees. Plus, plus, what's with: "anyone living in New Orleans has a good chance of being washed away again"??? Huh? Where the hell did he get that? It's just not true. You might have some risk of being washed away again in parts of St. Barnard Parish or NO East, but the city's inhabited areas, many of which weren't washed away the last time, are as safe as many other inhabited areas of this country.

Are we to become a country of only risk-free communities? Of course not. What we're seeing is the need to pretend that everything is okay, that our nation's infrastructure is fine and that as long as it's the fault of New Orleanians then they can go on not thinking about the risks of living anywhere.

[Sophmom]

St. Bernard. Typo. Sorry. I got all riled up.

[Berto]

I'll start saving urine samples to throw on the bastard

[Berto]

He's from Brady, TX and moved to Chicago to raise his family.

Doesn't this idiot know from whence he came?

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/eighth-body-found-after-texas-flooding/n20070820151909990040

[joejoejoe]

Comparing a town of 900 people to New Orleans requires the same scale of stupid that would use Lake Providence, LA as a model for Chicago's infrastructure.

They're both settlements on lakes, right? What a maroon.

[Frolic]

It's kind of cute that Ashley left off the name of his university when posting this letter. It's not like his professional homepage at "name redacted" university isn't the second hit for "Ashley Morris" on Google after this site. Anyway, I just thought that was funny.

Oh, and that Steve Chapman guy, he's clearly a dick.

[oyster]

Outstanding reply, sir, to that opinion "piece" in the Chi-Trib.

You deserve a Mancave.

[Richard P.]

Will someone please tell me which port locale in the southeast/Gulf Coast region, not to mention northeast U.S. is not vulnerable to hurricanes? What's not mentioned in the analogy to Galveston/Houston is that Galveston is an island while Houston has had the widest of wide open space in which to grow and become larger than Delaware but even with the growth of Houston and that city's takeover of a leadership role among Texas locales is that that area is hardly impregnable to hurricanes and anyone who remembers the stories while Hurricane Rita was in the Gulf remembers the massive evacuations from Houston. If Rita had made landfall directly on Houston there's not much doubt in my mind that the damage would have dwarfed the damage from Katrina. So then, let's start relocating the 4th largest city in the country and then also Mobile, Tampa, Miami and Charleston along with it, not to mention Memphis which is one day going to get it from an earthquake. Ridiculous. What it all reveals, however, is that many people do hold a disregard if not an outright dislike for New Orleans and have long held such an attitude. New Orleans is or is at least perceived to be the home of many things a lot of people don't like, as in blacks, gays, liberals and so on. These other places are hard-working, "normal" Americana. If they get hit, it's a crisis but if New Orleans gets it then we have deserved it and it's good riddance. Sad but true.

[mominem]

You forgot a major reason;

Of the last 50 years oil pumped from Louisiana offshore waters has contributed billions of dollars a year to the national treasury, all based on the hard work of people across South Louisiana.

Perhaps we should get some of it back when we need it.

[Michelle]

There's plenty of blame to sperad around the different levels of government, but for Bush to say there was no situational awareness about the potential damage from Katrina's impact was DISHONEST. Given the possibility that the worst could really happen, why did everybody just hope for the best? There WAS awareness, but there wasn't the leadership to knock heads together and say Regardless of who is responsible/to blame, let's get people out of there NOW, given that people's lives are at stake with this potential natural disaster. And let's not forget that there was a test, a fictional worst case scenario called Hurricane Pam, which predicted many of the things that happened in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

[certified]

There comes a point where you can't be mad at someone for who they are. Bush and his aidnimstration have shown us their true colors time and time again. I'm starting to get past my anger at Bush and his friends for fucking this up and killing thousands of people, first in Iraq, then on the Gulf Coast. I'm just going to focus my efforts on removing them from office so we can get on with our lives, and our country. I'm tired of being furious.

[Jana]

Zadi, that was amazing or shloud maybe amazing isn't the correct word. More like devastating t your soul. The iamges and the music go perfectly together. Every sonlge image was powerfull . I liked the most the part when Bush is saying that he has no doudbt everything is going to be fine, the images there are JUST PERFECT! Oh, and the september newspaper . nice touch.I hope to meet you tomorrow in the apple store.

[Rui]

Beautiful video! I hate the sappy Green Day video, but this is powerful. The best part is the ovrlaey of the Bushs' audio (son and mother) on the pictures. The video with the Barbara Bush comments is perfect! Give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves!