The Case For New Orleans: Why We Matter and Why We Should Exist
After multiple hurricanes, severe flooding, staggering death tolls, and expensive rebuilding price tags, the critiques that New Orleans shouldn’t exist, be rebuilt, or similar sentiment, consistently gain traction. Glenn Beck epitomized this sentiment:
“I find it hard to feel sorry for New Orleans.” … “We should just walk away from that city. Why are we there?” … “I’m not sure if we should bother rebuilding it.” … “Why are we spending all this money in New Orleans? We shouldn’t spend a single dime of tax-payer money.” … “How much do I think should be spent on New Orleans? Zero. Nothing. Not a dime.” … “The Big Easy is a lost cause.”
Although Beck hardly maintains relevancy, this rhetoric is found all over the political spectrum and from various walks of life. After Hurricane Katrina, Dennis Hastert, then-Speaker of the House, stated rebuilding New Orleans “doesn’t make sense” and that “a lot of that place could be bulldozed.” Less than two weeks after Katrina, Slate ran an embarrassing article titled, “Don’t Refloat: The case against rebuilding the sunken city of New Orleans,” by Jack Shafer (click at your own risk).
These opinions might sound rational on the surface to those unfamiliar, but a deeper analysis exposes not only its simplicity, inconsistency, and absurdity, but its deep-seated racism and classism as well. As the waters of Hurricane Ida recede, these opinions will inevitably resurface. Here’s why the naysayers are inconsistent and wrong.
Cities at Risk
New Orleans is not as at-risk as other global cities. According to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the rise of sea levels put multiple U.S. cities ahead of New Orleans in terms of risk. According to the OECD, the most at-risk city in the world is Miami, followed closely by New York City and Newark. Around the world, the OECD puts Chinese cities Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Hong Kong, and Ningbo more at risk than New Orleans. Kolkata, Mumbai, Tokyo, and Bangkok were also ahead of New Orleans on the list. So the notion that New Orleans is a doomed city due its geographical location and should be abandoned is unfounded. For such sentiment to be logical, one must conclude that these cities should not exist as well, even more so than New Orleans. If not, the hierarchy of what cities deserve the “right to exist” is inconsistent, at best. Nonetheless, who determines such a decision anyway?
Cities around the world are at risk from all sorts of disasters and are built to prepare for them. Earthquake-prone areas construct the necessary infrastructure to withstand heavy earthquakes. Millions of people live in dozens of cities around the globe and in the U.S., like San Francisco and Los Angeles, that are built on fault lines. Unfortunately, earthquakes are disastrous if a city does not have the proper infrastructure. Over 300,000 people died and a million were left homeless when a 7.0 Haitian Earthquake struck in 2010 (and more recently in 2021). However, in Chile, an earthquake in 2010 registering at 8.8 hit the country, but the death toll and damage was minimal compared to Haiti. This is due to Chile’s seismic building code adapted by Salvador Allende in 1972. The logic is the same with cities along the coast.
Sea Level
Arguments that New Orleans should be abandoned due to its sea level are overly simplistic and missing some vital information needed to maintain consistency. The initial flooding of Katrina and Ida had little to do with sea levels. LaPlace and Houma are two communities that were recently devastated by Ida, both of which have an average elevation of 10 feet above sea level. Similarly, New York City, with an average elevation of 33 feet, flooded during Ida and tragically had a death toll higher than the entire New Orleans metropolitan area.
Both Katrina and Ida were not natural disasters, they were engineering disasters amidst a rapidly changing climate. The flooding from Katrina had everything to do with a weak and outdated levee system, while flooding during Ida was, in part, due to communities excluded from the post-Katrina levee system. A study from the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane and Xavier Universities concluded that “half of New Orleans is at or above sea level.” Many areas that flooded during Katrina were above sea level, including portions of the Lower 9th Ward adjacent to the Mississippi River. Many of the most populated neighborhoods in New Orleans are above sea level: the French Quarter, Uptown, the Marigny, Bywater, and the Treme. Many places around the world that are well above sea level experience flooding. In 2008, a levee breach in Fernley, Nevada, led up to almost 3,500 residents requiring emergency rescue as water reached up to eight feet. Fernley is a soaring 4,200 feet above sea level.
An area can be below sea level while being heavily protected. 24% of Holland is below sea level, yet the area remains dry due to an incredibly well-built levee system. Rotterdam, the largest and busiest port in Europe, contains areas of the city some 22 feet below sea level, while the lowest part of New Orleans is seven feet (New Orleans East). Places around the world, from Israel to China and India to Germany, have areas with lower elevations than New Orleans. The success of Rotterdam proves that such a feat is possible if done correctly.
Levees and Pumping System
Another argument centers on the selfish notion that tax-dollars should not go to pay for levees or pumping systems that protect other people, primarily in New Orleans. Many major cities around the world require sophisticated pumping systems to stay dry, from New York City to London, which has some of the largest and most refined pumping stations in the world. A recent study by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) found that as of 2019, 62% of Americans, roughly 201 million people, reside in counties and parishes dependent on levees to stay dry, up from 55% just a decade earlier. This number will continue to increase given the rapid rise of urbanization. Twenty-eight states require levees. To deny New Orleans a well-maintained levee system is inconsistent, insensitive, and unsympathetic.
Many of New Orleans’ levees were built due to the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) built canals through dense neighborhoods and the fragile wetlands for oil and shipping industries to shorten the route to the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) was built in the ’60s to help cargo ships reach the Gulf quicker. People protested these profit-over-people initiatives, rejecting the notion that it would bring economic booms (which never materialized), but to no avail. I vividly recall as a kid crossing the Paris Road Bridge over the Industrial Canal, colloquially known as the “Green Bridge,” and seeing my father point in the general direction of MRGO and saying that if it does not close, it is going to “drown” us.
The MRGO mixed fresh water with salt water to create brackish water, which caused massive wetland erosion and further eradicated natural barriers against hurricanes, grew wider than the Panama Canal, caused millions for dredging purposes, and the outlet was rarely used. In 2005, the MRGO caused massive flooding in the 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish and funneled water to other canals connected to it, which led to the flooding of Lakeview, New Orleans East, and other areas of the city. The flooding did not come from the Mississippi River, but the canals undemocratically constructed around the city. After the citizens were proven correct, the government closed the MRGO in 2008, but the damage was already done. To suggest multinational corporations, in collaboration with the federal government, should be allowed to construct these canals yet the people who inhabited the region for centuries are not allowed to have protection from those canals is both callous and illogical.
The primary reason these canals flooded was due to improperly built levees by the ACOE. In 1986, the ACOE research branch funded an investigation, dubbed the “E-99” study, to determine how deep to build levees in the region. A 2015 study by civil engineers highlighted the flaws of the E-99 test, which ultimately led to levee breaches and excess deaths:
“What is also evident is that the Corps, in a separate attempt to limit project costs, initiated a sheet pile load test (E-99 Study)… but misinterpreted the results and concluded that sheet piles needed to be driven to depths of only 17 feet instead of between 31 and 46 feet. That decision saved approximately US$100 million, but significantly reduced the reliability of the floodwalls during Hurricane Katrina.”
The levee failures ended up costing more than $100 billion in damage. In 2006, the Chief of Engineers for the ACOE, Carl Strock, admitted the ACOE had a “catastrophic failure” in regards to the levees. He resigned soon after. In 2009, the ACOE was found guilty for the poorly built levees. U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval, Jr. stated, “…the corps not only knew, but admitted by 1988, that the MRGO threatened human life… and yet it did not act in time to prevent the catastrophic disaster that ensued with the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina.”
Katrina showed the need for an updated, well-funded levee system. According to Sandy Rosenthal, founder of levees.org, a New Orleans-based grassroots and advocacy group designed to monitor the levee systems, summed it up best in an email exchange with me:
“Congress authorized the corps to rebuild its hurricane protection after Hurricane Katrina’s moderate storm surge exposed the corps’ design flaws. However, that new system comes at the unspeakable cost of 1500+ human lives.”
The flooding of New Orleans was an engineering disaster, not a natural one, which could’ve been prevented with properly built and maintained levee and pumping systems. Unfortunately, the media and politicians continue to say the opposite, despite the overwhelming evidence, even at the highest levels of government. Former President Obama stated, “I think that Katrina was really a wake-up call for the country — about our need to fulfill our commitments to our fellow citizens, a recognition that there but for the grace of God go I, that all of us can fall prey to these kinds of natural disasters.” Labeling these disasters as solely “natural” alleviates responsibility.
It should be noted that many major cities rely on levees: Detroit, Louisville, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Baltimore, Kansas City, Portland, Seattle, Honolulu, Washington D.C., Omaha, Jacksonville, Savannah, Albuquerque, Tampa Bay, and especially Sacramento, which has some of the most at-risk levee system in the U.S. Why should New Orleans, or any of these cities, not have functionally levees?
Port and Economy
Economically, the Port of New Orleans is one of largest ports in the U.S. based on volume of cargo, while the Port of South Louisiana is the largest port in the Western Hemisphere. Together, these ports make up one of the largest in the world. New Orleans benefits from an incredibly strategic position located at the mouth of the Mississippi River, where it is wide enough to maintain high-volume traffic. It is the only deep-water port in the U.S. that serves six railroads and brings in iron, coffee, steel, coal, timber, chemicals, and more than half of the nation’s grain exports to our nation. Losing New Orleans forfeits the nation some of our most important supplies and raw materials.
The region is also home to other economies that benefit the U.S. Metropolitan New Orleans is the center for the country’s maritime industry. The region supplies a significant portion of the nation’s oil refining and petrochemical production. Louisiana ranks 5th in oil production and much of it comes from the New Orleans area. The New Orleans region is also a center of higher learning, with over 170,000 students attending college in New Orleans or within 100 miles of the city. South Louisiana is home to four iconic HBCUs: Xavier University of Louisiana, Southern University at New Orleans, Dillard University, and Southern University and A&M College. The multi-billion dollar tourist industry is massive and one of the largest in the U.S. New Orleans is also home to numerous headquarters for various companies. The economic toll, and more importantly the human cost, of abandoning Louisiana is unfathomable.
Culture
To those from New Orleans, you do not need to read this, as I cannot possibly capture the soul of the culture in this short amount of text. People wrote books on it and felt unsuccessful. As Chris Rose, a local author, once put it:
“I’m not going to lay down in words the lure of this place. Every great writer in the land, from Faulkner to Twain to Rice to Ford, has tried to do it and fallen short. It is impossible to capture the essence, tolerance, and spirit of south Louisiana in words and to try is to roll down a road of clichés, bouncing over beignets and beads and brass bands and it just is what it is. It is home.”
From the indigenous who settled and named the city Bulbancha to the recent influx of Hispanic immigrants, New Orleans has also been a center of diversity and a convergence of global cultures. The region was home to the country’s first Filipino settlement. The city’s roots are Choctaw, Chitimacha, Houma, Spanish, French, Congolese, Senegalese, Haitian, German, and Creole. Other cultures later added to the region’s flare: Eastern European Jews, Irish, Sicilian, Vietnamese, Salvadoran, and Mexican. As of 2014, the New Orleans region is home to the highest Honduran community outside of Honduras. New Orleans has a lure which brings people from all over the world to visit and settle. My great-grandfather migrated from Cefalù, Sicily to New Orleans in the early 20th century and could not imagine living elsewhere.
This cultural diffusion has produced some of the best food in the world: etouffee, gumbo, jambalaya, shrimp and grits, muffulettas, po-boys, boiled crawfish, raw oysters, beignets, and other savory dishes. The people enjoy eating, drinking, and “pass a good time.” Towns outside of the city thrive on the water. Ever rode on a boat and watched the sun come up through swampy trees while listening to the sounds of pure nature? Should I even mention the music or does that go without saying? The region is home to the country’s largest Mardi Gras celebration. It is home to eclectic accents spread out around the state not found elsewhere in the world. Entire neighborhoods have architecture unique to the U.S. It is the epitome of a melting pot. The history is so extraordinarily rich with tales of success, tragedy, resistance, resilience, and triumph. “The Big Easy” is addicting and captivating, and if you don’t live around here, it might be hard to understand. Some would rather struggle here than thrive elsewhere. As Mr. Rose so eloquently put it, I won’t “capture the essence” realistically, so why bother continuing?
Solutions
Those who make statements that New Orleans should be abandoned should accompany their pessimism with solutions or subscribe the same sentiment to all places facing severe repercussions from the ongoing climate crisis. According to the Washington Post, “nearly 1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster this summer.” Those who express sentiment about New Orleans rarely ascribe the same rhetoric to other regions. Evacuees and victims from other disasters in the country aren’t rarely blamed, and they’re certainly not labeled “refugees.”
We need bold solutions to climate change rather than placing blame on entire populations of majority Black cities and rural coastal communities. The point is not to claim that New Orleans won’t face challenges due to rising sea levels and climate change or that all is doomed in the face of climate change; rather, the purpose is to emphasize that it’s inconsistent, at best, to place blame on the city of New Orleans, a city with a poverty rate much higher than the national average. If naysayers are going to propose all New Orleanians migrate as a solution to climate change, then this solution should be accompanied with ways for over a million people to obtain the means to actually migrate. Then, to maintain that consistency, solutions must also be proposed to all of the aforementioned cities in this article.
Conclusion
There are no logical reasons why New Orleans deserves to be left to drown. It’s a city that must and should be protected. With rising sea levels and waters getting warmer, investing in critical infrastructure is the right thing to do, and we know it can be done. During Ida, the new levee system held the water at bay across the city. The New Orleans Metropolitan area will continue to rebuild, preserve its heritage, live life to the fullest, and move forward.
It’s going to take a lot to wipe us off the map, and the New Orleans region ain’t going anywhere anytime soon.