Background

1
Introduction
Introduction Background Solutions
Environmental and Engineering Intermission Solutio
ns Social and Political Conclusion
2
Background
Introduction Background Solutions
Environmental and Engineering Intermis
sion Solutions Social and
Political Conclusion
Geography of New Orleans Hurricane
Katrina Environmental Issues Alternative
Plans 100 Year Plan
3
New Orleans Geography

• Lake Pontchartrain (north)
• Lake Borgne (east)
• Mississippi River (through the city)
• Gulf of Mexico (south)
• Wetlands (southeast)

4
Environmental Concerns

• Elevation from 2 m above to 5 m below sea level
• Mississippi River bed is rising
• Subsidence 5-8 mm per year
• Reduction of Wetlands 75 sq. km per year
• Sea Level Rise 11 cm to 77 cm in 100 years
• Global Warming

5
Hurricane Katrina

• Made landfall as a Category 3 in southeastern
  Louisiana
• Sustained winds of 125 mph
• Projected storm surge of 28 ft
• On August 28th, Mayor Ray Nagin enacted the first
  mandatory evacuation plan
• Superdome housed 26,000 people
• Storm surge caused several levee breaches and
  flooded city
• Overall death toll 1,800

6
Government Response

• Response was slow and inefficient
• FEMA mobilized 1000 Homeland Security workers
• Firefighters and ambulance crews not allowed in
  immediately
• Federal government lacked sufficient devastation
  information
• Problems with looting
• Superdome became a humanitarian crisis
• Search and rescue efforts were uncoordinated

7
Increasing Hurricane Intensity

• Hurricane Betsy - 1965
• 81 casualties
• 1.4 billion
• Hurricane Camille - 1969
• 335 casualties
• 11 billion
• Hurricanes Katrina and Rita - 2005
• 2,000 casualties
• 105 billion

8
Looking 100 Years Into The Future

• The Possibilities
• The Final Proposal

9
The Possibilities

• Rebuild and Improve
• Abandon
• North Shore Plan
• The Final Proposal

10
Rebuild and Improve

• Rebuild better than pre-Katrina
• High cost
• High risk
• Preserves unique New Orleans culture
• Maintains economy

11
Abandon

• Deemed too risky to live in
• Organized relocation of citizens
• Low cost
• Low risk

12
The North Shore

• Preserve unique portions
• Historical
• Economic functions
• Relocate residents to St. Tammany Parish
• Make New Orleans a commuter city
• High risk on North Shore also
• Lack of available land

13
The Final Proposal

• Downsize to historical sector
• Move major port functions
• Port of South Louisiana
• Baton Rouge
• New hurricane and flood protection system
• Citizens Relocation Committee (CRC)
• Use river to develop wetlands

14
The Final Proposal

• Incorporates the best from the other
  possibilities
• Preserves historical sector
• Provides for relocation of port economy
• CRC provides for safety of suburban residents
• Smaller region to protect
• Lower long-term cost
• Lower risk

15
Solutions Environmental and Engineering
Introduction Background Solutions
Environmental and Engineering Intermission Sol
utions Social and Political Conclusion
Sea Level Rise Wetlands Rivers Flood Protection
System
16
Global Warming

• Increase in temperature
• Caused by emission of greenhouse gases
• Affect on sea level rise
• Thermal Expansion
• Melting glaciers, ice caps
• Changes to hydraulic cycle

17
Sea Level Rise

• Range 10 cm to 100 cm (IPCC Third Assessment
  Report)
• Median 48 cm
• Models used CCCma, GFDL, Hadley-CM3, MPI

18
Uncertainty of Sea Level Rise

• Do not capture multiple climate effects
• Uncertainty in heat uptake by deep ocean
• Timescales lead to inaction in policy
• Kyoto Protocol

19
Subsidence

• Types of
• Endogenic caused by human activities
• Exogenic caused by natural processes
• Causes
• Groundwater withdrawal
• Petroleum extraction
• Tectonic motion

20
Cost of Sea Level Rise

• 20 - 150 billion if sea levels rise 100 cm
  (Pugh, 2004)
• 370 million dry land damages
• 893 million for wetlands damage
• 200 - 475 billion for coastal stabilization
• 57 - 174 million in transient costs
• 1500 damaged homes yearly
• (McCarthy, 2001)

21
Louisianas Wetlands Functions

• Commercial importance
• Produces 1/4 of the nation's oil and natural gas
• Produces 1/3 of the nations fisheries landings
• Hosts 2nd largest wildlife habitat in the U.S.
• Protective importance
• Protection against storm surges
• Every 3-4 linear miles of healthy wetlands
  reduces storm surge by 1 foot

22
Long Term

• Reduce and compensate for current rate of loss of
  75 square kilometers per year
• Prepare for sea level rise
• Maintain barrier islands
• Improve knowledge of ecosystem dynamics and
  restoration technology

23
Wetlands Problems and Solutions

• Draining and Filling
• Zoning laws
• Canals and Channels
• Use fewer canals
• Prevent further erosion from canals
• Erosion
• Barrier Islands
• Use of dredged sediments
• Revegetation
• River diversions

24
Draining and Filling

• Proposed Legislation
• Prohibit draining and filling of ecologically
  important wetlands
• 100 foot buffer between wetlands and developed
  areas
• Best management techniques for drilling and
  farming

25
Canals

• Small Scale Canal Impact
• Canal dredging
• Human-altered hydrology and substrate collapse
• Large Scale Canal Impact
• Deep navigation canals
• Pipelines
• 8,000 miles of pipelines across coastal Louisiana

26
Barrier Islands

• Katrinas destruction of Chandeleur barrier
  islands (approximately 50 loss)
• Present-day slow rate of recovery
• Immediately dredging
• Sand deposits of previous delta lobes (i.e. Ship
  Shoal)

27
Dredged Sediments-Marsh

• Sediment pumped into or placed on shallow water
  areas
• Increases elevation of marshes or creates new
  marsh
• Mixed success
• May become more important in the context of
  increased sea level

28
Revegetation

• Major plant death
• Salt water intrusion
• Lack of nutrients
• Stabilization of soil
• Species must be well-adapted to predicted
  conditions
• Spartina can tolerate moderate salinity

29
River Distributaries

• Dredged sediments and revegetation are
  inefficient to continue long term
• Sediment and nutrient delivery system
• Raise elevation
• Counteract subsidence
• Revive ecosystems to reduce erosion

30
Distributaries

• Two distributaries
• Each divert up to 1/5 of normal river discharge
• Floodgate at entry point to control water level
• Open wider during floods
• Open less during low water
• Armored banks

31
Distributaries

• EAST Breton Sound
• Fill in MRGO until Violet Canal
• Violet Canal and MRGO form distributary
• WEST Barataria Bay
• Wilkinson Canal forms distributary
• Establish Barataria Waterway as main canal for
  Lafayette oil and gas field

32
Cutoff

• Southern cutoff
• 2 crevasses between cutoff and Buras maintain
  navigation, not flood control
• No levees below Buras navigation channel will
  not be maintained

33
Entry Point Buras

• Buras to replace Head of Passes as main entry
  point to deep draft channel
• Two navigation canals will allow entry from east
  and west
• Bird-foot delta abandoned nothing south of Buras
  unless built on a deepwater platform

34
Problem Riverbed Rise

• Riverbed rise
• Sediment builds up on riverbed because it cannot
  be distributed on floodplain
• Increasing stress on Old River Control Structure
• Maintains 70 discharge through current
  Mississippi River channel

35
Dredging

• River currently being dredged to maintain
  navigation channel
• Very costly but feasible because of economic
  importance of river

36
Wing Dams

• Wing dams dikes that extend from a rivers banks
  while allowing water to flow unhindered through
  the middle of the channel
• Water behind dams will slow and drop sediment,
  building up sediment behind the dam
• River channel will narrow and deepen

37
Wing Dams, cont.

• Increased current velocity and pressure on bed
  will increase erosion, promote self-scouring
  process to bring bed level closer to sea level
• River banks must be armored, so that increased
  erosion occurs on the bottom and not the sides
• New river entry point at Buras shortens
  horizontal distance, allowing erosion to steepen
  profile

38
New River Specifications

• Below Baton Rouge maintain 500 ft wide main
  channel, wide enough to accommodate riverboat
  traffic
• Between Port of South Louisiana and Wilkinson
  Canal maintain 650 ft wide main channel, to
  accommodate the traffic at Port of New Orleans,
  especially boats turning around

39
Old River

• Erosion of bed closer to sea level will decrease
  height difference between Atchafalaya and
  Mississippi beds at Old River, currently 12-14 ft
  
• Material will be dredged from behind Old River to
  match changing elevation of Mississippi River bed
• Increases capacity and use of existing structure
  for flood control

40
Flood Protection System Plans

• Filling in the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet
• Floodgates and double pumps on the 17th Street,
  Orleans Avenue, and London Avenue Canal Levees
• Levee Reconstruction
• Monitoring and Maintenance

41
Filling-In the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet

• Storm surge coming up outlet was intensified,
  causing levees to be breached
• Filling-in protects against funnel effect
• Commercial/industrial impact

42
Floodgates and Double Pumps

• Floodgates stop water from coming into the city
  through the canals
• Gates close when storm surge threatens
• Governance by NOAA
• Increase and redesign pump system throughout city

43
Levee and Floodwall Reconstruction

• Patchwork system
• Levees poorly monitored
• Subsidence
• I-walls protecting Lower Ninth Ward
• New Orleans East levees overtopped and eroded
• I-walls were not able to handle pressure from
  storm surges
• Scouring and seepage caused some I-walls to fail
• Foundations were poor

44
Solutions

• Rebuild to withstand Category 5 hurricane
• Replace I-walls with T-walls
• Selective levee armoring
• Rolled clay levees
• Replace poor foundations with compacted soil
• New levees from Intracoastal Waterway to
  Jefferson West Levee System

45
Monitoring and Maintenance

• Levee Governance Board
• Yearly levee inventory
• Differential Global Positioning System to monitor
  subsidence
• Role of Army Corps

46
Timeline
Floodwalls and levees raised to approved heights
and engineering errors fixed.
Nov 2006
2010
Sept 2007
Temporary floodgates on canals. 220 miles of
levee repaired.
Flood Protection System complete.
47
Intermission
Introduction Background Solutions
Environmental and Engineering Intermission Solutio
ns Social and Political Conclusion
48
Absorbing the Information

• The 100 Year Plan
• Environmental and Engineering Issues
• Sea level rise and subsidence
• Wetlands
• Mississippi River
• Flood Protection System

49
Solutions Social and Political
Introduction Background Solutions
Environmental and Engineering Intermission S
olutions Social and Political Conclusion

Downsizing/Zoning Ports/Jobs/Relocation Social/Cul
tural Insurance/Building Codes Evacuation Costs C
ommittee for Continued Monitoring
50
Downsizing By District

• What Do We Do Now?
• Risk of subsidence, sea level rise, increased
  storm surge
• Returned population- 190,000 43 of the 2004
  population of 440,000
• Residents rebuilding
• Repair Hurricane Protection Systems- 300 million
  spent by Army Corps of Engineers

51
Lakeview and Gentilly

• Safe in the short term
• Repaired Hurricane Protection Systems
• 170 million spent by Army Corps of Engineers
• Plans for another 120 million in future projects
• Necessary for general protection of city
• Will be zoned over 50 years

52
50 Year Zoning Plan
Time Zoning Law
Immediate No new house construction
5 years No household additions
10 years No immigration

• Criteria for Clearing Neighborhoods

Time Occupancy
Immediate lt5
30 years lt10
35 years lt15
40 years lt20
45 years lt25
50 years All evacuated from selected neighborhoods
53
New Orleans East, Venetian Isles, Village de
LEst

• Severe damage and high subsidence rates
• Would not be safe if another, similar hurricane
  hit
• Significant additional costs to make these areas
  safe
• 67.5 million spent
• 232.5 million planned
• Eminent domain, full and just compensation

54
Lower Ninth Ward

• Considerable damage 82 of homes had at least
  5,200 in damages
• Subsidence rate of 5 mm/year
• Average elevation 0.9 meters above sea level
• Returned population of 5
• Suitable for rebuilding
• Remaining districts in Orleans Parish will be
  preserved

55
Plaquemines

• 57 of homes sustained greater than 5200 in
  damage
• 13 mm per year subsidence rate
• Downriver from Pointe a la Hache immediate
  evacuation
• Between Wilkinson Canal and Pointe a la Hache50
  Year Zoning Plan

56
Other Uses for Land

• Research Area
• Wetlands
• Alternate Energy Sources
• Wildlife Reserve

57
Port Functions

• Port of South Louisiana will take over many of
  the roles of the Port of New Orleans
• Shift shipping and trading business out while
  maintaining tourism
• Provide monetary incentives for businesses to
  relocate to Port of South Louisiana

58
Jobs

• We plan to move businesses to Baton Rouge
• - Preparing Baton Rouge
• - Offering incentives for businesses to
  relocate
• Most jobs still in New Orleans will be related to
  tourism

59
Relocating People

• People will relocate
• - Zoning and eminent domain in some
  neighborhoods
• - Following the jobs to other cities
• Offer support through the Citizens Relocation
  Committee (CRC) and monetary aid

60
Plans for Preservation Programs

• Goal promote cultural awareness
• Festivals, museums, libraries, and memorials
• Example New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
• New Orleans History Month
• Preserve a citys culture while moving on to a
  safer, more efficient municipality in a new
  location

61
Social Considerations

• Completion of clean-up
• Reopening of funeral homes
• Beautification of cemeteries
• Propagation of neighborhood festivals
• Hurricane and Flood Memorial

62
Education

• Vocational training
• Non-academic activities for grade school students
• Normalize transportation and hours
• New curriculum
• Local cultural and political history
• Diversity acceptance
• Hurricane and flood preparedness
• Conservation and environmentally sound living

63
Insurance Policy

• Louisiana Department of Insurance
• clarify insurance ambiguities
• expansion of agent-homeowner services
• Mandatory National Flood Insurance Program
• avoid natural disaster syndrome

64
Building Codes and Green Architecture

• First Floor Plan
• Minimizes flood damage
• 5000 contents coverage limit
• Wind Damage Recommendations
• Protection of building openings
• Improved roof-sheathing attachment
• Improved roof-wall connections
• Secondary waterproofing to roof joints
• Green Architecture

65
Government-Subsidized Housing

• Single family homes and low-rise apartments
• Follow building codes and green architecture
  guidelines
• Integration of mixed income communities

66
Evacuation/Storm Refuge

• Evacuation Routes
• Major evacuation routes
• I-10 to Baton Rouge/Houston
• I-55
• I-59 to northern Mississippi
• Contraflow changes inbound to outbound

67
Car Access and Remnant Population Problem

• Superdome housed 26,000 people
• 9 of population has no car access
• Solution
• Public bus transportation to common evacuation
  destinations
• Set up additional local shelters
• Staff and supply Superdome with a maximum capacity

68
Baton Rouge Overpopulation Problem

• Baton Rouge's population nearly doubled with
  incoming evacuees
• Solution
• Allow only up to 50-100,000 refugees into city
• LSU as temporary shelter
• Develop Houston as evacuation destination by
  designating Astrodome as a shelter and
  Astrodome/Reliant Center Complex as a health
  clinic

69
Current Plan Phase System
Phase Location Time Before Landfall (hrs.) Strength of Hurricane
1 South of Intracoastal Waterway 50 Category 1 or higher
2 Between Intracoastal Waterway and Mississippi River 40 Category 2 or higher
3 Between Mississippi River and I-12 30 Slow-moving Category 3 or higher
70
Additions

• Phase 3 begins contraflow
• During Phase 1, begin pre-supplying shelters in
  New Orleans with food, water, and first-aid kits
• Contract private companies to do so and to stock
  excess emergency supplies such as flashlights and
  batteries throughout hurricane season.

71
Evacuation Cooperation

• 20-30 of New Orleans population failed to
  evacuate
• Solution
• Remind public of hurricane dangers increase
  evacuation cooperation
• Hurricane Awareness Week
• Continue to advertise/distribute info pertaining
  to evacuation routes, home security, bus
  transport stops

72
Costs of Short-Term Plan
Wetland Restoration 815,558,000
Levee Repair Construction 15,125,000,000
Clean-Up and Recycling 2,500,000
Acquisition of Land 6,480,400,000
City Planning and Insurance 1,401,345
Mississippi River 248,855,000
TOTAL 22,672,313,000 500,370 per government subsidized and insured house
73
Costs of Long-Term Plan
Wetland Restoration 24,435,000,000
Levee Repair Maintenance 15,000,000,000
Phasing Out of People and Industry 40,000,000,000
Mississippi River Monitoring and Maintenance 3,500,000,000
TOTAL 82,935,000,000
74
Committee for Continued Monitoring

• Experts and professionals from many different
  fields
• Provides flexibility to our proposal
• Keeping New Orleans safe in the future

75
Conclusion
Introduction Background Solutions
Environmental and Engineering Intermission Soluti
ons Social and Political Conclusion
76
Conclusion

• A plan of integration
• A downsized, sustainable city
• A New Orleans for the future

77
Credits

• We would like to thank Sam Bowring, Rafael Bras,
  Ari Epstein, Katrina Cornell, our Undergraduate
  Teaching Fellows, our Alumni Mentors, Debra
  Aczel, Maria Shkolnik, Ruth Weinrib, and the
  librarians.
• We would also like to thank the panelists.

78
Mission 2010 New Orleans