From: John Cuccia 

On Fri, 02 Sep 2005 14:38:12 -0400, Monte Davis
 wrote:

>John Cuccia  wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 02 Sep 2005 11:54:08 -0400, Monte Davis
>> wrote:
>>
>>>You won't find a better (or better-written) background on the
>>>Misssissippi River delta than John McPhee's _The Control of Nature_.
>>it is only a matter of time before it
>>fails and the Mississippi overwhelms, steals the Atchafalaya river
>>channel, and turns the current channel at New Orleans and Baton Rouge
>>into salt water estuaries.
>
>I can't help thinking about Venice, where the "city" itself is only
>about 40,000 people (mostly catering to 20x that many tourists)...
>and for at least the last century all the growth has been in drab,
>unhistoric but bustling Mestre and Marghera on the mainland, 5 km away
>and 10 m higher.

Exactly what I've been thinking, rebuild the city proper as a tourist
attraction and house the "real" population (the musicians and
entertainers, the bartenders and waiters and bellmen, the pimps and
prostitutes, the drug dealers, etc )  far enough away to avoid the
flooded bowl.   And I wasn't thinking of Venice, I was thinking of
Vegas-south, but you, a damnyankee, are much more attuned to the charms of the city

Hell, if they did it right they could make buildings high enough to allow
spring floods to occur naturally, and allow hurricane flood waters to
recede more naturally than then can now.

The port is going to be a huge problem for the nation, but it should
probably be relocated much closer to the Gulf than it is currently. The
state has been talking developing about a "superport" 50 or so
miles south of the city for several years now, but that hasn't gotten out
of the talking stage, given the very high costs and the goring of special
interests in other ports in the region.

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