Summary
NEW ORLEANS - Before I try my very best to make you care about levees, floodwalls, wetlands and the like, first let's deal with a more engaging question: Why rebuild New Orleans at all?
After all they've been through, New Orleanians tend to just sputter and fume when asked whether their city hasn't somehow forfeited its right to exist. I don't blame them one bit - they don't owe anyone an answer. But the question is out there, and ignoring it doesn't make it go away: Why should taxpayers spend billions to reconstruct and safeguard a city that lies below sea level, wedged between the continent's greatest river and a vast "lake" that's really an estuarine arm of the nearby Gulf of Mexico? Inevitably, skeptics point out, another Katrina or Wilma will come along and destroy New Orleans again.See the full content of this document
Extract
Why Rebuild It at All?
Things have changed, this argument goes. It's not 1815, so we no longer need a garrison at the mouth of the Mississippi to guard against the British fleet. Before the flood, New Orleans was...
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