[malkuth23]

That might be the only solution you can think of, but that does not make it the only possibility. What you are really saying is you don't think New Orleans is worth saving. New Orleans infrastructure consists of far more than just levees. Our pumping system is currently rated to remove 1 inch of rain the first hour and 1/2 inch each additional hour. We can remove this much rain with wooden screw pumps that still run on 25 cycle power. Upgrading or adding to the pumps in New Orleans to handle more water makes far more sense than giving up on what I believe is the most special city in America.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/new-orleans-wood-screw...

You say that nobody want to hear your hot take on abandoning New Orleans, a city with one of the most important ports in the country, yet I hear this proposed constantly (and upvoted) by people that have almost no specialized knowledge of infrastructure. It is armchair nihilism and imo not helpful at all. The army corps of engineers thinks differently. Agencies like the CPRA are working to restore land on the coast. There are ways to mitigate the damage, to reduce the risk and protect the city. Yes it is expensive. No it is not cheaper than losing our ports, our people, our culture.

https://gnoinc.org/news/ports-of-south-louisiana-new-orleans...

Soon enough, if we don't invest in NOLA, you will likely be right, but I doubt it will be because there was no other option. It will be because we as a country made a huge mistake and failed to act.

The truth is, a lot of America does not care about people or cities in the south. New Orleans gets a bit more attention because tourists had a good time on Bourbon once, but overall it is treated as an oddity and not an essential piece of the both the economic and cultural fabric of America. There are people down here that feel the same way about California with its earthquakes and wild fires and I make similar arguments when arguing with them. Speaking of which, NYC fared far worse against the remnants of a storm we took head on. Should we abandon it or improve it? Hell no we should not give up on NYC, nor SF with it's earthquakes, or LA with it's water shortages, or Baltimore with its crime, or Detroit with its collapse of industry and definitely not New Orleans.

[goatsi]

>We can remove this much rain with wooden screw pumps that still run on 25 cycle power.

To clarify, those are metal pumps invented by a man named Albert Baldwin Wood, not pumps literally made out of wood.

[ahnick]

It's not the only solution I can think of, but it's the only practical one. Sure you could build giant sea walls around the area or bring in land and start literally raising all the buildings above sea level (similar to what Chicago did in the mid 1800s), but you are talking billions of dollars, maybe hundreds of billions. Once you get into that situation it just makes sense to move everything upstream and perhaps only fortify key infrastructure like ports until even those pieces have to be relocated.

The army corps of engineers is not given the option of not trying to save New Orleans. People in government tell them to go build levees and protect the city from flooding and they do the best job that they can, but they are fighting a losing war. The time to introduce relocation assistance programs is now, so you spread the cost and process out over many years; otherwise, you are going to just end up doing the same thing later, but it will cost more money and more lives will have been lost.