The futility of fighting nature

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It will cost tens of billions of tax dollars, maybe much more, to create the New New Orleans. The natural inclination is to declare defiance in the face of adversity and vow to restore the city to its past glory... Many experts think simply putting New Orleans back together would be shortsighted and eventually lead to a repeat of this week's disaster. They think serious consideration should be given to concentrating homes and commerce only on strips of higher ground near the banks of the Mississippi or--even more radical--abandoning the site altogether and starting fresh somewhere less vulnerable to flood... "New Orleans has been fighting against nature for an awful long time," explained geologist Nicholas Pinter, a flood expert at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale... New Orleans is sinking, and one of the main culprits is the same levee system designed to keep the water out. Levees both intensify the flow of a river and choke off the supply of sediment that maintains an equilibrium between land and water. "When it comes to blocking off a flood plain with levees," said Pinter, "the history is failure again and again and again. One-third of all flood disasters are the result of levee failure."