Why?
by Robert Anderson
Shortly after Jean Baptiste Lemoyne founded New Orleans in 1718, a
priest-chronicler named Charlevoix described it "as a place of a
hundred wretched hovels in a malarious wet thicket of willows and
dwarf palmettos, infested by serpents and alligators." From its
origins in a hollow at the angle of a deep three-sided bend in the
Mississippi River, New Orleans slowly spread out for miles on a
narrow alluvial strip between the River and Lake Pontchartrain.
Today most of New Orleans lies either below sea level or at least
below the level of the River and Lake. Only the levees, most of
which were constructed beginning in the early part of the twentieth
century, have kept the city dry.
Until Katrina! Mother Nature has a unique, and sometimes deadly,
way of reminding us of the penalty for defying her will. New
Orleans, geographically, can best be described as an historical
mistake. It would be unthinkable to construct a city in such a
location now. Even if private developers wanted to do it, the
political environmental lobby existing in America today would never
tolerate such a violation or exploitation of the Mississippi River's
wetlands. For decades governments have restricted or outright
forbidden any sort of habitable development of America's wetlands.
America's wetlands have become "sacred ground" to be preserved in
perpetuity by the force of government edicts.
So what's going on in the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans?
Governments are about to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to
reconstruct a city in a geographical depression below sea level next
to an ocean subject to hurricanes. To describe the land area of New
Orleans as merely wetlands is the ultimate understatement. Much of
the city would be part of the ocean but for the levees! In fact,
the whole of Louisiana from the existing site of New Orleans south
is slowly returning to the sea. Virtually everyone knows the entire
area is a high-risk area to both hurricanes and continual flooding
from the Mississippi River. If nothing habitable existed there
today, nothing ever would under existing governmental edicts
protecting wetlands. So, why is government about to expend tens of
billions of dollars to do something which they would forbid any
private developers to even consider doing now?
Nobody is asking that question, let alone answering it. Even to ask
the question subjects one to criticism for not being compassionate
toward the refugees evacuated from the cesspool which once was New
Orleans. Guilt is imposed upon anyone who would selfishly suggest
it's an insane idea to rebuild another city in an ocean. And yet it
is! Why build a government-funded city where it can only survive
until another failed levee again returns it to the sea? Why build a
government-funded city below sea level when dry land exists all over
America not exposed to flooding or hurricanes? And finally, why
should Americans be taxed billions of dollars to build an "American
Venice" facing annual hurricane risks?
Perhaps the most serious question which must be asked is why anyone
would choose to live below sea level next to a high hurricane-risk
ocean? The historical reality is New Orleans evolved through
inertia more because that's where it began three centuries ago than
because that is where it would be built today. The demographics and
economic circumstance of New Orleans in recent years has made it
into a modern day anachronism. While the Crescent City was quaint
and colorful, it's hardly a geographical location toward which
people would gravitate today if it didn't already exist.
The funding of a new government-built city on the old location of
devastated New Orleans can only be viewed as an act of historical
restoration underwritten by taxpayers and/or as a response to the
perceived compassion of the American people for the plight of the
refugees. Certainly it would never occur if dependent upon the
marketplace to voluntarily fund it. Sadly, what people would never
do with their own wealth, their government is about to do with
wealth exacted from them by taxation.
Can governments save New Orleans? Of course not! That which has
been destroyed can never again be recovered, by a government or
anyone else. The question is why consume resources, either public or
private, to rebuild anything which will only be destroyed again by
the forces of nature and government neglect? While Katrina got all
the attention, it was the breeching of the government levees that
destroyed New Orleans. Nature's wrath started the holocaust, but it
was the failure of government dikes that flooded and destroyed the
city.
For those who argue the city must be rebuilt a final caution: At
what cost, who pays, and what will be forgone from doing so? Already
estimates of $300 billion are anticipated just to recover from the
damage. That's over $1,000 for every man, woman, and child in
America today. Is a new government-funded New Orleans worth
foregoing all the potential benefits every man, woman, and child in
America could enjoy if that same $1,000 consumed by government for a
below-sea-level building project in Louisiana was left in their
pockets?
One tends to have a different perspective toward feelings of
compassion and guilt when the cost of building a below-sea-level
city next to a hurricane-prone ocean is coming out of the pockets of
people who have chosen to live out their lives on high ground out of
the path of an angry sea.
So, why do it?
September 10, 2005
Robert Anderson [send him mail] taught economics at Hillsdale
Collage and was executive secretary of FEE.
Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com
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