Relocating New Orleans picks up support

When St. Louis University professor Tim Kusky first suggested that New Orleans be relocated after Hurricane Katrina, he got threatening telephone calls and was reviled over the Internet.

Now Kusky believes he is being proved correct because fewer people are deciding to move back to the Big Easy.

"I’ve gotten hundreds of e-mails," Kusky said in an interview last week. "At first they were about half and half. Now they are almost all supportive."

As 2005 recedes into history, Katrina is being ranked among the year’s top stories. But what to do in the wake of the disaster will be debated for months and years to come.

Few scientists are willing to go as far as Kusky by suggesting New Orleans be relocated. But some are calling for an end to federal support for people who want to live in areas that are going to be ravaged by storms again in the future.

They also say scientific data should play a bigger role in the debate when decisions are made about rebuilding, population location, levee construction and flood insurance. Taxpayers should pay attention to that debate, because they will bear the cost of the levee system as well as covering rebuilding costs in the wake of future disasters.

Kusky, an endowed professor of natural science, teaches courses on plate tectonics, the early history of the Earth and on natural hazards and disasters. He made headlines in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on Nov. 22 after an appearance on CBS "60 Minutes." In that program, Kusky said New Orleans is sinking and that it should not be rebuilt.

Since then, Kusky said, there’s been more time to assess what happened and that support for his position is growing.

"It’s clear New Orleans is not going to be the same," he said. "Estimates range that half" the city’s population "will go back. Now, one quarter have gone back. We need to be looking at rebuilding in a wiser way and not putting people in an area that is most at risk."

"Many of the e-mails I’ve had from people there are from scientists who are afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation from others down there," Kusky added in an e-mail message. "But the science must be heard to protect the people and their property."

On Aug. 29, Katrina overran New Orleans as a Category 3 storm, breaching levees and killing 1,300 people in the Gulf region. Supporters of rebuilding the city want a levee system that could protect it against a Category 5 hurricane. It could cost more than $30 billion and take decades to complete.

"I don’t want to say it should not be rebuilt," said Robert Young, a geology professor at Western Carolina University. "It’s the role of science to say, ‘Here’s the truth as I see it and let’s weigh the costs and the benefits and try to make an informed decision.’

"If you were to ask me can we make the city safe so that what happened during Katrina will never happen again, my honest answer is ‘no,’ " Young said in an interview. "No matter what we do or how we re-engineer and no matter how many acres of wetlands we try to put back, the city is located in such a vulnerable position that this will happen again."

"What we have to do as a nation is to step back and look at the economics of the situation and decide whether it’s worth it to keep all of that infrastructure there," Young said.

In testimony before a congressional committee, Young has recommended the federal government stop helping to rebuild southern coastal communities repeatedly hit by hurricanes. He has called for the creation of a commission such as the one that assesses the value of military bases. The new commission would decide what areas would not eligible for federal rebuilding subsidies.

J. David Rogers, a professor in the University of Missouri-Rolla Geological Engineering Department, said national policymakers need to do a better job of assessing the costs of flood insurance and using scientists to help calculate the risks of disaster.

Rogers is an expert on floods and levee breaks and has taught courses in engineering geology and environmental geology. He also has taught a flood-control history class. His five-part lecture on the Katrina disaster can be found under the "flood hazards" portion of his Web site at http://web.umr.edu/~rogersda.

The ridiculous result Rogers sees from Katrina is that some New Orleans residents who lived within dike-protected lands were not part of the National Flood Insurance Program.

"We’ve allowed people to build in these areas, and we are not charging them the freight we should for living in those zones," Rogers said in an interview. "From my perspective, as an engineer, looking at the economics of the whole thing, that’s the part that seems to have failed in terms of its theory and practice. The real estate lobby pushed that through. They didn’t want people inside the dike zones to feel that they were at risk."

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Reach Terry Ganey at (573) 815-1708 or tganey@tribmail.com.

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