its a doozy

partially true partially not.

N.O. was originally developed mostly becase it was VERY economically desirable. The logical port for all of the Mississippi river barge traffic carrying agricultural products from about a dozen U.S. states to be shipped overseas. Also oil refineries in the GOM.

Comes down to geography ... desirable, and undesirable.

 

I hear ya, it is an economically strategic place to develop. But nature doesn't care about economics.

The army corpse of engineers, altered the path of the Mississippi in order to be able to develop New Orleans. This blocked the natural deposition that would naturally occur on the deltas there. Because this deposition is not occuring, the natural protection from storm surge that the deltas offer has decreasing significantly. And rather than having this natural protection in this area, New Orleans is sitting on an area, which normally would actually be building up from the river deposition. But rather is now sinking at a continuous rate.

 

considering its sinking around an inch a year and surrounding parts (like 9th ward) will never get rebuilt cause most people are using relief $ for new cars and rims instead of what it should be for, they probably should.