Colorado has welcomed evacuees from New Orleans, and donated generously to relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Is there anything more we can do, besides never again allowing a Coloradan to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency?
Consider that on average, New Orleans sits 2 feet below sea level. And it continues to sink lower because groundwater has to be pumped up and out. As more subsurface water is removed, the surface subsides, so parts of the city get even lower, which means even more pumping. It s a vicious cycle.
Another major American city once had similar woes. Long before there were big electric pumps, Chicago had a major drainage problem. The city tried laying planks over the streets, but John L. Peyton, an 1848 visitor, was not impressed. Under these planks, the water was standing on the surface over three-fourths of the city, and as the sewers from the houses were emptied under them, a frightful odour was emitted in summer, causing fevers and other diseases.
In Nature s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, historian William Cronon explained that Digging a new sewer system to drain away the excess water was pointless. … And so Chicagoans moved in the opposite direction. If they could not lower the drainage system, they would have to raise the city.
In 1849, the city council required that the grade level be raised by as much as 14 feet. The process took two decades and required that large buildings weighing many thousands of tons be lifted by dozens of men turning dozens of jacks in unison so that new foundations could be built underneath.
So it is possible to elevate a city. It s been done, and it was done without modern technology.
But where would New Orleans get the fill material? The highest point in Louisiana is only 535 feet above sea level, and the statewide average is 100 feet. Using local materials is usually a good idea, but in this case, it would just move the problem to some other Pelican State locale.
In a geologic sense, though, those materials aren t local. The mouth of the Mississippi River once sat 80 river miles above New Orleans. Now it s 90 miles below the city.
Some of that vast quantity of delta soil was once part of our Rocky Mountains. Over millions of years, erosion and gravity transport our mountains, particle by particle, down rivers like the Platte and Arkansas to end up as sediment that builds the delta and the barrier islands. The mud also fills low spots as floods recede.
We ve messed up that system with dams, levees, channels and dredging. But the immediate issue is to provide material to elevate New Orleans – material that was bound to get there anyway sometime in the next 50 million years.
How much? The city covers about 180 square miles. To raise it to 10 feet above sea level would thus take about 60 billion cubic feet of fill.
That s a considerable volume, but we could spare it. Figure that a typical fourteener might rise 4,000 feet from its base, and have an average slope of 30 degrees. Assume it s a perfect cone, for simplicity, and you get a radius of 6,928 feet, for a volume of 201 billion cubic feet – more than three times what it would take to raise New Orleans above sea level.
Which mountain to donate? I doubt we d really miss Missouri Peak or Mount Huron from Chaffee County, since neither is anything like a prominent landmark, but it would eliminate a lot of recent access controversy if we donated from Mount Lincoln, Mount Bross, Mount Cameron and Mount Democrat in Park County.
After all, if they weren t fourteeners, they wouldn t be nearly so attractive to climbers, and by my rough figures, the top 1,750 feet from each mountain would suffice to raise New Orleans.
Railroad tracks remain in place on the Lake County side of the Mosquito Range, so it should be possible to move the material by train to Tulsa, Okla., where it could then be barged down to New Orleans and dumped, even as the jacks are raising the buildings.
This transfer is going to happen anyway, and if we can help a city recover by hastening the process, meanwhile eliminating a Colorado contention, why not?
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
