New Orleans debacle continues

The continued hand-wringing over rebuilding efforts (and our tax money being spent) in New Orleans is starting to wear real thin on me. The experts are now saying if they build up the weakest levees, it will put the French Quarter in even more jeopardy.

Seems to me the smartest response is to simply rebuild the poverty-ridden city on higher ground; just annex the neighbors like Omaha did.

It's not that I don't have a heart. We've got tornadoes in this part of the country. There are also wildfires, tsunamis, earthquakes, ice storms, blizzards, floods, and all matter of other natural disasters. All are regrettable and most are unavoidable.

But when New Orleans - a huge part of which actually existed below sea level - got hammered by Hurricane Katrina, the nation's outcry and shock was astounding, fueled by knee-jerk angst from pseudojournalists like Geraldo Rivera.

I too was shocked Š when I learned how much of that city was built below the level of the Mississippi River, Lake Ponchartrain, and the Gulf of Mexico. Do these people not understand the simple nature of water and physics?

Some lessons must take a while to sink in (pardon the pun). Years ago, when Nebraskans tried to alleviate flooding in the southeast part of the state, they quickly found that when you channelize one part of a river, you just about have to do the same for the rest of the river downstream.

If you don't, the newly-straightened (channelized) portions of the river do a great job of quickly moving heavy downpours out of the flood-prone area. But when this accelerated runoff then hits the unchannelized portions downstream (with lots of twists and turns), the flooding is dramatically worsened.

In other words, if you don't do the job completely, you've actually made the situation worse. We learned those lessons quickly on the Nemaha river system as well as the mighty Missouri.

So what should we learn from this disaster? Move the city to higher ground!

Instead, in New Orleans (and Washington) it seems they'd rather point fingers, hold out their cup, or label the poor response as racism. That and blame the President, FEMA, the Red Cross, National Guard and the war in Iraq. Where is the federal relief money? Where is their FEMA trailer?

Are they serious? They built a city on ancient river-borne sediment that is prone to compaction (sinking) and did it below the level of an ocean that is known for brewing up nasty storms, and suddenly they're horrified this great act of tempting fate backfires.

It would seem to me that when natural disasters strike here in the Midwest - such as the monster blizzards in the high plains this past winter - that folks simply button up their coats and help each other in any way they can.

And as many have pointed out, there was not widespread moaning that the federal government wasn't helping. Or complaining there wasn't a FEMA trailer or stipend for them.

They didn't expect the President to be there in person. And (thankfully) there were no visits from Sean Penn, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or other grandstanding opportunists.

Yes, the destruction caused by Katrina was devastating and I truly feel bad for those affected. And I do hope much of the city can be rebuilt Š on higher ground and without my tax money.

But let's put things into perspective. If you or I are crazy enough to build much more than a ramshackle cabin on a Platte River island or shore, and a flood sweeps it away, folks here won't have much sympathy for our decision to build there in the first place. We take the risks of developing such land knowingly.

And we also get flood insurance.