The High Costs of Rebuilding

The NY Times posits that it will cost billions and take decades to implement a levee system capable of protecting New Orleans from a Category 5 storm.

Building Category 5 protection, however, is proving to be an astronomically expensive and technically complex proposition. It would involve far more than just higher levees: there would have to be extensive changes to the city's system of drainage canals and pumps, environmental restoration on a vast scale to replenish buffering wetlands and barrier islands, and even sea gates far out of town near the Gulf of Mexico.

The cost estimates are still fuzzy, but the work would easily cost more than $32 billion, state officials say, and could take decades to complete.

No word on whether changes to the state and local governments will improve matters. Considering the amount of graft and corruption at the state and local level, cleaning out the statehouse and the New Orleans local government of the corrupt officials and extra layers of bureaucracy could go a long way to speeding up the construction of improved levees in the Mississippi Delta area.

Whiplash Nagin is at it again. After vowing to completely rebuild, he's backing away from that vow as urban planners are considering to not rebuild in some vulnerable locations:

Elected officials and residents from New Orleans' hardest-hit areas on Monday responded with skepticism and, at times, outright hostility to a controversial proposal to eliminate their neighborhoods from post-Katrina rebuilding efforts.

Even Mayor Ray Nagin, whose own commission asked the Urban Land Institute to devise the restoration plan, said he is reserving judgment on the most radical aspect: to abandon, at least for the near term, some of the city's lowest-lying ground.

Nagin's doing what anyone in his position has to do, keep options open for himself politically, but he should never have put himself in this position in the first place by vowing to completely rebuild in the areas most prone to flooding. That made no sense.

One aspect of flood control that will definitely change will be the MR-GO (Mississippi River Gulf Outlet). It appears that the channel acted as a funnel and exascerbated the flooding in New Orleans. It also contributed to the loss of wetlands that act as a buffer during storms.

Critics of MR-GO had long warned of such a disaster in urging that it be closed, but they were ignored. That was a tragic mistake, and the many voices that are calling for the waterway to be closed must be heeded now. Keeping MR-GO open after its danger has been so graphically demonstrated would be unforgivable.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has suspended the dredging of the channel for the next year, and rightly so. It makes no sense to continue spending $16 million a year to clear a channel that has such a murky future.

As the debate over MR-GO begins in earnest, the focus must be protecting people and property, not protecting the economic interests of the handful of businesses that use the channel, although some compensation might be due to businesses that will have to move.

St. Bernard Parish officials say an average of 16 to 18 ships go through the MR-GO in a month. That's not much traffic, but the Port of New Orleans still wants to keep the waterway open, albeit at a shallower depth.

Hydrology experts should determine the best course of action here considering that the economic impact of the closure of the channel appears limited.

Meanwhile, folks are building back in Biloxi and neighboring areas.

With a lot of help from faith-based groups and FEMA assistance, people living on the street are bouncing back.

"Everyone I know in the Cleveland Avenue area is building back," said Thomas Gates, who has lived there for 40 years. "I was here for Camille and other storms but nothing came close to Katrina."

Four feet of water swept through homes, but that area didn't experience the devastating surge and wind that hit closer to the beach.

"We're waiting on Sheetrock," said Gates, 68, a retired construction worker. "We'll get back but it'll probably take a year."

He and his wife are out front in "a fine FEMA trailer" like most families in that area. "We'll be visiting grandchildren this Christmas," Gates said.

What will slow the pace of rebuilding? The lack of skilled construction workers. While the cleanup doesn't require a lot of skilled construction workers, building new homes and buildings does:

Hurricane Katrina has changed the Coast's economy from a tourism to construction, but the real rebuilding hasn't even begun. Executives with three of the Coast's biggest contractors say we're only in the first phase of structural recovery: repairs and remediation.

"A lot of people are dealing with insurance companies for this quarter," said Roy Anderson III, president of Roy Anderson Corp. "If I can guess, it will be the first quarter of 2006 to mid-2006 before people start finalizing their negotiations and hopefully have a good settlement with their insurance. Right now, it's a lot of remediation, protection and preservation of assets."

Going forward, the demand for highly skilled construction workers will increase, but there's not a lot of homegrown talent available.

"We were able to use a lot of nonconstruction-skilled people do to cleanup," said Charles Collins, vice president of JO Collins Contractor Inc. "The construction is going to start real soon when it's time to start rebuilding. There was already a tremendous shortage of skilled workers on the Coast. It's certainly not improved because of this. I'm talking carpenters, painters, concrete finishers, just the whole gamut of skilled construction workers."

And one shouldn't forget the need for plumbers and electricians, both of whom are in high demand; particuarly electricians who have to make sure that structures that survived flood damage have sound electrical systems.

UPDATE:
Mayor Nagin is proposing building a free wi-fi network for New Orleans to lure business back to the city. I think your resignation, along with that of everyone else who was responsible for levee construction, maintenance, and oversight, would do more to lure business back than building a wi-fi network.

In an attempt to boost its stalled economy, the hurricane-ravaged city of New Orleans is starting the nation's first free wireless Internet network owned and run by a major city.

Mayor Ray Nagin made the announcement at a late morning news conference.

Similar projects elsewhere have been stalled by stiff opposition from telephone and cable television companies aimed at discouraging competition from public agencies.

One has to wonder how long this proposal will remain intact given that businesses that make money on wi-fi will oppose the plan, not to mention the fact that the government service will be limited in bandwith as soon as the emergency passes. Again, we're seeing priorities run amok. Going for the sexy stuff instead of the nuts and bolts of fixing the levee system.

UPDATE:
Scott Delea has been photoblogging the rebuilding and widespread damage in New Orleans. (HT: Mister Snitch)

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour.