New Orleans: The Big Easy On the Brink

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So environmentalists and engineers are frantically coming up with plans to save New Orleans. One idea is to raise levee walls to increase their effectiveness against storm surges. Another is to create large-scale diversions that would allow the Mississippi to flood in a controlled manner--and through sedimentation add thousands of acres a year of new land. Yet another would be to take immediate steps to reverse the loss of sensitive wetlands. Adding land through sedimentation is one of the best ways of restoring wetlands. Among other possible schemes: cutting back on shipping routes that harm marshes, installing wave absorbers to reduce wetland erosion and rebuilding damaged barrier islands.

The big sticking point, not surprisingly, is money. The price tag for a complete solution could be as much as $14 billion in federal and state money--which may be more than Washington wants to spend, and more than Baton Rouge can. But experts are also working on scaled-down remedies, including construction of a "curtain wall" that would bisect the city, creating a safe haven to which residents could evacuate.

So far, little has been done. Part of the problem, of course, is that excessive worrying and planning are radically at odds with the spirit of the Big Easy. Despite the damage inflicted by Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and the near miss of Andrew in 1992, New Orleans is still a place where the primary meaning of hurricane is a fruity rum drink the law lets you carry openly as you carouse in the French Quarter. While the grimmest of the doomsayers warn that New Orleans could be the next Atlantis, some laid-back residents are saying that it could just as easily become the next Venice and that after the deluge, the good times won't roll--they'll float.