I know, the words I write here will be considered sacrilege by folks who live or once lived in the city called New Orleans, I hate being the one to rain on someone’s parade, but since we don’t have a Paul Revere riding around shouting about the coming of the next horror if we spend big bucks and make big efforts to try to rebuild the dead city, somebody has to begin to spread the word.

New Orleans is ten feet below sea level. Should we ignore this fact because happy times have been spent on its swampy ground?

New Orleans, we are told by some, can be stopped from sliding into all of that salt water surrounding it, if only we pile the levees higher and make them stronger. Should we ignore the fact that the higher the levees the deeper the floods that will follow?

What actually caused the almost total destruction of New Orleans? And was it inevitable?

According to Klaus Jacob, a Columbia University, disaster risk management expert, in his article published in the “Houston Chronicle,” Sept 11, 2005, Katrina was not a natural disaster. Katrina’s effect on New Orleans was the direct result of a social, political, human and engineering disaster. Katrina’s attack on New Orleans was inevitable and, easily, might have been worse. Had Katrina’s eye landed just west of the city, the storm surge and wind would have been more destructive in New Orleans than on the MS side. New Orleans would have experienced faster flooding and a much greater loss of life.

Jacob reminds us that the Army Corps of Engineers in the middle 20th century was charged with protecting N.O. from floods. The Corps took defensive measures to keep the river and N.O.’s canals confined to defined pathways. These measures did serve to prevent many floods, but, also, prevented the movement of sediments in to build up the areas that were growing lower and lower. As a result the land sank while the defenses were being repeatedly raised and strengthened.

No matter the admirable intentions of the engineers, the defenses were never designed to protect NO against a direct hit by a category five hurricane or by the eye’s landfall east of the city in a category four.

We should not forget that the level of the Gulf, itself, has begun its inevitable rise, which, in the estimate of the scientific community, will reach possibly to three feet and will rise more and more rapidly as time passes.

If rebuilt, what is in New Orleans’ future?

New Orleans, no matter what, will no longer exist in 100 years or even sooner.

These are geological realities that must be taken into consideration by all who are concerned about the fate of this playground of the south. Jacob tells us that some of the city can be saved if transformed into a floating city with buildings on platforms. The new New Orleans could become an American Venice. Buffer zones could be established to protect oil production, refining and transshipment facilities. Engineering talent would have to go to work designing anchoring of the platforms to withstand the fury of storms, but this could be done.

We may all mourn the loss of a city, which celebrated life so beautifully with music, food, liquor and parades, but we should realize that the story of the loss of a great city is not a new story. The history of the world is filled with tales of cities sinking into water, mud, sand, and crevices or being covered by hot lava. Down through the ages, cities have been destroyed and new cities have sprung up elsewhere. It has only recently been learned that the ancient cities of Canopus and Herakleion sank into 25 feet of water in Abu Qir Bay due to Nile flooding.

Some of present day China’s major cities are sinking due to the withdrawal of water from below the surface of the ground and the presence of too many high rise buildings in a given area. Buildings are beginning to topple.

New Orleans is but another page in the book of history. Its loss was as inevitable as the rising and setting of our sun. Rebuilding it will be to spend our fortune on a city sinking quickly into sand and water. We should spend our money to build concrete cities elsewhere, designed to last for a multitude of future generations, not build in New Orleans “bowl” just for the two or less than two generations that will be able to enjoy living in a rebuilt New Orleans.

An American Venice should be our choice.

Contact Joan Hough at joanhough@aol.com.