Don't presume to tell me about Amsterdam, I've been there, pal! I know all about the place, very friendly people, speak english, brew great beer, cut diamonds, have a great Ven Gogh museam and a floating hotel I stayed at. Good cheese too. Nice liberal people, too bad the weather sucks.
Yes it is under sea level and they filled in a giant inlet to provide them with more land for growing. But being under sea level isn't the problem, as long as you don't have storm surges threatening to come over the top of the dykes.
NO is a bit different, sandwiched in between a lake and the Missisippi. Forget about dykes, the whole city needs to be raised up, something that couldn't have been done while it was inhabited. Just fill up the bowl with dirt and stone and keep pilling it up until it's 20 feet above sea level. Establish building codes to handle the high winds and then you've got a place that can last. And you could even bury people and not worry about the water digging them up.
:nod:
You don't need a dutchman to tell you that!
The comparison with Bangladesh is apt, as both cities are in the middle of river deltas and both are subject to severe storms and heavy rains. And there are a hell of a lot more people living in Dacca than in NO!
The threat of storm surges to the Netherlands does not come from the North Sea. It comes from the flood surge generated by heavy weather throughout Europe that drains too much water into the Rhine River and causes flooding, some severe.
Since the Rhine drains into the North Sea in and around Holland, the people there had to build canals and levees to guard against this annual flood surge, but Mother Nature being as fickle as she is, occasionally this is not enough. The pressure on the dykes has to be tested every year until perfected.
Efforts to raise the level of New Orleans certainly is one way to combat future flooding, and it has precedence. Seattle did this, quite successfully, around Pioneer Square, and they have a fascinating tour you can take there that allows you to walk the streets of Old Seattle one floor below the current street level. Their problem was tidal surges that would inundate the whole downtown area.
Of related interest, the very first Crappers used in this country were installed in Seattle. Old Thomas Crapper's device that he claimed through purchasing patents for it (he did not invent it himself) caught on big time there. The only problem was the tidal surge was, shall we say, unpredictible. Being "clever" and "hardy" individuals, the Seattle residents at first developed these tower-like outhouses to combat this tidal surge, as all Crappers drained into "Pughget" Sound back then.
But, as stated, this unpredictible tidal surge would convert the Crappers into impressive fountains at certain times of the day. God help anyone who could not time his bowel movements to these tidal surges, as they could find themselves blown clean through the roof of their outhouses at the top of a spray of ocean water forced through the pipes to douse their hineys clean up to their chins. These natural bidets had the added bonus of saving hundreds of pennies on toilet paper each year, but the citizens were getting a bit tired of flying over the city with their pants down around their ankles, screaming for someone to catch them.
Thus motivated, the citizens met near Pioneer Square to discuss what to do about this issue. Laws were considered to ban anyone from bowel movements between the hours of tidal surges, but food being unpredictably unclean back then made this alternative literally run out of steam. Putting outhouses on pylons that could sort of float up and down with the tide apparently were considered unsafe, plus some individuals claimed to get "toilet-motion" sick, and the basin needed to help allievate this illness was otherwise occupied at the same time, so after much discussion, it was voted down.
As the long day progressed, nervous citizens began glancing up in the sky in case someone might get caught as the tide came in and a flying Seattlite could do a splat-landing on their heads. At last, some bright young lad, new to the area, piped up, saying "why not raise the city to a height
ABOVE the tidal surge?"
After a moment of dead silence, uproarious laughter cracked up the crowd, splitting the sides of grizzled tidal veterans, many still sore from their last encounter with ocean water. Just then, Obidile Phartjuice landed amongst the crowd, smudging the coveralls of the loggers with unidentifiable residue. Suddenly, this idea was not so funny, and the townspeople, thus motivated, began building scaffolding on the spot to raise downtown - and the rest is history.
This is (mostly) a true story. Bet you can't pick out the parts that I embellished.
