Rebuilding New Orleans

House Speaker Dennis Hastert was correct. It makes no sense to rebuild New Orleans just like it was: a city built below sea level protected by a patchwork quilt of levees and an underdesigned and poorly engineered pumping system. But as the speaker further explained, done correctly, New Orleans will be and should be rebuilt.  

More important, New Orleans needs to be rethought. New Orleans needs to become a community that is engineered and designed to live with water rather than in fear of water. To put the problem in perspective, if Venice, Italy, can exist 365 days a year with water, New Orleans can be redesigned to coexist with water for a few days each year, if necessary. But that requires some rethinking.  

It probably means a smaller community. It probably means engineering utility systems and pumping systems that are elevated and protected above the projected level of floodwaters. It probably means designating some of the lowest land areas as water-gathering reservoirs to relieve the pressure of incoming floodwaters and to move water along while breaches are repaired. It probably means redesigning buildings so that ground-floor areas below expected floodwater levels can withstand a flood for reasonable periods of time. It probably means sky bridges and vertical evacuation shelters scattered throughout populated areas. And it probably means flood protection levees that either have redundancies (like the Dutch), or more easily reparable features.  

What an amazing and exciting challenge it would be to create our own American Venice, mostly dry but ready for water should an act of nature or man again turn a makeshift torrent of water loose upon its magnificent and culturally unique corridors.  

When New York City was faced with the awful tragedy of September 11, design teams competed for the challenge of rebuilding the World Trade Center so that the stunning image of the Twin Towers might be re-created with less risk and less danger of a historical repeat.  

The time is now right for a national competition among our nation's best and brightest engineers and architects to rethink and re-engineer New Orleans so that it can be re-created with less risk and a more assured future.  

Katrina will not be the last storm to assault New Orleans, but it should be the last one to render New Orleans so desperate that we harbor thoughts of abandoning it.  

There will be no jazz funeral for this once-great city if we are wise enough to give it the chance to live, not just until the next Katrina, but through all the perils that it and other great American cities face in so many different forms. Let us challenge the genius of American innovation to show us the way, even while the last polluted pond of floodwater is being pumped from the streets of New Orleans, and while we still grieve the terrible toll of human suffering and death the city, its sister parishes and the state of Louisiana have endured.

BILLY TAUZIN
President and CEO
PhRMA
Washington