That's an interesting dilemma. I think, just like with anything worth doing, you have to evaluate risk vs. reward. Perhaps we could get by with relocating the city of Cedar Rapids and "moving" it out of harm's way. I don't think the same could be said for New Orleans. Perhaps you're right in that it shouldn't have been settled in the first place, but clearly the United States could never really have gotten off the ground (or continue today) without free access to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.

The same could be said for Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. That port city lies lower and is at greater risk of flooding, but it is also an economic engine. For centuries, the Dutch had struggled to reclaim the surrounding countryside from the North Sea to turn it into liveable, workable real estate. In the 1950s, a catastrophic flood hit. It killed thousands. But the Dutch applied their particular waterworking genius into a remarkable artificial defense against the sea and the storm surge. They've built for themselves the Delta Works, an enormous (and expensive!) barrier system which would fall into play should the sea ever threaten to come pouring over the top again.

Clearly, it wouldn't be economical or effective to do this for every riverine town and hamlet, but for cities like New Orleans -or maybe even Baltimore -we can't really afford not to. The initial outlay in design, labor and materials would be dwarfed by any potential loss of life, rebuilding costs or insurance payouts incurred by simply shrugging our shoulders and applying band-aids like we did after Hurricane Katrina

Don't be so quick to blame Mother Nature. The levee failures are civil engineering failures, and in most cases federally directed civil engineering failures. Don't be so quick to absolve the architect and the contractor who built the levees which washed away so easily. Levee Engineering 101 says "all levees will eventually overtop so build robust levees with protective armoring to prevent scouring and melting from water."

I wasn't blaming Mother Nature. My point is that levees are human devices, flawed for any number of reasons. They'll all fail when enough time or Nature catch up to them, and we're watching that on the news. When they do, it would seem to make more economic sense to move people and infrastructure out of the way wherever possible to avoid a repeat performance. In Italy, they farm the lowlands and live on the hilltops. Makes sense.

I live in Washington, D.C., now, but I grew up in a rural Missouri county that borders the Missouri River and has two of its major tributaries running through it. Thus, the county is blessed with lots of bottomland and rich farms. Naturally, it was devestated by the 1993 and to a lesser degree 1995 floods. Since then, no one lives in the bottoms anymore. They are still farmed, but no homes or others dwellings exist on the low areas. I agree that we should encourage people who live in flood-prone areas to move to higher ground, and let some of the land go back to nature as wetlands and buffers. Last spring, the Missouri River rose to a flood stage not seen since the 95 flood, and the damage was greatly mitigated by the fact that no one lives in the bottoms and the naturalized land help absorb the brunt of the floods.

We depend on human devices to keep us safe every day - seat belts, door locks, pipelines carrying natural gas, brakes on our vehicles. If the devices are deemed to be important enough - a flood protection system, for example - they should be well designed, by professionals - the Corps of Engineers, for example. In some cases, New Orleans comes to mind since I live here, the "core" issue is the Corps! They designed a system that was flawed and doomed to fail.

Cities flourish next to rivers and oceans because you can't dock a barge or ship to a mountaintop.

No place is truly habitable on its own. Desert cities require water supplies. Any settlement outside the tropics requires heat and fuel for survival through the winters. If it's near a seismic fault line, a city ignores earthquakes at its own peril, as we tragically saw earlier this year.

If an area suffers repeated flooding, it's time for serious investigation. In New Orleans, that meant learning that the Federal government's levees were never built to standard. If they had performed to their design standard, New Orleans would have suffered nothing more than "broken branches and wet ankles", in the words of LSU Hurricane Center researcher Ivor Von Heerden.

I cannot speak to the specifics of this week's flooding in the Midwest, but whenever this New Orleanian hears "flood" and "levee" in the same sentence, I would encourage our soggy siblings to the north to make sure the Corps and whoever else was charged with maintaining their flood protection system actually did the job.

It could be dangerous to suggest where people should or shouldn't live, and where cities are located.
While it does make sense for Italy to farm/live where they do, the same cannot be said for the US. For one thing, there are many plains states with no mountains upon which to live. For another many plains states cities were founded around where our agrarian foreparents settled.
If climate change warnings are correct, Boston, New York and every city on the east coast will be hammered with major hurricanes in the future. Should we then move those cities? Who decides?
I'd also be curious to know your resources for determining it'd be more cost effective to move towns and cities than to shore up the levees.
To my way of thinking, our efforts would be better served to a) not add insult to the injury of those victims of this latest failure of the Army Corps of Engineers and
b) demand the Corps does their job.
Oh - and c) to ensure this doesn't continue to happen, establish an 8/29 commission

Because of the polar melt-off and global climatic change, we humans can expect to find less land mass for more inhabitants. If this is a choice of abandoning the lowlands or shoring up the levees, I pick shoring up the levees! Would SOMEONE please order 17 foot pilings and drive them into the New Orleans levees...This is much easier than trying to save southern Florida.

I think that the biggest threat to communites along the banks of the the Mississippi and other rivers across this nation, is the gross ignorance and mindset that people should not settle there. Who knows when or where the river will crest and cause a flood ? The Corps, that's who. If people are so easily persuaded to give up their homes and land and not rebuild, I think they are misguided and weak minded. In the first place the river banks NEED maintenance and periodic inspection by qualified engineers. Engineers who know the threat of the river and are prepared to do what is necessary to prevent such theats from ever happening, as best as humanly possible. If you were to do an inestigation right now, I feel certain that you would come up with areas of levees whos' foundations have been overlooked and neglected. People MUST get involved and write or better yet, call their representatives. Tell them you want a full investigation of the levee that broke in your area. Many call the Dutch hard-headed people. Well, look at them now, it has paid off. They have reclaimed land from the Zuider Zee (Sea) making a twelveth province, which they have used for making condominiums for the elderly in retirement years as well as a town called Lelystad. THIS is the kind of engineers we need. This is the kind of people it takes to bounce back, turn things around and set Congress straight about our neglected infastructure. It is sad to think that the technology is there but is not being used. The levees CAN be strong and high enough. I just hope people wake up like many did here in NOLA and start holding their representatives feet to the fire.

New Orleans “…should never have been settled…”—?? Frank, you are dead wrong.

You just don’t know your history.

Long before this country was a country, French explorers sailing up (what came to be) the Mississippi River made their landing on the first dry ground possible—nearly 95 miles upriver from the Gulf. They stopped and eventually settled in a place that had long been inhabited by the Houma and Tchoupatoulis native peoples. Their settlement eventually came to be known as “New Orleans”—and so it is today.

Over time, naturally, the “settlement” grew and expanded. It was a major commercial, financial and military port. So important, in fact, that some wars were fought to maintain control over it. And New Orleans helped win a war.

We Americans have very short attention spans and very little knowledge or appreciation of our history—much less anything else pertaining to the rest of the world. If you’ll do just a little searching, you will find bountiful historical record of why there was ever a settlement in New Orleans. And you might discover some of the importance of the place.

(Quick sidebar—Andrew Higgins developed his famous Landing Craft in New Orleans. He tested it in the Bayou St. John—next to City Park. He needed a watercraft that could carry great weight yet run in shallow water. It got a little bit of use on D-Day during WW2. Dwight Eisenhower lauded his effort with the quote, “…Higgins won the war…” That’s why the first WW2 Museum in America is now located in New Orleans.)

Yes, it flooded the day after Katrina. But the areas that flooded were not the original dry ground. They were lower lying areas, “suburbs” carved out of plantations to handle ever growing population. These areas were only settled AFTER drainage and levees were in place to make them habitable.

In more current times, the US Army Corps of Engineers built the levees. Under federal order. With federal money. Outside of local control.

Unfortunately, they were flawed. By that federal agency. Which means the federal government is responsible—both for damages that resulted and for making the injured citizens whole again.

Guess what? The current Midwest flooding is merely a repeat of New Orleans’ disaster. The Corps is in a tizzy once again. And, once again, you want to blame the victims. The citizens were wrong to be living on a flood plain…

No. The citizens are only at fault for trusting their government when it assured them the levees were safe.

Are you saying the government lied?

Should people rebuild?

Having suffered great losses in Katrina, my complex and complicated answers boil down to this simple saying, "HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS".

It's hard to take discussions regarding weather-related relocation vs. rebuilding seriously for the sole reason that it's virutally imposible to define (all) the situations where relocation would be manadatory, and it's also impossible to define where the people who live in these areas would be relocated to - much less how and when this would all take place. Instead, the practical (and most economic) solution is to apply the appropriate amount of resource to building/maintaining the infrastructure that's in place - whether it be bridges, roadways, or waterways. In an article in the Huffington Post on June 11, Georgianne Nienaber correctly highlights the fact that since 1977, the congressional allocation of funds for civil works has declined dramtically and steadily. The Army Corps of Engineers has, by it's own admission, a massive backlog of congressionally APPROVED BUT UNFUNDED waterways projects - something like 20 years worth of work at present levels of funding. (When do you think all those important projects approved for your region of the country will be completed?) Waterways are like bridges and roads - they need to be maintained to provide their value to society. When waterways fail, we ask the question about rebuiding or relocating. When bridges fail, we never question the wisdom of rebuilding, but we do demand an answer to the question "how could this have been avoided?" With waterways, the corps backlog makes the answer obvious - fund appropriately what is approved, and complete the project when it's needed. (It took the corps 40 years to piece together the flood protection system for New Orleans that congress "approved" in 1965, and when Katrina came knocking it was still INCOMPLETE). You really need to ask why - over the past 30 years - congress continues to approve projects that it doesn't fund, and why we continue to let them do that to us year after year. The old Fram oil filter advertisment says it best when it comes to maintenance - pay me a little now, or pay me a lot more later. Our federal representatives have chosen to subject us all to the "pay me later" risk and that strategy has burned us repeatedly with lives lost and a lot more dollars later. If you really want to make a policy arguement when it comes to waterways, shift the conversation from "rebuild or relocate?" to calling for your federal representatives in both parties to adequatetly fund and oversee the building and maintenance of their "approved" civil works projects, and do so to standards that adequately protect the safety of the society that is impacted by these projects. It's not rocket science - but even if it were, we're shown we're pretty good at that.

Your defeatist attitude just magnifies the fact that American engineering standards are in no way competitive. Why not oursource the water management? Get the military out of it, they just follow orders given by Congress under the direction of the crooked, crony developers that they owe. Does any other country handle infrastructure protection without payoffs and influence?

It is an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, the nation needs infrastructure such as ports to sustain its economy (look at the devastating economic effects shutting down the flooded sections of the rivers will have). In order to have a fully-staffed port, one needs employees. Employees need housing, drug stores, grocery stores, doctors, dentists, gas stations, car lots, auto repair stores, Laundromats, hospitals, law enforcement, courts, jails, local government, venues for pursuing hobbies, entertainment on off-hours, and each provider of the above services also needs the same. So in short order one has a town or hamlet or Manhattan developing around a port that supports the nation's economy. Certainly this is true in Baltimore or did Baltimore's creation and growth have absolutely nothing to do with its' port?

On that proverbial other hand one has a bunch of uninformed/under-informed citizens who believe their tax dollars should only support them in their little lives in their own little cities and they rage "don't rebuild flooded areas with my money!" Politicians and pundits are quick to take on this seemingly popular fight. Many of these towns were not built yesterday, or last month on a whim, but as in the case of New Orleans almost 300 years ago for economic and strategic purposes. These ports provide for the flow of commercial goods – corn, lumber, steel, coffee, tea, petroleum products, etc. that truly fuel our nation. These ports provided military installations that protected our shores from foreign sea-faring enemies at our inception. The Louisiana Purchase was all about gaining access to the Port of New Orleans and the Mississippi River for commerce and protection.

What are the costs to the raging taxpayers should we decide to relocate EVERY at-risk community? Where would we put communities like Miami, Houston, New York City, Baltimore, and Boston? The question isn’t should we relocate these to “higher/safer” ground, it is how can we protect them from the absolute worst case scenario?

Adopt the Dutch mentality and invest in our infrastructure. Be revolutionary in today’s myopic American culture and look at the long-term scenarios. In the long-term it makes more sense to build against a 1 in 5,000 year storm than to further inflate the cost of goods by ferrying workers in and out of port cities so those in the rare areas that aren’t hit by any natural disasters can say “they didn’t rebuild with my money.”

It is interesting that you find it okay for the crop fields to be flooded and devastated because it is good for the fields in the long run. You do realize that in addition to food prices rising because of the escalating fuel costs they will now also rise because of supply deficits? The waterlogged farmers who lost their crops aren’t the only ones who will be crying in their Wheaties; you and I will too as we cruise the grocery aisles. What about protecting the farmers' investments in America's food supply?

Rebuild intelligently or relocate in a knee-jerk reaction? To rebuild intelligently, the US Army Corps of Engineers should have outside, independent oversight. A 8/29 Investigation is necessary to ensure that the fatal mistakes that led to the federal flood of New Orleans are not repeated anywhere else. By the Corps admission there are at least 122 levees in imminent danger of failing. Maybe the communities in the vicinity of those levees should look at relocating. Any ideas on where to put Sacramento? How about Baltimore, got Corps' levees?

Thanks for the thoughtful discussion. This is great. So often online threads get unnecessarily nasty. I did not mean to suggest we should (or could) relocate intact cities, or abandon vital ports like New Orleans. I only suggest that more consideration should be given to opportunities to relocate homes and businesses, rather than rebuilding in place, after they are destroyed or badly damaged by floods. Isolated homes, or even small towns along the rivers could be rebuilt high on the river bluffs rather than in the flood plains. It's not a radical concept. It's been done before. We just need to do more of it.

Does it make any sense to spend millions to reinsure and rebuild storm-ravaged vacation homes, roads, water and sewer lines on barrier beaches that will always be in the path of future hurricanes? If you want to build a million-dollar beach house on sand 50 feet from the surf - fine. You understand the risks you're taking with your investment. Stay as long as you can. But don't ask me to spend tax dollars to rebuild the roads, water and sewer to your ruin in the wake of Hurricane Flossie so you can rebuild the place in the path of the next storm.

As for the Army Corps of Engineers, I get a sense from these comments that folks who live with these levees that they're less than satisfied with the product. And that's my point. Human beings will never be able to construct and maintain a vast system of levees that will hold back the rivers forever, everywhere they're built. They will eventually fail, or be overwhelmed by a storm or flood. Better to give Nature the respect she deserves and back away wherever we can.

There's no big dilemma here. Rebuilding in a known area of flooding should forever release any government department for ever being responsible to these people again. Simple really.

There are some flood protection subtlties that seem to be missing from this discussion – rebuilding at elevations higher that a science-based high water mark.

It should be a no-brainer and a civic responsibility to either require or motivate rebuilders to make their homes safe from future floods. In Louisiana, the US taxpayers were kind enough to offer grants from up to four Federally funded programs to provide up to $90,000 just to elevate a home. You would think that would be the end of the story but it isn’t. These programs have dribbled money over a period that will exceed 3.5 years. The programs have continually changed their policies and one, a FEMA HMGP funded mitigation grant has yet to be defined. The most searing fault is that many home rebuilders received money for their second floor (HUD compensation grant) more than a year (and counting) before they expect to get HUD elevation money for their first floor

The US Army Corps of Engineers admits it has systems management responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to inform all of the stakeholders, including home owners living in the shadow of their “systems” about the risks of relying on them for protection. This they haven’t down. Their performance has been so deficient that a senior respected official of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has taken the Corps to tasl for not reaching out to “protected” residents to inform them that their homes are a critical line of defense in the overall levee protection system. This is one of the reasons that the Corps itself declared that the New Orleans Levee protection works were a “system in name only.”

On the issue of holding the Corps accountable – it hasn’t worked. A more effective approach is for the ASCE to bring an ethics action against individual professional engineers who “sealed” documents based on engineering practices that are widely recognized as not holding public safety paramount. Establish professional accountability paralleling that of medicine or airline pilots would go a long way motivate safety in design, construction and operation of life-critical public works such as levees, dams and bridges.

The Corps poor performance has been abetted by failures in other Federal programs. FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) rates and policies are devoid of any science. FEMA’s base flood elevations (BFE) are way below historic high water marks. Houses that were built below sea level before the NFIP was established are grandfathered in to the program. NFIP rates are not based on actuarially valid data and, in fact, are seemingly based on politics at all levels of government.

Finally, civic authorities have allowed residents to reduce their assessed damage. This has incentivized and allowed many residents to renovate below sea level. At present the ratio between those who revovated at grade and those who elevated at least to the politically determined BFE is at least 6:1

In summary, there are alternatives to not rebuilding in flood plains that are based on sound science and affordable public policy. Tax payers everywhere should insist that political leadership reform our flood protection policies and programs