**SOMETHING** called New Orleans must and will be maintained and protected, because, as noted above, the port and other things are too important to be lost. It is just a matter of working out how to avoid total disasters like this again.

We know that with modern engineering, we could, in time, creat something like the Dutch use.....but it cannot be done overnight! It will take YEARS to build a strong, reasonably safe,environmentally friendly levee/flood wall system for a selected portion of the N. Orleans area. In the meantime, storms are becoming stronger and more common! We cannot throw an unlimited budget at this situation.
   Even the Dutch don't try to do the ridiculous.

New Orleans should not exist as a major city, but we know that history and nostalgia and bureaucracy will ensure (not 'insure' *wry grin*) that it survives in some form to allow tourism and the necessary infrastructure to support the port and allow workers to live near their jobs..etc....but it would be cheaper in the long run to build rapid transit to housing in dryer areas to the north than to try to protect areas which are inherently unsafe.