The “Problem” of New Orleans and Diminishing Sustainability of Mississippi River Management—Future Options
1
Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, College of the Coast and Environment, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
2
Comite Resources, Inc., P.O. Box 66596, Baton Rouge, LA 70896, USA
3
Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office, Department of Public Safety and Corrections, Baton Rouge, LA 70806, USA
4
USACE, 7400 Leake Ave, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
†
Has retired.
Academic Editor: Thomas Meixner
Water 2021, 13(6), 813; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13060813
Received: 2 February 2021
/
Revised: 3 March 2021
/
Accepted: 5 March 2021
/
Published: 16 March 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Management, Conservation and Restoration in Deltaic Ecosystems with Special Emphasis on the Mississippi Delta)
Climate change forcings are having significant impacts in coastal Louisiana today and increasingly affect the future of New Orleans, a deltaic city mostly below sea level, which depends on levee and pumps to protect from a host of water-related threats. Precipitation has increased in the Mississippi River basin generally, increasing runoff, so that in recent years the Mississippi River has been above flood stage for longer periods of time both earlier and later in the year, increasing the likelihood that hurricane surge, traditionally confined to summer and fall, may compound effects of prolonged high water on river levees. The Bonnet Carré Spillway, just upstream of New Orleans has been operated more often and for longer periods of time in recent years than ever before in its nearly 100-year history. Because all rain that falls within the city must be pumped out, residents have been exposed to interior flooding more frequently as high-intensity precipitation events can occur in any season. A sustainable path for New Orleans should involve elevating people and sensitive infrastructure above flood levels, raising some land levels, and creating water storage areas within the city. Management of the lower Mississippi River in the future must include consideration that the river will exceed its design capacity on a regular basis. The river must also be used to restore coastal wetlands through the use of diversions, which will also relieve pressure on levees.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
Mississippi River; coastal restoration; Mississippi River and Tributaries Project; river diversions; New Orleans; climate change
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Day, J.W.; Hunter, R.; Kemp, G.P.; Moerschbaecher, M.; Brantley, C.G. The “Problem” of New Orleans and Diminishing Sustainability of Mississippi River Management—Future Options. Water 2021, 13, 813. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13060813
AMA Style
Day JW, Hunter R, Kemp GP, Moerschbaecher M, Brantley CG. The “Problem” of New Orleans and Diminishing Sustainability of Mississippi River Management—Future Options. Water. 2021; 13(6):813. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13060813
Chicago/Turabian StyleDay, John W., Rachael Hunter, G. P. Kemp, Matthew Moerschbaecher, and Christopher G. Brantley. 2021. "The “Problem” of New Orleans and Diminishing Sustainability of Mississippi River Management—Future Options" Water 13, no. 6: 813. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13060813
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
