How do we deal with the New Orleans Soup Bowl after we finally get everyone out, shore up the levee and complete the 1.7-month draining period. Well unfortunately due to the damage, sewage, dead bodies and disease, we must burn it to protect our civilization from the spread of deadly epidemics. Once the water is drained it will look like a bomb went off anyway, it is already a living hell, simply finish it off and burn it to the ground. And then evaluate and decide if starting over makes sense? It will not be good for farmland due to the chemicals in the ground water. It will not be good for much of anything in those lower areas. Perhaps lake expansion makes more sense. Make the lower areas a giant addition to the port? That makes sense. But putting more housing below sea level is stupid. Only poor people will live there, after this last disaster. The levee on that side is not worth redoing. The real estate values there have truly sunken.

Have a company like Bechtel Corporation come in and build a new levee across the higher ground, use those lower areas for marinas, parking of port barges and assets like tug boats, etc.

http://www.bechtel.com/

That company is completely without limits, both politically, globally and the size of the project hardly concerns them. They are totally nuts and can make anything work and have been doing it for 100-years. Look at some of their projects; no other company on Earth has the balls to do such a project.

We must drain it, burn what's left at the lower levels, put in another different higher ground system which is at sea level and start there. Dig out the other lower level and refill it as part of an expanded port to serve the growing needs of our population base and support our exports from the highly productive Midwest. Let's think ahead and keep our emotions out of this. We must build our Nation's Infrastructure strong as can be for the next 200-years of our prosperity. Think on this.