Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
I don't know why daylighting the culverts is untenable. The Corps is spending tens of millions to rebuild the box culverts Uptown. Eventually the other ones will need to be replaced, and daylighting might prove to be cheaper than direct replacement. The savings could be used to put in landscape treatments to allow for public access and recreation, and to make it beautiful, unlike the awful ones in Jefferson Parish.
The trick is maintenance. You'd need to prevent dumping and prevent the standing water from breeding mosquitos. You'd also have to plan the new ditches carefully so that they don't prevent future transit lines, trails, or roadway expansion in the neutral ground.
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I definitely agree with you and I didn't mean to sound so defeatist. It's just New Orleans doesn't seem to care about new ways to manage stormwater since the Wood Screw Pump. The Corps does not seem like an agency particularly concerned with innovation -- and definitely not one that is interested in the quality of life effects of their decisions. And when the City needs FEMA money (and thus FEMA approval) for their infrastructure decisions, that's a recipe for doing the same ol' same ol' that the bureaucrats at those agencies know exactly how to rate.
The reality is it's really the box culverts that are untenable. The city will never be able to afford to replace them when they start to fail or to do preventative maintenance on them to extend their lifespans. The city cannot afford to treat the water properly before it runs into the Lake, spoiling the water quality. And during a flood event, processing all the water through the system is untenable as well: you can't move water quick enough and we will continue to have neighborhood street flooding until we learn to handle the water at its source.
As is to be expected, the Pacific Northwest leads the nation in addressing these issues. I though this project in Portland was particularly interesting, where a 7-foot wide and 50-foot long curb extension could process all the stormwater runoff from 10,000-square feet of asphalt hardscape:
http://pruned.blogspot.com/2008/02/h...y-in-post.html Here the caveat is (a) the street has a gradient that doesn't exist in New Orleans, (b) the Pac. Northwest has lots of rain but when it comes down it comes down at a much slower rate of accumulation than New Orleans and (c) the system struggles with sediment build-up that must be cleaned. One would expect even more of that in New Orleans and less of a commitment to maintenance. Still, very interesting to see the concept.
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