The Extraordinary vs. the Everyday Catastrophe: Part 3

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But fundamental to the whole “Gutter to Gulf “and “Dutch Dialogues” enterprises I personally think can be traced back to one simple thing – ALL of New Orleans before the late-19th century was at or above sea level. I will say it again – at or above sea level. When the Mississippi River naturally flooded and deposited its rich sediment, in effect consistently growing the earth, the water naturally drained to Lake Pontchartrain to the north – again all at or above sea level. It was not until the invention of pump technology (that was exported to the Netherlands) that the back-swamps of New Orleans could be pumped and drained for relentless development, mostly post-WWII suburban slab-on-grade style. In effect, by the mid-to late-20th century there was not much water to be seen or found within the friendly leveed confines of what had become both an urban and suburban Orleans Parish.

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Pre-levee condition of Mississippi River and wetlands. image credit: Gutter to Gulf studio – Washington University students Philip Burkhardt, Erin Dorr, Jonathan Dowse, Brendan Wittstruck

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Post-levee condition of Mississippi River and wetlands. image credit: Gutter to Gulf studio – Washington University students Philip Burkhardt, Erin Dorr, Jonathan Dowse, Brendan Wittstruck

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New Orleans topography, PRE pumping and draining technology; image credit - Gutter to Gulf studio – Washington University students Philip Burkhardt, Erin Dorr, Jonathan Dowse, Brendan Wittstruck

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New Orleans topography, POST pumping and draining technology; image credit - Gutter to Gulf studio – Washington University students Philip Burkhardt, Erin Dorr, Jonathan Dowse, Brendan Wittstruck

This decision was critical and lacked any foresight whatsoever for what would follow – the city began to sink – a lot.


According to Richard Campanella (who consistently and graciously delivers awesome presentations to the Gutter to Gulf effort), portions of New Orleans neighborhoods such as Lakeview, Gentilly and Pontchartrain Park (where Wendell Pierce is from) are now 6-8 feet below sea level and portions of New Orleans East are now 10-12 feet below sea level. Quoting Campanella, “The stages of the Mississippi usually oscillate between 6-10 feet in the summer and fall, to 12-16 feet in the late winter and early spring. Sometimes it's as low as 3-4 feet or as high as 17+, at which time they open the Bonnet Carre Spillway (upriver from New Orleans). The highest it's been in the last 50 years has been just under 20 feet; the lowest has been 0.7 feet.”

Do the simple math of elevation difference between the higher river and the low-lying neighborhoods.

How the hell did we let this happen?

Campanella continues, "The soil composition of New Orleans consists of sand, silt, clay, organic matter, and water. And in pre-20th century, there was lots more  groundwater than there is today. The largest particle size of this mixture is sand – picture that! Anyway, when the city was drained in the early 1900s, the removal of that groundwater opened up cavities in the soil body. That dryness allowed the organic matter to decompose, which created more spaces. Clay, silt, and sand particles settled into those cavities. The soil had only one way to go – down.  And New Orleans continues to go down,  although at different rates at different times and places.”

But many buildings and major sub-surface drainage infrastructure remain more or less at the same constant level.  

Wait a minute. How is this?

Most buildings and the massive drainage culverts, some large enough to drive a bus through, are friction pile-supported. Therefore, they don’t sink. They may weeble and wobble a bit – that gives them that special funky New Orleanian “je ne sais quoi” – but in effect they don’t sink like non pile-supported earth. Paraphrasing David Waggonner – if the land continues to sink and the structures remain at constant height, imagine a future apocalyptic New Orleans high up on stilts. This may be a bit hyperbolic, but it does raise the fundamental question of what needs to be done.

And herein lies the irony of all ironies – New Orleans is thirsty for water, not just for sazeracs.

New Orleans is not just thirsty – New Orleans is starving. New Orleans is a humid desert, if that makes any sense, water-locked by an inaccessible oasis. The answer for a future sustainable New Orleans is simple – intelligently re-introduce water in what wants to be a deltaic, watery, dynamic urban landscape. Here are some thoughts endorsed by Gutter to Gulf and Dutch Dialogues:

1) Allocate different scaled and usable areas for retaining, detaining and filtering water – this includes smarter architecture and infrastructure types that can help delay transference of water, in addition to introducing lots of water-loving plantings, like cypress trees, to uptake water – in turn offsetting pressures from the overburdened existing drainage system. A mature cypress tree can uptake 440 gallons (9 bathtubs) of water a day.

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Washington Avenue canal – morning, February, 2010. image credit: Gutter to Gulf, Spring 2010. Washington University student – Brandon Hall

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Washington Avenue canal – afternoon – same day, February, 2010. image credit: Gutter to Gulf, Spring 2010. Washington University student – Brandon Hall

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Mature cypress tree uptake capability. image credit: Gutter to Gulf, Spring 2010. Washington University students – Philip Burkhardt, Erin Dorr, Jonathan Dowse, Brendan Wittstruck

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Proposal for a “water neutral” house and lot for the Broadmoor neighborhood. image credit: Gutter to Gulf, Spring 2010. Washington University students – Sofia Balters, Brandon Hall, Jim Peraino. Design entered in the USGBC 2010 Natural Talent Design Competition: Small, Green, Affordable. Presented by Salvation Army’s EnviRenew Initiative

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Proposal for a “water neutral” house and lot for the Broadmoor neighborhood. image credit: Gutter to Gulf, Spring 2010. Washington University students – Sofia Balters, Brandon Hall, Jim Peraino. Design entered in the USGBC 2010 Natural Talent Design Competition: Small, Green, Affordable. Presented by Salvation Army’s EnviRenew Initiative

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Proposal for a tank farm along major highways to collect storm-water runoff. image credit: Gutter to Gulf, Spring 2009. Washington University student – Zachary Gong

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Proposal for a tank farm along major highways to collect storm-water runoff. image credit: Gutter to Gulf, Spring 2009. Washington University student – Zachary Gong

2) Re-charge the existing constantly shifting and variegated soil types with water to re-balance the water table level and therefore stop the soil from moving so much and wreaking havoc on structures, streets and existing water infrastructure. The recent report “The Price of Civilization” from the Bureau of Government Research noted that an astonishing 70% of water in New Orleans is UN-metered, due to leaking infrastructure!

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Example of re-configured street, park and neutral ground based on soil requirements (New Orleanian for median). image credit: Gutter to Gulf, Spring 2010. Washington University student – Julian Pelekanakis

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Example of re-configured street, park and neutral ground based on soil requirements (New Orleanian for median). image credit: Gutter to Gulf, Spring 2010. Washington University student – Julian Pelekanakis

3) As the third Dutch Dialogues workshop advocates – in addition to promoting an economically feasible alternate to the US Army Corps of Engineers proposal for the permanent pumps at Lake Pontchartrain and their correlating outfall canals in drainage basin 1 of New Orleans – create a robust circulating and highly visible water system. This is not limited to just fresh water, but also could add brackish water into the system (brackish water is part saline water that mosquitoes really hate) from Lake Pontchartrain via the historic Bayou St. John and Lafitte Corridor. This would not only supplement and tie into the existing drainage network, but also spatially re-connect the French Quarter to Lake Pontchartrain. In historical context, this connection is exactly why the City was founded where it was in the first place – this was the shortest portage length from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain (BTW – a secret short cut that the Native Americans graciously gave to Bienville and Iberville). See www.dutchdialogues.com for more information.

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1798 map of New Orleans. Image courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection

4) Water management is not just about public stewardship, but private responsibility as well. We cannot simply rely on the US Army Corps of Engineers, the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board and the Public Works department for protection. Private owners of lots and buildings need to shoulder some of the water management responsibility as well. The first step would be to incentivize such private actions.

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Tools to make a marshland and places for water. image credit: Gutter to Gulf, Spring 2010. University of Toronto students – Jenny Bukovec, Denise Pinto

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Tools to make a marshland and places for water. image credit: Gutter to Gulf, Spring 2010. University of Toronto students – Jenny Bukovec, Denise Pinto

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Tools to make a marshland and places for water. image credit: Gutter to Gulf, Spring 2010. University of Toronto students – Jenny Bukovec, Denise Pinto

In other words, re-introduce a variety of water conditions, cognisant of varied soil types and existing neighborhood conditions and land uses. Weave water within the complex and exquisite urban morphology that already exists in New Orleans – a seductive hierarchy of radial streets that dance and meander with the Mississippi River – defining its rich aggregate of differentiated, diverse neighborhoods. Many of which already have vast open public and private spaces.

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300 foot wide West End Boulevard neutral ground, Lakeview neighborhood (no existing below-grade drainage – previous location of New Basin Canal). image credit: photo by Derek Hoeferlin, Spring 2010

But let’s be clear about one thing – this is exactly the opposite of forced removal of neighborhoods. If you want to go there, you might as well write off everything downriver from Baton Rouge, since it’s all a “flood plain” anyway.

The world is one big watershed.

Once again, all this said is not about the extra-ordinary catastrophe. It is about everyday storm-water management and specifically for New Orleans, how everyday storm-water management fits into the larger scope of regional wetland restoration and environmental stewardship, coupled with multiple lines of defense from storms and their surges. The ginormous Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West Closure storm barrier to block off the dysfunctional Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) is fully under construction and due for completion in 2011, but the general consensus still is significant wetland restoration is the priority for survival.

And maybe most importantly, storm-water management is not just specific to New Orleans – it is a priority for any metropolitan landscape, nationally and of course globally.

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Localized flooding in East St. Louis, Spring 2010. image credit: photo by Derek Hoeferlin

To answer Jess’ question about water management and culture, again I think there’s a simple answer.

WATER IS THE SOURCE OF ALL CULTURES. And the site of New Orleans, problematic as it may be, was founded because of strategic confluences of waters and the subsequent cultural relationships to these waters. The mixing of Native-African-European (and most recently Asian and Latin) Americans.

Many water cultures, like the Khmer in Cambodia, set the gold standard for integrated water management developments of their time – every aspect of their lives was tied to water – their culture was rooted in their dynamic landscape.

Cheesy as this sounds – water is life. We just need to get back on the same page of learning to live with water, not to fight water with what are band-aid, static solutions. Cultural awareness of the ground needs to be fundamental and foundational, and water is the primary component for this fundamental foundation, part of a dynamic system. All cultures have their roots with coexistence with water. There is no denying that. Many water cultures, like the Khmer in Cambodia, set the gold standard for integrated water management developments of their time – every aspect of their lives was tied to water – their culture was rooted in their dynamic landscape. But according to a theory presented in the July, 2009 issue of National Geographic, possibly due to decades of drought and environmental upheaval, eventually the Khmer started to tinker, in an ad-hoc manner, with their ingeniously integrated system. They therefore undermined their own brilliance – in effect they turned their backs on water and resorted to a band-aided static system. As a result, their civilization was severely compromised, eventually sacked by rivals, and collapsed.

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Moat, Angkor, Cambodia, Spring 2010. image credit: photo by Derek Hoeferlin

Therein lies the cautionary tale for not just New Orleans, but every delta and watershed condition worldwide – and there are lots of them. As Bruce Lindsey, Dean of the College & Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design at Washington University in St. Louis, says, “the world is one big watershed.”

We’ve just lost sight of, and are blind to our innate connection to water as the source of anything and everything.

If New Orleans does not embrace water as its fundamental, foundational and ordering principle, “a within our sights-within our minds” mentality (with potentially beautiful and dynamic spatial results), New Orleans may die. As designers, we cannot allow this to happen. Can we?

So five years after Hurricane Katrina, I’m an architect in it for the long haul. Are you?


Derek Hoeferlin
August 29, 2010

5 years ago, Hurricane Katrina made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane near Buras, Louisiana. At least 1,836 people died along with $81 billion in damage.

This was a result of poorly designed and maintained navigation waterways, such as the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, and the lack of floodgates and pumping stations at the sites where the New Orleans outfall canals meet Lake Pontchartrain.  These allowed for the funneling of catastrophic storm surge to the city and surrounding parishes and then breached a poorly designed and maintained flood protection system. But compounding this man-made catastrophe was a city that had been pumped and drained dry in the 20th century causing it to sink, coupled with rapid wetland loss along the coast.

If we fix the – everyday – catastrophes of a sinking city and disappearing wetlands, New Orleans will be less likely to fill up like a stagnant bowl of water or get inundated with storm surge. Therefore we – as tax-paying citizens – will not have to solely rely or trust a perimeter line of defense designed by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

DEREK HOEFERLIN is a registered architect and urban designer with his own practice, a senior architect at H3 Studio, Inc. in St. Louis, and collaborates with Waggonner & Ball Architects of New Orleans, most notably the “Dutch Dialogues” initiative. He is a senior lecturer at the Sam Fox School College & Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design at Washington University in St. Louis, where his students’ work has been highly recognized and publicized. Derek and his architecture and urban design students collaborate with University of Toronto landscape architecture faculty and students on the “Gutter to Gulf” initiative which advocates that water planning be fundamental for New Orleans. The Sam Fox School awarded Derek a 2009/2010 Outstanding Teaching Award; and, a 2010/2011 Creative Activity Grant for “Gutter to Gulf Goes Global” to begin comparative delta/watershed research between the Mekong, Mississippi and Rhine/Meuse.

Derek was a full-time employee with Waggonner & Ball Architects from 1997-2003 where held primary roles on AIA award winning projects in Louisiana and China. With H3 Studio, Inc. he was a District Plan Project Manager for the Unified New Orleans Plan (UNOP) in 2006. In 2009 with Ian Caine, Derek tied for first-place in the “Rising Tides” design competition seeking solutions for sea-level rise in San Francisco. Derek and Ian are currently finalists in the “Build a Better Burb” design competition for retrofitting Long Island downtowns. With H3 Studio, he is currently part of the Behnisch Architekten team as a finalist for “Framing a Modern Masterpiece: The City, the Arch, the River | 2015” to reinvigorate areas surrounding the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Derek has presented his New Orleans work at several national design and planning conferences and has contributed his thoughts on disaster, recovery and long-term rebuilding to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and St. Louis Beacon.

Derek holds Master of Architecture degrees from Tulane and Yale.

JESS GARZ has served as the sole staff person for Transforma since 2007. In addition she conducts research for the Urban Institute on how arts and cultural activity influences the health of communities throughout the country. She is also working as the interim project director on the Multi-Tenant Arts Facility Project for the National Performance Network. Previously she worked on various aspects of the post-Katrina recovery of New Orleans with an urban-planning firm, H3 Studio; an architecture firm, Waggonner & Ball Architects; and the Tulane City Center, the community outreach program of the Tulane School of Architecture. Garz holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis, where she was a student in Derek Hoeferlin's first post-Katrina design studio in 2006. Jess will begin graduate studies in city planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fall of 2010.

STAN STREMBICKI is currently a professor of art in the College of Art at Washington University in Saint Louis where he has taught since 1982. He has exhibited though out the USA and internationally and has taught in Florence, Italy since 1990. He was granted a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1993. His work from the Katrina portfolio was recently purchased by the Louisiana State Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Kresge Art Museum.

Later this semester, Derek Hoeferlin and Stan Strembicki will be taking students from their respective disciplines – architecture and photography – to New Orleans for documentation and research.

This article was first published by Archinect on 10 Sept, 2010 and it has been republished by Architects for Peace with due permission from its authors.

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