Between Logos and Eros: New Orleans' Confrontation with Modernity Page: 7
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control the environment in and around New Orleans. The result is a city much like
Calvino's fictional Octavia, a tenuous edifice that depends on a convoluted web of
engineering marvels and jerry-rigged innovations to make life possible in an underwater
city. Only through an elaborate configuration of levees, pumps, bayous, drainage canals,
embankments, seawalls, jetties, breakwaters, and spillways is New Orleans made
habitable (see Figure 1).
On the eve of Hurricane Katrina the Orleans Levee District consisted of 129 miles
of levees and floodwalls, 189 floodgates, 97 flood valves, and two flood control
structures (Orleans Levee District). The levees and floodwalls act as barriers to water
rushing in from the river and lake, but they also trap water in the city. In order to keep
rain and flood water from collecting in the deep parts of the bowl, water must constantly
be pumped out. To this end, ninety miles of subsurface canals (many large enough to
drive a bus through), another ninety miles of open canals, twenty-two pumping stations,
and thirteen underpass stations drain over 61,000 acres in the Orleans and Jefferson
parishes. In an average year the drainage system expels 12.9 billion cubic feet of
rainwater from the region's lowlands. Figure 2 below illustrates the extensive barrier
system lining the river, the lake, and the canals between the two.
Mississippi River New Orleans city centre northern sub u rbs Lake Pontchartrain
Katrina level foodwall Katnn level
l m Katrina flood level builtilevee I designlevel
normal level - normal level
peat ele -ve--natural-r:ver levee. -
--5-m older delta sediments nedge peat
Figure 1: Cross-section of New Orleans (Waltham 2005, 228).
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Moore, Erin Christine. Between Logos and Eros: New Orleans' Confrontation with Modernity, thesis, May 2008; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc6073/m1/12/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .