Between Logos and Eros: New Orleans' Confrontation with Modernity Page: 35
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and this, in turn, would force the river to scour a deeper path for itself. George Willard
Reed Bayley, an assistant to the state engineering office, declared, "Outlets never will be
adopted, they are contrary to the spirit of the age; that spirit of improvement which would
reclaim and cultivate, that would convert every swamp and fen into abodes of wealth,
into cultivated fields" (Pabis 2000, 66). By 1881 most civil and military engineers had
accepted the necessity of the levees-only policy. They agreed that the best course of
action for the city would be to sever the relationship between the Mississippi River and
its alluvial lands. "At all costs, they claimed, engineers needed to prevent the river from
infiltrating the conquered territory claimed by the American settler" (Pabis 2000, 82).
The levees-only policy was finally abandoned during the catastrophic flood of
1927, when in order to save New Orleans the Corps dynamited a portion of the levee
south of the city. To divert the worst flooding from New Orleans, the Corps used 1,500
pounds of explosives to open a crevasse 3,213 feet wide that funneled 325,000 cubic feet
per second from the main channel (Davis 2000, 100). This did save the city, but at the
expense of the poorer St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes to the east and south of New
Orleans. Had the Corps not insisted in an impermeable floodwall - had they seen the
wisdom of yielding somewhat to and working with natural forces, lives and property
could have been saved.
The economic survival of New Orleans is contingent on its proximity to the
Mississippi.3 But the river has not always been in that location: about once a millennium
3 According to the Port of New Orleans website, "Maritime activity within the Port of New Orleans is
responsible for more than 107,000 jobs, $2 billion in earnings, $13 billion in spending and $231 million in
taxes statewide." http://www.portno.com/facts.htm35
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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/m1/40/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .