The development of manufactured flood risk: New Orleans' mid‐century growth machine and the hurricane of 1947

Abstract

Much of the flood risk faced by coastal and riparian populations worldwide is manufactured rather than strictly natural--the outcome of human development projects involving municipal growth machines. This paper details the impacts of the hurricane of September 1947 on New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, and its relationship with the urban development and expansion efforts undertaken during and after the Second World War of 1939-45. New Orleans' newest drainage and shipping canals, which were a major part of its mid-twentieth century development initiative, funnelled the storm surge into the city, a pattern that would repeat itself in subsequent years. Unlike more infamous hurricanes, such as Betsy and Katrina of 1965 and 2005, respectively, the 1947 event is not well-known among disaster researchers. Yet, it provides a fundamental example of how local elites have continuously exacerbated flood risk throughout the city and surrounding area, leaving it simultaneously dependent on and endangered by its embedded system of drainage and shipping canals.

Growth Machine Up-links and the Manufacture of Flood Risk in Mid-twentieth Century New Orleans

“…Despite their longevity, tenaciousness, and adaptability, however, “ growth elites do not necessarily know what they are doing ” (Molotch 2010:658, emphasis in original). The creation of the MR-GO in particular was of limited, short-term economic benefit to the city in the postwar era (Freudenburg et al 2009), and the creation of the triple-canal “funnel” on the city’s eastern side has trapped New Orleans in an ongoing cycle of path dependence (Mahoney 2000; Rast 2011; USACE, n.d-b; Youngman 2015) whereby the city and the Corps remain stuck in a pattern of building new rounds of structural flood mitigation megaprojects after each major hurricane to ostensibly protect the city from the flood risks engendered by prior megaprojects. 5 Even with a new set of flood control structures in the center of the contemporary “funnel” and the MR-GO “de-authorized” and blocked off from the Gulf (USACE, n.d-a.), there is no way to undo the “obsolete and irreversible” canal’s dredging and its subsequent erosion and expansion (Gramling et al 2011), nor to completely mitigate the city’s ever-worsening manufactured flood vulnerability.…”

“…Likewise, the shipping canals dredged on the eastern side of mid-twentieth-century New Orleans have led to increasingly devastating flooding with each subsequent hurricane over the last several decades (Shallat 2000; Van Heerden et al 2006; Youngman 2015). Throughout much of the 1900s, the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans (BCPNO; the “Dock Board”) and the Board of Levee Commissioners of the Orleans Levee District (the “Levee Board”) were two of the most powerful elements of the city’s growth machine.…”

“…New Orleans’ shipping canals have been a flood menace since at least the late eighteenth century, repeatedly channeling flood waters into the heart of the city during hurricanes and other high water events (Shallat 2000; Youngman 2015). In the mid-twentieth century, the flood risk from the city’s shipping canals worsened as the Dock Board pursued its dream of working around the riverfront’s legal status as public property (Azcona 2006; Freudenburg et al 2009; Kelman 2003) by trying to build a network of canals that would create an “inner harbor” at “tidewater” (i.e., sea level) out of the wetlands lying between the river and the lake immediately to the north of the city’s contemporary Lower Ninth Ward.…”

“… 1. This also occurred to a lesser extent during the 1947 hurricane and during Hurricane Betsy in 1965, flooding the eastern side of the city in both storms (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [USACE] 1965; Youngman 2015). …”

Exploring Community Preparedness for Complex Disaster: A Case Study in Cilegon (Banten Province in Indonesia)

“…The authors recognize these phenomenon as 'complex disasters', and consider that it should be examined based on research findings both of natural disaster research and occupational health and safety research. Some previous works, such as Linden and Perry [1], Sengul et al [2] and Youngman [3], have already explored the complex disaster. However, the relevant research has been still limited, and further efforts are required to contribute to the society.…”