[extropy-chat] Fill it in a pave it over

[BillK]

On 9/6/05, Adrian Tymes wrote:
> Assuming you could buy out the entire city, or most of it.  While the
> government may have the legal right to force the sales (see recent
> eminent domain cases), even the US federal government might have a hard
> time coming up with that much money (without giving many people so
> little that it could credibly be called far below fair value/market
> price).
> 

What's fair market value for land under six foot of water?

The other factor that I haven't seen mentioned is that so far the
discussions assume that Nature is going to play fair. That could very
well not happen. There is no rule that says natural disasters must
happen five or ten years apart.

There will be more hurricanes this season and more again in following
years. NO could well be hit again soon, maybe with a cat 5 this time.

Or Florida might be hit as well.

San Francisco and LA could be hit by a bigger than usual quake, Mount
St. Helens is still rumbling and might blow again, or the Yellowstone
volcano might blow. There might be a string of floods, tornadoes or
other disasters that would leave little available to rebuild NO.

Since 9/11 FEMA has been made part of Dept of Homeland Security and
only spends about 25% of what it used to on disaster planning and
recovery.

As more people are now living in places 'in the way of harm' the US
probably needs a permanent disaster recovery army which moves on from
one site to the next.

BillK