>> That actually settles a lot of my concerns about the metroplex, because things have only gotten so bad recently. <<
Okay, great.
>> That is the time-line I was picturing, actually. <<
Yay!
>> If there were a quiet soup in just the right position, with just the right powers, with just the right amount of common sense, he could have influenced things in the right way, as far as city planning, and flood control. <<
The three primary players are Stormtreader, a woman in New Orleans; Mudslinger, a man in Slidell; and Lagniappe, a woman (probably, might be genderqueer) in between. In the 1960s, what has been mostly quiet punctuated by occasional celebrities is rapidly becoming less quiet. Stormtreader and Mudslinger each have a handful of other soups, and they've been trying to do stuff, but there's nobody to teach them how and the effective PR materials are decades away. So it's going to take a major disaster to make people wise up, and Lagniappe to serve as a conciliator.
Then they can use their powers not just to fix things directly, but to figure out how to fix them that will actually work. Stormtreader can, to some extent, feel how the air moves around buildings: what will rip loose easier or stay put better. Mudslinger can feel the earth, how it rises and falls, how buildings merge into it, how the river deposits silt. Lagniappe can feel people and probably uses psychology more than superpowers to influence people. They already have some neighborhood influence because they can accomplish some things individually, but they need the teamwork to fix something as big as lower Louisiana.
>> The difference would be that people would be resigned to it, they would maybe understand that it has to happen, and it would just be one of those things that you have to endure to live where you want to live. <<
That makes sense. You can be stubborn and stay put, which requires making accommodations; or you can move to where you can have more conveniences. The latter is what will entice people into the undeveloped uplands of New Orleans (I was surprised to see how much of that there was) and the middle ground between there and Slidell. Those who stay behind will be folks willing to do anything to keep their homes. Trying to force people to do anything is bad; it's better to make attractive places that will lure away the less attached.
>> Take people living in the Rigolets, all of the houses there are at least two stories off the ground, not an easy thing to deal with, but they do. It floods there, too, but they just live with it. <<
That sounds like what I had in mind, yes.
>> Uhm, the Rigolets are a chain of islands across Lake Pontchartrain, it's considered a suburb of Slidell. It's pronounced 'ri-guh-lees'. So, if the river had to change its bed every so often, and flood, y'know, like rivers do, people living in the way would be prepared. <<
If people would just not crowd it so much, that would help tremendously. When you build right down to the waterline everywhere, then the least little twitch and sigh will cause big problems. If you hang back, the river has wiggle room.
>> To illustrate the point of just how much we've messed up the topography down here, the Rigolets did not start out as islands, it was more dry places in the swamp. Now it's islands, because that part of the swamp that used to surround the lake is part of the lake. Ugh. There was an outlet to the Gulf, but yeah, mostly just swamp. <<
In Easy City, the marsh may come back.
>> I'm honestly thinking Lake Pontchartrain would be the best bet. The very best thing, would be if people had let it alone to do its thing, but that's not possible. <<
Noted and logged.
>> They've chained Old Man River, and he ain't happy. <<
That river never did like two-legs to begin with. People were warned not to crowd in too close, but they didn't listen, and then they whine when they get wet.
>> I think the levees cause more problems than they fix, but there could be a way to make them work. <<
Water seeks the lowest level. You can't push on a river. In order to make levees work, you have to keep the riverbed low, give the water somewhere else to go, and just use the levees to keep minor rises from making a frequent nuisance of floods. Earthmoving is great for putting the silt where it will do some good instead of filling up the channels, for making and maintaining levees, and for raising ground to build on. You need to be careful not to pile too much weight on soft ground or it will sink. The river needs its floodplains and marshes; you can't just stop up the water, it has to go somewhere. So there would be areas to keep dry, and others allowed to flood. Low-lying areas should have things people can enjoy when dry, that won't be hurt by floods.
>> Yeah, it's pretty common knowledge around here that any houses more than 50-60 years old are much safer, and in a much better place. I liked your idea of having houses in low-lying areas be up in the air, mostly because of what I mentioned earlier, some of the neighborhoods in low-lying areas already do that. That's all I meant about doing it right from the beginning. <<
Okay, great. We're on the same page with that.
>> Let me sum up: instead of all the levees, and draining the swamps, and building houses flat on the ground where they shouldn't be, we let the river take a more natural course, flooding when necessary, and have houses and communities designed to withstand that sort of thing. <<
Exactly.
>> Something like that could have been put in place anywhere from about seventy years ago to thirty years ago, though 1965, 1995, or the 1980s seem to be the best bet, because that's when people started noticing a problem. <<
I'm guessing that the massive flooding of 1965 was the trigger event which made Stormtreader and Mudslinger potentially willing to cooperate, and Lagniappe aware that somebody needed to organize things better. They were young and idealistic and passionate. It probably took a few years to learn how to work together, gain support, and expand from the initial neighborhood projects to things that spanned different communities. By 1975 they probably had some of the dots connected and good forward momentum. So when the problems in the mid-1980s hit, people would have learned to trust them and that cooperation pays off. The chain of hurricanes causing floods would encourage further improvements to civil engineering; the oil crash would make people more interested in alternative energy sources. (Terramagne is way more interested in science.) That could be what spurs people to design the mid-range mass transit that creates the beltways defining the core of Easy City. It would still have room to grow over time.
>> Alternately, what you've suggested about one or more soups with earth-moving powers altering the terrain sounds plausible. It sounds like it would work more with the environment, than fighting against it, the way we're doing now. <<
If you work against the environment, superpowers aren't all that much better than bulldozers. Remember, it's not just raw power that makes a difference, but extra senses. When you can feel the lay of the land, it's much easier to understand how to change things for the better. You can sense where the floods will be worst, where you can raise land and keep it stable, etc. So levees and channels and ridges that Mudslinger shores up will stay put much better than changes made by ordinary means. The hard part is convincing people to go along with that: which is Lagniappe's job. Once they see that it works, they'll be more amenable.
Re: Thoughts
Okay, great.
>> That is the time-line I was picturing, actually. <<
Yay!
>> If there were a quiet soup in just the right position, with just the right powers, with just the right amount of common sense, he could have influenced things in the right way, as far as city planning, and flood control. <<
The three primary players are Stormtreader, a woman in New Orleans; Mudslinger, a man in Slidell; and Lagniappe, a woman (probably, might be genderqueer) in between. In the 1960s, what has been mostly quiet punctuated by occasional celebrities is rapidly becoming less quiet. Stormtreader and Mudslinger each have a handful of other soups, and they've been trying to do stuff, but there's nobody to teach them how and the effective PR materials are decades away. So it's going to take a major disaster to make people wise up, and Lagniappe to serve as a conciliator.
Then they can use their powers not just to fix things directly, but to figure out how to fix them that will actually work. Stormtreader can, to some extent, feel how the air moves around buildings: what will rip loose easier or stay put better. Mudslinger can feel the earth, how it rises and falls, how buildings merge into it, how the river deposits silt. Lagniappe can feel people and probably uses psychology more than superpowers to influence people. They already have some neighborhood influence because they can accomplish some things individually, but they need the teamwork to fix something as big as lower Louisiana.
>> The difference would be that people would be resigned to it, they would maybe understand that it has to happen, and it would just be one of those things that you have to endure to live where you want to live. <<
That makes sense. You can be stubborn and stay put, which requires making accommodations; or you can move to where you can have more conveniences. The latter is what will entice people into the undeveloped uplands of New Orleans (I was surprised to see how much of that there was) and the middle ground between there and Slidell. Those who stay behind will be folks willing to do anything to keep their homes. Trying to force people to do anything is bad; it's better to make attractive places that will lure away the less attached.
>> Take people living in the Rigolets, all of the houses there are at least two stories off the ground, not an easy thing to deal with, but they do. It floods there, too, but they just live with it. <<
That sounds like what I had in mind, yes.
>> Uhm, the Rigolets are a chain of islands across Lake Pontchartrain, it's considered a suburb of Slidell. It's pronounced 'ri-guh-lees'. So, if the river had to change its bed every so often, and flood, y'know, like rivers do, people living in the way would be prepared. <<
If people would just not crowd it so much, that would help tremendously. When you build right down to the waterline everywhere, then the least little twitch and sigh will cause big problems. If you hang back, the river has wiggle room.
>> To illustrate the point of just how much we've messed up the topography down here, the Rigolets did not start out as islands, it was more dry places in the swamp. Now it's islands, because that part of the swamp that used to surround the lake is part of the lake. Ugh. There was an outlet to the Gulf, but yeah, mostly just swamp. <<
In Easy City, the marsh may come back.
>> I'm honestly thinking Lake Pontchartrain would be the best bet. The very best thing, would be if people had let it alone to do its thing, but that's not possible. <<
Noted and logged.
>> They've chained Old Man River, and he ain't happy. <<
That river never did like two-legs to begin with. People were warned not to crowd in too close, but they didn't listen, and then they whine when they get wet.
>> I think the levees cause more problems than they fix, but there could be a way to make them work. <<
Water seeks the lowest level. You can't push on a river. In order to make levees work, you have to keep the riverbed low, give the water somewhere else to go, and just use the levees to keep minor rises from making a frequent nuisance of floods. Earthmoving is great for putting the silt where it will do some good instead of filling up the channels, for making and maintaining levees, and for raising ground to build on. You need to be careful not to pile too much weight on soft ground or it will sink. The river needs its floodplains and marshes; you can't just stop up the water, it has to go somewhere. So there would be areas to keep dry, and others allowed to flood. Low-lying areas should have things people can enjoy when dry, that won't be hurt by floods.
>> Yeah, it's pretty common knowledge around here that any houses more than 50-60 years old are much safer, and in a much better place. I liked your idea of having houses in low-lying areas be up in the air, mostly because of what I mentioned earlier, some of the neighborhoods in low-lying areas already do that. That's all I meant about doing it right from the beginning. <<
Okay, great. We're on the same page with that.
>> Let me sum up: instead of all the levees, and draining the swamps, and building houses flat on the ground where they shouldn't be, we let the river take a more natural course, flooding when necessary, and have houses and communities designed to withstand that sort of thing. <<
Exactly.
>> Something like that could have been put in place anywhere from about seventy years ago to thirty years ago, though 1965, 1995, or the 1980s seem to be the best bet, because that's when people started noticing a problem. <<
I'm guessing that the massive flooding of 1965 was the trigger event which made Stormtreader and Mudslinger potentially willing to cooperate, and Lagniappe aware that somebody needed to organize things better. They were young and idealistic and passionate. It probably took a few years to learn how to work together, gain support, and expand from the initial neighborhood projects to things that spanned different communities. By 1975 they probably had some of the dots connected and good forward momentum. So when the problems in the mid-1980s hit, people would have learned to trust them and that cooperation pays off. The chain of hurricanes causing floods would encourage further improvements to civil engineering; the oil crash would make people more interested in alternative energy sources. (Terramagne is way more interested in science.) That could be what spurs people to design the mid-range mass transit that creates the beltways defining the core of Easy City. It would still have room to grow over time.
>> Alternately, what you've suggested about one or more soups with earth-moving powers altering the terrain sounds plausible. It sounds like it would work more with the environment, than fighting against it, the way we're doing now. <<
If you work against the environment, superpowers aren't all that much better than bulldozers. Remember, it's not just raw power that makes a difference, but extra senses. When you can feel the lay of the land, it's much easier to understand how to change things for the better. You can sense where the floods will be worst, where you can raise land and keep it stable, etc. So levees and channels and ridges that Mudslinger shores up will stay put much better than changes made by ordinary means. The hard part is convincing people to go along with that: which is Lagniappe's job. Once they see that it works, they'll be more amenable.