New Orleans Is NOT Sinking

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – The way to save the City of New Orleans, number one, is to blow a hole in that levee and let that water come through.  It’s going to have to happen anyway.  Let the silt begin to refortify the delta.  If you don’t, what you have is a bowl.  The next time one of those levees cracks as a result of a hurricane may be the end of the Crescent City.  You notice that when the great flood of 2005 after Hurricane Katrina happened, where were Shepard Smith and company holed up at so that they weren’t in flood waters?  They were on that original ridge that runs through the French Quarter, which is still high enough ground to withstand the flood.  It’s not below sea level, it isn’t.  I get a little tired of this mythology about all of us loving to live below sea level.  We don’t.  It’s the damn government messing with the freaking rivers that makes us live below sea level.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Caller Cindy:  I talked to Alabama yesterday.  Those people seem to be getting it.  We’re writing some good bills here in our legislature, so who knows?  Maybe Florida will be a free state.

Mike:  Maybe Louisiana will be a free state.

Caller Cindy:  You’re right.  I hope so.  I actually go there because I enjoy the food.

Mike:  Well, we enjoy producing it.  We have seen our Louisiana coastline basically evaporated thanks to the stranglehold that the Corps of Engineers in cahoots with people that run the City of New Orleans have put on the Mississippi River.  The river wants to turn just north — I don’t know if you listeners know this but let me clue you in.  The Mississippi River has not always been where it is today.  It’s current mythology to think that it was always there and it’s always been the Mighty Mississippi in its exact location.  That is not true.  The Mississippi, about 1200 years ago, used to come out where today the Pearl River empties into the Gulf of Mexico.  As a matter of fact, the Pearl River is, if you’re a student of geography, the Pearl River is the Mississippi River.  The river turned; it turned west.  Do you know where it wants to go today, Cin?  It wants to go west.  The Mississippi River would come out in the Gulf of Mexico today probably where the Atchafalaya River empties into the Gulf today, if the Corps would stop redirecting it just north and west of Baton Rouge.  That’s where it wants to turn.

As a consequence, the coastline, and of course the coastline is dotted with all kinds of canals and stuff that were dug to facilitate the oil industry down there, but the coastline, which used to be filled with cypress trees all the way to the Gulf, the coastline has basically evaporated.  We’ve lost some 25, 30 miles of coastline.  As a matter of fact, if you go back and read the original 1812 Constitution of Louisiana, you’ll get the coordinates of where the coastline ended, and it’s about 25 miles south of where it is today, and they also said that we claimed the territory that is three leagues out into the ocean or out into the Gulf, which would be about ten miles today, somewhere around there.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because we are locked in an eternal fight with the federal government, eternal, over waters, over levies, over crop rights, over land rights.  It’s an eternal battle over oil rights, over gas and mineral rights.  The people of Louisiana would be far better off to be the Republic of Louisiana and maybe form a confederation with Texas or Arkansas and Mississippi.  We’d be a lot better off because we have all this abundance of resources here.  Of course, we also have the threat of hurricanes so you have to gauge it.  We can’t do it.  You try to explain this to people, Cindy, and they just look at you like, [mocking] “I ain’t fighting no damn civil war again, man.”  That is the first thing that comes up.  That’s why I’ve spent a lot of time with What Lincoln Killed.  You’re spending a lot of time with the Tea Partiers.

Caller Cindy:  We ordered your book, we ordered your tape.  I’m going to be showing it and pushing, pushing, pushing.  By the way, what you just said, I had read a book — I believe his name is Stillwell.  I want to say he was a journalist from Washington years ago.  He wrote a book about Louisiana.  He went down there and went to all those little towns which are below sea level, some —

Mike:  Wait, wait, wait, this is the other thing, Cindy.  Andrew, do you remember when you were in introductory physical science or earth sciences?  Do you remember you had to study deltas?

AG:  Right.

Mike:  You know what a delta is, right?  It’s an outcrop of land on a river that occasionally floods and you get the silt from the river flood, right?

AG:  Yep.

Mike:  That’s what that crescent in New Orleans is.  It’s a delta.  It’s supposed to flood every year, you imbeciles, you numbskulls, you nitwits, you apple heads.  We dammed the damn thing up.  We built levies so it can’t flood every year.  What do you think is going to be the end result of that?  All the sediment is then pumped out every time it rains, out into Lake Pontchartrain or the Mississippi River, Cindy.  No place in Louisiana would be below sea level if the natural course of things were allowed to happen, because the Mississippi dumps tens of millions of metric tons every spring of silt where it needs to go and continues building up and fortifying that levee.  Why do you think people settled on the crescent that is New Orleans, because it was under water?  That’s the stress talking.  That’s just foolish.  It was high ground, high ground, not low ground.

Caller Cindy:  Mike, is that the same — isn’t there somebody — after the hurricane, I listened to a Louisiana radio station.  I remember the man was an artist, but he also was an advocate for all of this that you’re talking about.  I don’t remember his name.

Mike:  I’ve got to run, but thanks for the email.  If you find out the name of that artist, send it along.

Caller Cindy:  I will, thank you.

Mike:  Keep up the Tea Party work.  For all of you, [mocking] “Why should we be spending our money to bail out a bunch of people that live in houses below sea level?”  You made them below sea level.  Herbert Hoover made them below sea level by walling off the Mississippi River and its almost yearly flood every spring that would go into the City of New Orleans and fortify the delta.  As a matter of fact, Andrew, if you ever come down here, and I suspect if the Redskins go to the Super Bowl you will be here this February —

AG:  Don’t jinx me.

Mike:  Hey, man, your team looks good.  If you ever come down here to New Orleans — and you should come down here and visit us at some point in time.  We’ll put you up in your little studio in there and you can send Eric orders over the internet.

AG:  Deal.

Mike:  You’ll tour St. Charles Avenue.  As you’re touring St. Charles Avenue, any house that was built after 1928, you’ll notice, may have a basement and a concrete slab.  Most houses that were built prior to 1928, the great flood, you’ll notice are elevated, five, six, seven, eight, depending on where they are.  Why were they elevated?  Why?  Why would you build a house up on stilts?  Because they knew that the river came in every year and flooded the delta.  They dealt with it.  The ’28 flood was just a freak event.  The waters would have receded, the damage ultimately repaired.  People that didn’t want to live in the path of destruction any long may have moved, but no, the federal government had to come in and started building these levies all the way up to St. Louis.

The way to save the City of New Orleans, number one, is to blow a hole in that levee and let that water come through.  It’s going to have to happen anyway.  Let the silt begin to refortify the delta.  If you don’t, what you have is a bowl.  The next time one of those levies cracks as a result of a hurricane may be the end of the Crescent City.  You notice that when the great flood of 2005 after Hurricane Katrina happened, where were Shepard Smith and company holed up at so that they weren’t in flood waters?  They were on that original ridge that runs through the French Quarter, which is still high enough ground to withstand the flood.  It’s not below sea level, it isn’t.  I get a little tired of this mythology about all of us loving to live below sea level.  We don’t.  It’s the damn government messing with the freaking rivers that makes us live below sea level.

End Mike Church Show Transcript