Mississippi River

Cliff Brady

It has been reported that the level of Lake Pontchartrain has dropped 2 feet. The lake is 630 square miles in area.

That means that 35,126,784,000 cubic feet of water have flooded into the city. Maybe closer to 25,000,000,000 cubic feet assuming the lake is conical. Anybody care to estimate the electric power required to pump that water up 20 feet to drain NOLA? Are gas turbine pumps used for this kind of stuff?

What are you left with after pumping it? More billions to spend on toxic cleanup that no one should probably be exposed to. I think NOLA may need start over somewhere else when the costs we will all pay are looked at.

Mike T., Swampeast MO

This is heat-related (indirectly) as decisions soon to be made will affect all of us and we all use heat energy.

Please encourage your legislators to take a long, hard and objective look at the Mississippi River before a single penny of your tax dollars are spent to "rebuild" New Orleans. I have nothing but empathy for the terrible suffering there now and have certainly enjoyed some GREAT times in that city, but there are problems.

In high school science class in the late 70s I recall a film detailing man's battle with the Mississippi. It has been trying for DECADES to follow the natural course of things--it wants to wander through the delta. Only man-made structures prevent it from exiting near Baton Rouge. All of our efforts to keep the Mississippi flowing near New Orleans have caused the city to subside. EVERYONE knew this was an absolute disaster in the making. I would not be at all surprised if we find that sections of the city have been undermined--either by the river or the lake.

ralphtheplumber_2

Interesting.

a cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 lbs, more or less.

25,000,000,000 cubic feet of water weighs 1,560,000,000,000 lbs.

Raising it 20' would require 31,200,000,000,000 ft-lbs of work.

Most pumps are about 50% efficient, so we're talking 62,400,000,000,000 ft-lbs input.

That's 23,500,844 kW-hours of power, or if you prefer, 31,515,151 HP-hours.

Let's say (for the sake of discussion) that they have (10) 1000hp pumps. They'd have to run for 1300 days to empty that.

That's a lot of water.

DanHolohan

Perspective

Read Rising Tide. It puts what's going on into perspective, and it also explains The Big Easy's reason for being. What a crazy place to build a city. A fascinating read.

Mike T., Swampeast MO

If you use 33,000,000,000 cubic feet of 80° water with 80% pumping efficiency I wind up with 19,346 megawatt hours or 52,809,842,200 BTUs.

If diesel oil were used at say 55% overall efficiency, it would take approximately 38,866 barrels (9.7 gal/barrel for diesel).

This presumes I didn't miss a decimal place somewhere...

Dean_7

perspective again

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemed to repeat it"
George Santayana

John MacGregor_2

NO LA

All those windmills in Holland are not just for tourists, they are there to pump the ocean water back out to sea. The Dutch know how to do it on the cheap. Maybe the Corps of Engineers should look at windmills or syphons situated in the Mississippi river to suck it dry.

EJW

The Big Question

Where do you pump it? How will they clean it, or will they? EJW