Mordechai Treiger | Treading water in The Big Easy

Spring Break 2008 saw 175 Penn students make the pilgrimage that care forgot. Their work was hardly a big easy: Students cleared wreckage, rebuilt houses and even helped out at an animal shelter.

But the sad truth is that despite these students' best efforts, New Orleans will still succumb to the next major storm. The question for the city is not if but when.

Meet Camille, Category 5.

In 1969, she ripped through the underbelly of America with hurricane-force winds, flattening houses and dumping over 13 feet of water into low-lying areas. Hundreds drowned, and swaths of Louisiana and Mississippi were declared disaster areas. The hurricane caused $9.1b in damages: only one-ninth the estimated cost of Katrina.

Thirty-six years later, Camille was outclassed by Katrina, which inflicted more damage with considerably less effort. Katrina flooded more than four-fifths of New Orleans, killed 1,836 people and caused over $80 billion in damages. And while she's considered the most destructive natural disaster in the history of the United States, Katrina clocked in at only Category 3.

It calls into question how much of Katrina's disastrousness was truly "natural" and to what extent the devastation was aided by the hand of man.

Ships anchored alongside New Orleans float higher than the Superdome AstroTurf. Watermelons there don't grow down by any bay; to watch the Mississippi flow by, you must walk up the levees that contain it.

Because modern New Orleans is mostly below sea level, any levee breach is instantly catastrophic. And while those levees can protect the city from some storms, they're also part of the problem. Though river deltas the world over naturally fan out, a series of public works ensure that the Mississippi doesn't. To Environmental Studies professor Robert Giegengack, the consequences are obvious: "Growing instability in the system guarantees that the adjustment, when it comes, will be quite catastrophic."

It's only a matter of time, he predicts, before the river condemns New Orleans to its place in history alongside Pompeii, Persepolis, Knossos and Machu Picchu.

That the city's physical structure will be spared isn't even guaranteed; it's literally sinking into the Gulf. Sediment loss and consequent wetland depletion have weakened the city's protection, says Doug Jerolmack, an Environmental Studies professor who mathematically models sedimentary systems.

"The only thing you can do to save New Orleans is put it under a plexiglass bubble," Giegengack said. "We'll have some centuries to examine its archaeological record before it gets completely washed away by erosion."

And while environmental degradation certainly played a role in the drowning of New Orleans, the primary reason for Katrina's catastrophic damage was that so many people chose a lousy place to pitch tent.

There's a widespread perception that if we pour enough money into defending New Orleans, it can be made safe.

"New Orleans can be rebuilt," said Joe Tierney, executive director of Fox Leadership, which sent 100 students to the city last spring. "There's not a doubt in my mind the levees can be strengthened to the point where they can be kept safe."

But at what cost? Current estimates put the price of protection somewhere around $200 billion. The perception that New Orleans is protectable would be cute if it wasn't so dangerous. Impossible promises of protection and federal assistance should the city's defenses fail during future - inevitable - catastrophes amount to little more than a nationalized subsidy. Either all of America's citizens will be forced to pay for the follies of the few, or those unfortunate enough to have believed the promises will be left high and wet.

"It's hard to just ask your government to keep paying for it," admitted College senior Jon Kole, co-director of Civic House's Alternate Spring Break. "Do I think it's the best use of American tax dollars? No. But I'm not entirely sure it would go to a better use if it wasn't going to them."

Students clearly gain a lot from the trips. "What had the greatest effect on me was the gratitude of the residents," said Nursing junior Randi O'Neill, who went with Fox Leadership. "I really think they gave us more than we could give them."

But it's important to remember that some of their efforts to help resettle New Orleans could ultimately do more harm than good. Who will answer to the city's residents when disaster strikes all over again?

Yes, New Orleans can be rebuilt - but I wouldn't put my money on it and can only hope the government wouldn't put my money on it, either.

Everybody knows the funeral dirge popularized by New Orleans jazz musicians.

The saints are marching in - let them.

Mordechai Treiger is a College junior from Seattle, and can be reached at treiger@dailypennsylvanian.com. Fridays with Mordi appears on alternating Fridays.

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