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Text Box: Annotated Bibliography These are the sources I used and the notes I took while looking through them. There are books (1, 2), articles, reports, and websites. Books: 1. Colten, Craig E. (2005). An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State Press. The author emphasizes poor choice of site, the susceptibility of the original population to disease, and the difficulties of sewage and drainage. In the early 1800s, a canal was built from lake Ponchartrain to the Gulf to handle sewage and waste, but it flooded regularly and sometimes reversed direction, essentially rendering it extremely ineffective as a removal system. Inequity along class lines came to mean dirty conditions and dangerous flood risks for poorer sections. This trend continues today with the huge floods in the Lower Ninth Ward, for example. After WWII and through the 1980s, homeowners bought federal flood insurance. Protection efforts of wetlands began after 1970. This book is mostly helpful because it details some of the problems the citizens had with the canals and trenches they dug around the city to transport water or sewage in or out. 2. Eads, James B. (1874). Jetty System Explained: Mouth of the Mississippi. NE corner of Fifth and Chestnut Streets, St. Louis, Missouri: Times Print. This book explains the proposed jetty system to keep the river from changing its course. Jetties are underwater levees, built to reinforce the banks, similar to the woven steel mats that we sink over the banks today. This proposal would not prevent floods. The author briefly explains erosion and deposition patters of the river. He takes into account that the river does have a mouth bar, some distance into the Gulf, which changes the direction of tidal currents near the mouth. The theory that the bar is formed with heavier material “pushed” along the bottom is refuted, and claims are made for the origin of the bar to be entirely of suspended sediment. Jetties tend to increase flow rate and deepen the pass where they are built. This book provides an early look at attempts to control the river. 3. Kelman, Ari. (2003). A River and Its City: The Nature and Landscape of New Orleans. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. New Orleans was founded without regard to the environmental difficulties that settlers would face (coming home up river, epidemics in the tropical climate, sewage and drainage below sea level). The idea of the waterfront being a public space varied meanings over time. At various points, it was a public place that belong to everybody, or only public officials were allowed to regulate it, or today where any new land formed becomes the private property of the abutting owner. Wetlands once blocked the city in from behind, until they were drained with pumps and developed. New Orleans was the original supporter of the Fulton group, who brought the steamboat to the region, causing a sudden boom in the city’s economy and their establishment as a major trading port. This book is more historical than scientific, providing a lot of information on the politics of the waterfront and control of natural resources along the coast. 4. McPhee, John. (1989). The Control of Nature. New York, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. Only the first chapter of this book is relevant. It talks about the purpose of Old River: to preserve New Orleans and Baton Rouge as port cities. The Atchafalaya is not so adapted to river transport (for steamers and other big cargo ships) as is the Mississippi. The delta is thick with sediment and would have to be, maybe even continually, dredged to allow big ships to pass. Water coming through Old River enters a stilling basin, the most violent part of the complex. Old River is actually an old meander of the Red River, already captured by the Atchafalaya. If allowed to change course, the delta below Old River would be filled in with silt and become unstable. The structure is not even anchored in rock because the nearest bedrock in this region is 7000 feet straight down. The 1973 flood undermined the entire structure, boring a hole in the bottom. Continue (more books)