Actually, most people don't know this but New Orleans wasn't built below sea level. Because of petroleum extraction in the gulf of Mexico, New Orleans has subsided very slowly over the past 50 or so years to the point it's at now.
Personally, i don't think they should allow those people to rebulid in that area, because that area isn't going to stop subsiding for quite some time and over the next 100 or so years we expect it to subside another 30 feet or so. However, a lot of people have invested their lives in that area and i feel they deserve some type of recompense for their losses. After all that area did not start subsiding until the Petroleum co's started extracting oil.
It's common sence to understand when you extract oil from the subsurface the pressure holding up the sediment up drops. So the people should have known better than to build there but they were there before the exploration begun so they had a right to know what oil exploration was going to do to that area.
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