If You Tell a Lie Big Enough and Keep Repeating It, People Will Eventually Come to Believe It PART 2: Utah Senator Bob Bennett

Orange thematic: elevations ten feet (or more) below sea level.

HIGH RES Version

SUPER HIGH RES Version

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
--Joseph Goebbels

Three weeks ago Utah Senator Bob Bennett, who has yet to visit New Orleans or the any of the Gulf Coast post-KTMB, made the following public statement concerning the rebuilding of the city:

"Building a city ten feet below sea level does not strike me as inherently, basically a good idea ... "

THE LIE: New Orleans is a city situated ten feet below sea level.

THE TRUTH: The City of New Orleans is not "built" ten feet below sea level.

Senator Bennett's statement is a falsehood--whether an intentional mistake or an accidental one--regardless, the statement is incorrect and more importantly it's misleading and further clouds the already New Orleans-iffy perception to our fellow Americans.

The majority of the City of New Orleans and its immediate Southshore suburbs are built within a few feet above sea level, at sea level, or below sea level. However, the only areas ten feet below sea level in the New Orleans area--despite what Senator Bennett blindly assumes--are limited to drainage canal embankments, roadway underpasses of bulwarked railroad corridors (I-10, Canal Boulevard, Orleans Avenue, etc.), and retention lakes and ponds (primarily in New Orleans East). The orange portions on the above map (and the I-10/RR thumbnail to the left) represent these -10 foot elevation (or lower) locations.

Below are the scientifically-derived elevation statistics of "core" New Orleans utilizing state-produced datasets and processed and analyzed with specialized software by myself.

"Core" City of New Orleans Elevation Characteristics (Eastbank/17th Street Canal to the Industrial Canal):

Below Sea Level: 51.3% (13,674.94 acres/21.36 square miles)
Sea Level or Above: 48.7% (12,983.64 acres/20.29 square miles)

Flooded post-KTMB: 70.6% (18,817.31 acres/29.40 square miles)

-10 Elevation or Below: 0.1% (50.52 acres/0.79 square miles)

Elevation statistics for the other sections of the New Orleans area to come in a near-future post . . .

RELATED: If You Tell a Lie Big Enough and Keep Repeating It, People Will Eventually Come to Believe It PART 1: New Orleans National Flood Insurance Participation