Those 100-year floods come fairly often, don't they? The gaussian distribution isn't a good fit for the tails, I guess--underestimates them by quite a lot.
One of these days will come the inevitable, and it might be smart to think about where the new port ought to be. It would be even smarter to start figuring out how to channel the river to prepare for that day, and have facilities ready for a controlled relocation, but that's probably politically impossible. Too many oxen will get gored, and the inevitable corruption surrounding a new port city (especially in Louisiana) would make it too easy a target to shut down. And can you hear the unending laments that we must not lose a historic American city? They might even call it a "great city," though aside from the port I'm not sure it has been that in a long time. Even the great New Orleans culture seems more nostalgic than lively. I might be missing something, since I don't live there, but from the reports I've heard Katrina disrupted the critical mass.
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