The levees along the Mississippi are one of the big reasons why the land around New Orleans is sinking. >When Bienville founded New Orleans in 1718, the delta

The levees along the Mississippi are one of the big reasons why the land around New Orleans is sinking. >When Bienville founded New Orleans in 1718, the delta was more than 400 feet deep at the river's mouth and extended northward on top of that Pleistocene foundation to midway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. It continued growing southward until the late 1800s, when construction of flood-control levees prevented the river from resupplying the delta with new sediment. And that's when subsidence became a serious problem. https://www.nola.com/coastal/2008/12/part_2_southeast_louisiana_is.html https://www.nola.com/coastal/2008/12/part_2_southeast_louisi...