3 ms·

New Orleans and Houston are basically built on swamps. In New Orleans, you can’t even bury people below ground, so I doubt you can do much with power lines unde

New Orleans and Houston are basically built on swamps. In New Orleans, you can’t even bury people below ground, so I doubt you can do much with power lines underground.

hedora 2y ago
It turns out we don't need to speculate: https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/64650dded34ec179a83dbad6 https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/64650dded34ec179a83... Most of the wells they sampled are > 100 ft above the water table. Some are as low as 12. The lowest is 2.83ft. Here's the relevant bit of the schema XML document for the CSV the produced: <attr> <attrlabl>DTW23</attrlabl> <attrdef> December 2022 through March 2023 depth to groundwater in feet measured from land-surface elevation referenced to NAVD 88 </attrdef> <attrdefs>U.S. Geological Survey</attrdefs> <attrdomv> <rdom> <rdommin>2.83</rdommin> <rdommax>453.97</rdommax> <attrunit>feet</attrunit> </rdom> </attrdomv> </attr>
- MisterBastahrd 2y ago
  I used to live in a neighboring parish to the west of New Orleans. If you dug more than 3 feet into the ground, you were hitting water. Driving pilings is a sloppy mess.
yread 2y ago
In Amsterdam the ground water level is also very high but people manage to put lines in the ground
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  So this is weird, but I never saw people buried above ground in Amsterdam like in New Orleans. What the diff? Even if cremation is common now, it probably wasn’t a hundred or two years ago?
robocat 2y ago
Swamp is a poor excuse IMHO. Plenty of my city Christchurch is built on swamp. yet it has slowly been replacing HV and LV power poles with underground cabling for about 50 years now, although there is still some remaining. We don't get hurricanes so I'm not sure of reasons for us using underground cabling. NZ is no where near as wealthy as Texas so Houston should be able to afford to do it too. Christchurch gets earthquakes instead of hurricanes: http://db.nzsee.org.nz/SpecialIssue/44(4)0425.pdf http://db.nzsee.org.nz/SpecialIssue/44(4)0425.pdf
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >NZ is no where near as wealthy as Texas so Houston should be able to afford to do it too. No country is nearly as wealthy as the USA, but the USA can't afford to build a bullet train or replace decrepit bridges that randomly fall down.

New Orleans and Houston are basically built on swamps. In New Orleans, you can’t even bury people below ground, so I doubt you can do much with power lines underground.

hedora 2y ago

It turns out we don't need to speculate: https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/64650dded34ec179a83dbad6 https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/64650dded34ec179a83... Most of the wells they sampled are > 100 ft above the water table. Some are as low as 12. The lowest is 2.83ft. Here's the relevant bit of the schema XML document for the CSV the produced: <attr> <attrlabl>DTW23</attrlabl> <attrdef> December 2022 through March 2023 depth to groundwater in feet measured from land-surface elevation referenced to NAVD 88 </attrdef> <attrdefs>U.S. Geological Survey</attrdefs> <attrdomv> <rdom> <rdommin>2.83</rdommin> <rdommax>453.97</rdommax> <attrunit>feet</attrunit> </rdom> </attrdomv> </attr>

MisterBastahrd 2y ago
I used to live in a neighboring parish to the west of New Orleans. If you dug more than 3 feet into the ground, you were hitting water. Driving pilings is a sloppy mess.

yread 2y ago

In Amsterdam the ground water level is also very high but people manage to put lines in the ground

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
So this is weird, but I never saw people buried above ground in Amsterdam like in New Orleans. What the diff? Even if cremation is common now, it probably wasn’t a hundred or two years ago?

robocat 2y ago

Swamp is a poor excuse IMHO. Plenty of my city Christchurch is built on swamp. yet it has slowly been replacing HV and LV power poles with underground cabling for about 50 years now, although there is still some remaining. We don't get hurricanes so I'm not sure of reasons for us using underground cabling. NZ is no where near as wealthy as Texas so Houston should be able to afford to do it too. Christchurch gets earthquakes instead of hurricanes: http://db.nzsee.org.nz/SpecialIssue/44(4)0425.pdf http://db.nzsee.org.nz/SpecialIssue/44(4)0425.pdf

shiroiushi 2y ago
>NZ is no where near as wealthy as Texas so Houston should be able to afford to do it too. No country is nearly as wealthy as the USA, but the USA can't afford to build a bullet train or replace decrepit bridges that randomly fall down.