Looking at satellite images of New Orleans , it is relatively straightforward to guess that the city will be declared a Sacrifice Zone , because (as Neil Stephenson defined in Snow Crash) it is land “whose clean-up cost exceeds the total future economic value.”

On the other hand, there is the Port of Southern Louisiana , which is of tremendous importance to the US economy. There is the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) and quite a number of other oil transport and refinery facilities. All these can not run without a substantial workforce. Most of the workers lived in or around New Orleans and are by now either struggling for their very survival or are climate disaster refugees in the neighboring states. And they are unlikely to return until New Orleans gets inhabitable again.

Giving up the ports is not an option, the economic damage to the US would be too massive. So my guess is they will rebuilt some sort of New Orleans roughly in the same spot. Probably there will be a risk premium to wages for workers who agree to live there, but lets face it, there are even people willing to go to Iraq for oil and transportation jobs now, if the money is right.