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Actually the subsidence is natural, those sediments are soft and they just sink under their own weight. Lots of coastlines are subsiding like this, I think Houston is subsiding faster than N.O.
But I think Elphaba is right, the river always dumped way more sediment than necessary to maintain the marshes and barrier islands, but now that it's channelized out into the Gulf, there's nothing anymore to balance the sinking.
The scientists who warned against the channelization, and all the dredging and development, were generally dismissed as either (1) hysterical environmentalists or (2) exaggerating to get more research grants.
Now that their predictions have come true, I think it's time to think seriously about what they've always said needed to be done: rebuild the wetlands and barrier islands, and rechannel the river so that it's again dumping sediment on all those fringing wetlands that used to shield N.O. and other areas from the storms.
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