True story: One of these years, a major East Coast paper will reveal in a dramatic five-part series that New Orleans flooded because of design and construction flaws by the United States Army Corps and Engineers, and will win a Pulitzer for its efforts. Until then, we have to put up with stories like this one, a Washington Post piece on the voting plans of Katrina evacuees in Texas.
The premise: these frustrated exiles will take out their frustrations at the polls, probably to the benefit of Barack Obama. But the reporting: start with the first paragraph, in which we learn that
Hurricane Katrina uprooted (Gregory Sam) from his home town of New Orleans
As if the winds, possibly tornado-style, picked him up and deposited him eight hundred miles west.
Three paragraphs in, we learn that it was not just wind...
For the nearly quarter-million people such as Sam who were evacuated to Texas after the hurricane and its floodwaters left New Orleans devastated in 2005
So Katrina had floodwaters. Why, in a city that had a "Hurricane Protection System" under construction for the past forty years thanks to the Federal government, why was that possible? Silence. Crickets.
Back to the exile voters. They're angry, we learn...
They are angry, for instance, that Donald Trump will soon construct a 70-story hotel in the city's central business district while neighborhoods in the Ninth Ward are still rodent-infested wastelands.
This is reported as fact, from a Houston dateline. In fact, half of the Ninth Ward, the Upper Ninth, has no "rodent-infested wastelands". The reporter probably means the Lower Ninth, in which some blocks have lots covered with high weeds and rodents do reside thereon.
Then, there are the numbers. Population stats on the Katrina disaster are all over the place, but these are lulus.
Anderson is one of about 100,000 evacuees who have permanently settled in Houston. An additional 60,000 or so are in metropolitan Dallas, 60,000 are located around Austin and San Antonio, and 10,000 are sprinkled across this vast state, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
That would total up to 230,000 permanent New Orleans exiles in Texas alone. Not counting the known tens of thousands in Atlanta, and Baton Rouge, and other parts of the diaspora. New Orleans' population before the disaster was about 450,000. There are believed to be 300,000-plus citizens back now, depending on whose figures you use. The numbers in this story would suggest that the current population of New Orleans includes almost no African-American returnees, a conclusion easily rebutted by talking to some black people in the city, in Treme, Gentilly, New Orleans East, even in the Ninth Ward.
Finally, the story of Martin Jones and his wife. He's an evangelical pastor, who had a kidney transplant more than a decade ago. We learn that
... the couple longs for New Orleans, where they want to restart the growing inner-city ministry they led. But the stale air, rodents and slow recovery have made it impossible for them to go back.
In a week where everyone's yelping at the NYT for poor sourcing on its John McCain story, what's the source for "the stale air" characterization of a city? Apparently the fact that, while salvaging what they could from his house and church, he contracted a bad bacterial infection. Not to minimize that awfulness, but in most cases, such incidents occurred because of mold infestations of the flooded buildings. The city's "air" had nothing to do with it. As for the "rodents", earlier in the article we learned they infested "the Ninth Ward". But Jones' buildings, the piece reports, were
on the edge of the French Quarter
The French Quarter, it should be noted, is about a ten-minute drive from the Ninth Ward. For people.
Journalism, we're constantly told, is a matter of reporters reporting, and their editors pestering them with questions and requests to get facts right, before stories run. This piece, written about a city the reporter is clearly not in, based on what one individual may have said about the place he's left behind, seems never to have been graced by an editor's touch.
The Pulitzer still awaits....
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Interesting that the whole debate about why the oil industry should pay for the wetlands they destroyed has been deleted from this "public" blog. Hhmmmmm
To show that I am not some crackpot, here are some links about why the oil industry is significantly responsible for Katrina's damage to New Orleans. This a recent AP article which appeared in the NY Times, Wash Post, and numerous other periodicals inclusding this website. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/20/did-oil-canals-worsen-kat_n_82374.html
This is a recent article in USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2007-12-19-wetlands_n.htm
And this is a short documentary which lays out the legal and scientific case about why the oil industry is responsible to repair the significant damage they caused to our hurricane protection system.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4694637694087008583
I would check these out or bookmark them quickly before these posts also get deleted.
Mr. Shearer, you might take a look at the Scientific American website sciam.com where you will
find a large number of articles that predicted the disaster and discuss some or the remediation
solutions. I've not checked into it, but I suspect the American Society of Civil Engineers Journal
( I hope I have that right), might also have some very important contributions to make.
HARRY RESPONDS: I've checked the SciAm website, and read the pieces that aren't behind a subscription wall. None of them predicted the catastrophic failure of the Corps' "Hurricane Protection System", which was the cause of the flooding.
We attempt to defend our homes against nature and take whatever steps we can. Nothing created by man can be perfect. However, in responding to nature we can take whatever steps we can to recover and bring the community back to whole. The award winning article will expose the corruption in LA and how much money has been spent but little done to corrpution and graft. The Dem party will never permit such a story, however, if their is such a brave soul to do the article, it will win. MS has prospered, LA has floundered. The Dems in action and results for all to see.
HARRY RESPONDS: One little difference: Mississippi was hit by a hurricane, it flattened and left. Louisiana was flooded thanks to more than fifty levee breaches, water standing for weeks, corrdoding sub-street infrastructure in NO. Two entirely different situations. Not to mention the per capita advantage in federal aid Mississippi enjoyed.
New Orleans is a major American city. Miss's affected areas are a few beach towns. That is a rediculous comparison. You obviously know little about the situation and have jumped on the Dennis Hastert bandwagon. Do a little research next time.
What true writer cares if it is a democratic or republican administration? This is about justice, about righting wrongs on American citizens. This is not a reality show, red team vs, blue team. These are real Americans that have suffered and have been forgotten. The truth is American government has failed, government of both parties. Will America redeem herself or not? It is looking like "not" to me. I truly hope I am wrong.
You guys would of hated the 19th Century.
I wonder if Spike Lee's film is worth an honorable mention?
Why's everyone ignoring the 800# gorilla.
Global warming is causing rising ocean levels which will make keeping New Orleans dry harder and more expensive as the years go by. Why should ALL of America be taxed to save this particular piece of land BELOW SEA LEVEL.
The answer was, and still is, to move the French Quarter to Las Vegas, and abandon the city. Just as we will abandon a LOT of coastal cities in the coming 200 years.
Instead of getting angry, try a reasoned response.
wadenelson1
Las Vegas! Right! Superb suggestion. Let's ALL move to Las Vegas, that synthetic desert "oasis" where even in good times water has to be rationed, and the entire city is in danger of becoming a ghost town if global warming results in less fresh water reserves for everyone!
Wow, that sounds like something coming straight from the White House.
You are one side of the coin. Here is the other. Which is the true American?
http://blog.nola.com/chrisrose/2008/03/maine_teen_feels_debt_of_grati.html#more
How do you abandon the biggest port in the country? The economy of the US would take a hit so much more expensive than just stepping up and doing the obvious thing, restore the wetlands and strengthen the levees.
New Orleans will survive and thrive, as always it has and always will. Those who remained there will rebuild. Those who fled will return home. It is not merely a city, it is an institution, a culture, a way of life.
It is New Orleans and it is an American Treasure.
Thank you, Spender. You came along just when I thought no one (except those of us who live here) gets it.
You know, pushing Cat 5 levees & coastal restoration as N.O.'s ONLY line of defense against more Big Ones, some even bigger and badder than Katrina, is kind of like the owners of the Titanic refusing to include enough life boats and survival equipment because the ship's compartmentalized hull was engineered to be unsinkable.
Why put all your eggs in 2 baskets, esp when neither of those baskets will be functional anytime soon?
And folks wonder why so many across America are ready to simply abandon New Orleans and let it sink into the Gulf. Not that I agree with their reasoning...which I don't... but when so few Louisianians seem to be making logical sense based on reality, science, forces of nature, and even history and cultural authenticity regarding the rebuilding, can one blame them?
Yes, it is rediculous that anyone thinks you can just let New Orleans go. Aside from the obvious loss of a major American city and cultural cauldron, the economy of the US would take a deadly blow. The NO port system, including BR and St Bern is the largest and busiest port system in the world. 60 percent of all grains exported from the US come through NO. The oil infrastructure that fuels the nation comes through NO and vicinity. Abandoning NO might make interesting parlor talk but it is downright absurd and the nation needs to be educated about how important NO is to the nation and the world, so we can end this debate and get on with the work of rebuilding our lost land. That is where the oil industry comes in to pay for the damage they caused.
WallyLove, I'm posting here to summarize all the exchanges below.
I read the Burdeau article, and re-read the Time (August 2007) and Nat'l Geographic (October 2004) articles, all linked below. I looked for placenames in all the articles. All are affected by wetland loss. I found about 10. One was Shell Beach on Lake Borgne; it's loss is almost exclusively due to MRGO. Two were Venice and Empire, both on the River; their loss must be due to reduced sediment from the River. The other 7 were all in the Terrebonne-Lafourche-Barataria esturary. They were all embedded in discussion of the oil and gas damage to the wetland. They are also all on the West Bank of the River. I'm sure you understand that none of the wetland loss that far south and west, and across the River, had any role in the Katrina flooding of New Orleans. I don't doubt that the wetlands to the east of the River are being lost at a terrible rate, and that their loss contributed to flooding in New Orleans East and St. Bernard, as I have stated before. I just don't see their role in flooding Lakeview and Gentilly.
I also re-visited the engineering reports about the flooding. They discussed levee subsidence of between 1 and 5 feet, and design/construction errors of up to 2 feet due to benchmark subsidence. I didn't really scour the reports to learn where those settlements occurred. "Urban Geographies" by Campanella (2006) includes a photo of the Jefferson-St. Charles levee. He explains that the wetland in St. Charles Parish is about 6-8 feet above sea level. The developed and drained Jefferson Parish side is about 5 feet below sea level. One could assume that the undeveloped Jefferson Parish was once at the level of its St. Charles neighbor. (And, these soils are virtually identical to those in Lakeview/Gentilly.) But the levee and canals and pumps went into action and the land sank. I don't know when that levee was built, but it's been there my entire life - almost 50 years. So, that's about 11-13 feet of subsidence in 50+ years.
I have never seen any reliable map showing an enclosed Lake Borgne, or the islands, etc. around the Rigolets. The British brought sailing ships, big three-masted warships, into Lake Borgne in 1815. There was no wetland loss prior to that time, certainly, wetlands were still being created. They did not portage them from the Gulf. They sailed them directly from the Gulf to the Shell Beach area. They walked to Chalmette and most of them died; the rest walked back to their ships and sailed back into the Gulf. Forts Pike and Manchac were built in the next few decades to prevent future invasions from sailing into Lake Ponchartrain. Calling them "lakes" has always been a misnomer; they have never been landlocked. Your doppler evidence is completely unreliable. Look for USGS Quadrangle maps of the area. Most were originally drawn in the 1950s. They should show most of the pre-subsidence wetlands pretty clearly.
The book I cited above is "Geographies of New Orleans," (Campanella, 2006). The illustration on page 63 shows an unleveed section of lakefront St. Charles Parish alongside a leveed section of lakefron Jefferson Parish. The average elevation in St Charles is +0.8, the average elevation in Jefferson is -5.5, making the difference - and implied settlement - only 6.3 feet.
The forts protecting the eastern entrances to Lake Ponchartrain are named Pike and McComb. Fort Pike faces the Rigolets and Fort McComb faces Chef Menteur Pass.
That is a great beautifully detailed book and I recommend it for all. Rich is a great guy, too. He's a transplant from the Bronx who fell in love with N.O. and is dedicating his life to the preservation of New Orleans. There is a lot of passion for this city even from people who only discovered it in the last few years. I hope others will be inspired that so many care for such a national treasure.
Thanks for putting this information together since I believe it is the most crucial issue for New Orleans. Crime, education health care all take a back seat if a 30 foot ocean surge barrels in unabated. As far as an enclosed lake, I did not mean sealed off, but far more land enclosed them to the degree that Borgne was called a lake and not a bay. The Rogolets was a narrow pasage and not the vast opening it is today. In fact a floodgate was planned in the late sixties to plug up this entrance which used to be clogged up with wetlands. BTW, the British did not walk from lake Borgne they rowed hundreds of smaller craft down Bayou Bienvenue to the Viller Plantation. Bayou Bienvenue basically doesn't exist anymore, it has turned into an extension of "Lake" Borge and thus the Gulf. Lake Borgne's coast was ten miles further east at that time. Today the British could have floated right up to the Industrial Canal. That "spillage pond" has been totally engulfed. Go in a tall building on Canal St and look east. You'll see this vast body of water clearly in eyesight. This is the Gulf right in our back yard.
" . . . of design and construction flaws by the United States Army Corps and Engineers,. . ."
With that in the author's first sentence, he appears to not know about what he is writing.
It's a "Bush Moment" in time.
And now for something COMPLETELY different...
Why not encourage/incentivize/beat the drum for elevating all salvagable structures above the Katrina surge line? After all, it was not so much the wind, but the surge and the weeks of standing water which couldn't flow back out to the lack because of broken levees that did most of the damage.
Some have even argued that many if not most New Orleanians would have been better off hunkered down in well-stocked, emergency-supplied, properly elevated structures, with no levees and no evacuations at all.
That is absolutely silly. Evacuate until the wetlands are restored or you're a dead duck.
WallyLove
Did I say not to restore wetlands? No, I didn't. Of course restoring wetlands is a primary priority.
Even if wetlands could be put back to their pre-MS River leveed state (which they can't), however, it still would not solve the problem of hurricane storm surge. The sea level is rising no matter what we do or don't do levee-wise or coastal restoration-wise.
If the N.O. area keeps building as if devastating storm surge is not a probability every 50 to 100 yrs OR MORE, we'll keep having to fish dead bodies out of attics because there is no way to evacuate an entire real city, with tens of thousands of pedestrians who don't have cars and for whom cars only get in the way.
Those who think gargantuan Dutch-style levees and that a few freshwater diversion and barrier-island restoration programs will allow the N.O. metro area to carry on as usual are the silly ones. Besides that, even if unlimited federal funding were deposited in coffers today, it would be YEARS before levees and wetlands were sufficient to protect against another Big One. Many structures can be elevated in a matter of months.
And as far as being a dead duck because one didn't evacuate...I beg to differ. Ask any one of a number of New Orleanians if they would have left at all if they'd been well-stocked
AND they knew their homes would not flood, and you will find lots and lots of silly people.
Katrina did not hit NO. If a cat 3 made a direct hit and topped the levees, you would have 30 feet of water in a bowl almost the size of Lake Pontchartrain. There would be no rooftops to save people from. Even if someone built a 30 foot high house, how would you get them water, food, there would be no electricity, nothing but a lot of corpses floating everywhere. The current plan, which should have been the plan before Katrina, is 100 percent mandatory evacuation. Those without transportaion will be Amtracked to Baton Rouge and points north. A curfew will be imposed immeduately and anyone who is stupid enough to stay will be arrested if they leave their home and removed for their own protection. And you are mistaken about the ability to build protective land. We have one of the biggest land building machines on the planet; the Mississippi River. If we take full advantage and basically let the river run wild south of NO, then land will start to accumulate immeduitely and in ten years we will see significant land gains. Obviously we will have to relocate a few thousand people in Plaquemines and St. Bernard and that will be financed by a portion of the settlement the oil industry will be forced to put up very soon. Once again, it is absurd to think people can stay during a major storm.
New Orleans homeless pushed into barrack
New Orleans Mayor Orders Barrack Built to Break Up Homeless Camp, but Epidemic Remains
http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/New_Orleans_homeless_pushed_into_ba_02272008.html
Harry, thank you. The point you made is what has been the 800 lb gorilla in the room for the past 2 plus years. It seems that no one wants to take the time to actually be a journalist, especially about this subject. The experts have put out specific reports of one kind or another and you have a journalist here or there reporting on the crime stats or interviewing a lone survivor here or there but it seems that it is so much easier grabbing unsourced stats and use quotes from anyone hanging around that might have ever been to NOLA. It is pitiful and disgusting. It really makes a person wonder if you should believe anything that is on a newscast, opinion show "expert" or in the newspapers when you read absolute bs reported as gospel that can be disputed by 2 minutes on the computer by someone barely computer literate.
As for the Pulitzer being handed out, I believe that the person/s that can look honestly at Aug/Sept 2005 to the present and unravel the knots will earn the Pulitzer and a helluvalot of respect.
A good general idea of the situations that the people faced are documented by photos at the following website http://outhouserag.typepad.com/hurricane_watch/katrina_pictures/index.html Then follow up by looking at the photos from Hurricane Rita that hit the La/Tx coastline 3 weeks after Katrina http://outhouserag.typepad.com/hurricane_watch/rita_pictures/index.html
If anyone has captured the 'story', I haven't read it yet.
Thank you Harry. I wrote the WP a comment on that story but they only allowed 5000 characters so I just stuck to the Racial Bias of the piece which perpetuates the portrate of poor people, majority black, as the prominent "victims" of the Federal Flood. Their tactic so reminds me of the Nazis' Propaganda tool of telling the 'little lies" over and over and over until they stick in the cultural memory.
I sure am glad that you are the one nailing these pigs.
I posted you onto on the Ladder to counter the WP.
http://noladder.blogspot.com/
Thanks
Harry, do actually expect mainstream media to come down here to NOLA to see the situation for themselves? And the few folks who do manage to come down here just blow thru town with one hot topic they follow around for a day or two, and then leave to go publish their house-of-cards story.
This is just another example of how the insular worlds of big media in NY and LA (and even Houston which is a frickin' 8-hour drive from here) are completely out-of-touch with what is going on here in New Orleans. Can you imagine if the mayor of New York or Chicago said in a television interview that he'd "cold cock" anyone who tried to get close to him to do him harm? It'd be the first topic that night on The Situation Room or Hardball.
(note: for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, go check out the interview at wwltv.com)
Really enjoy your consistent coverage and opinions regarding our city. It's probably the only place in any media format where New Orleans is mentioned regularly.
YANGETY!
We may have to face the fact that the NOLA metro area will never return to its former glory. As a cautionary tale, we all might want to look at Galveston -- before and after the hurricane that killed more than 6000 people in 1900. Galveston actually hauled in huge amounts of earth to raise it somewhat above sea level, and built a substantial seawall. During the years Galveston was attempting a comeback, Houston surpassed it and Galveston has never truly recovered.
The fact is that the very existence of the canals, concrete levees, and below-sea-level communities added to the fate of NOLA, because all the building devastated the wetlands (not to mention the nutrias).
The only hope for the Mississippi delta region is for less re-building, fewer canals, fewer levees, re-routing of the oil pipelines and so on.
HARRY RESPONDS: Perhaps it need not be said, out of consideration, but New Orleans has a 300-year old culture that Galveston did not. As for former glory? New Orleans long ago made its peace about not being the opera capital of the US, as it was in the 19th century....
Not to mention Galveston is not on the Mississippi or any river for that matter, so it's a pretty useless port, too.
The major cause of wetland loss was not the levees but rather the oil companies cutting through the wetlands to supply America's SUV's.
Galveston compared to New Orleans. . .ha!
Our "glory" remains, it's just wants the federal government to take responsibility for what they did and then fix the damage they caused. I saw New Orleans after the hurricane and before the flood. I know the difference the water made and what damaged what.
Blaming Katrina on faulty ACE designs and construction is not only simplistic, it is hurting New Orleans' hopes of survival. Hurricane Betsy, when it hit land forty years ago, was a much stronger storm than Katrina when it hit and it struck us in the worst possible place, slightly west, putting us on the biggest surge side. But the 17th St., London Ave and Orleans Canals did NOT overtop and flood the city. In fact those canals had no seawalls at all at the time and still did not overflow. The reason? We had thousands of square miles more land just forty years ago than now. The destruction of the wetlands is the cause of Katrina's wrath, not fauty seawalls. You can't build a levee high enough when you are suddenly on the coast. Not only that, the Supreme Court says you can't sue the ACE. So the only hope to restore the wetlands is to have the oil industry which destroyed in the last fifty years, the land equivalent to the state of Delaware, which used to protect us. You put that land back and we don't even need sea walls. Why don't you ever mention the role of the oil and gas industry, rather than continuing just harping on the ACE? This is exactly the message the oil industry is trying to hoodwink the public with.
HARRY RESPONDS: Every time I discuss what needs to be done to make New Orleans safe, I mention the wetlands, and usually I mention the cause of the destruction. But there's an ethical, maybe even a moral, distinction between heedless destruction of habitat for short-term economic gain--where in the US doesn't that happen?--and a Federal agency mandated by Congress to build a protective system to certain clear standards spending four decades and a lot of money to utterly fail at that task.
Additionally, those canals did not flood the city during Betsy because there wasn't a MR-GO funneling storm surge into the heart of the city. Finally, it's simplistic to blame just oil-and-gas for the decline of the wetlands. A major contributor was the channelizing of the Mississippi, preventing river sediment, during floods, from replenishing the wetlands.
This s flat wrong, and I really hate to have to keep posting the facts of the matter, but here goes:
"Blaming Katrina on faulty ACE designs and construction is not only simplistic, it is hurting New Orleans' hopes of survival.
Sorry, Bub but faulty and unrepaired levees is Exactly what flooded New Orleans. By your reasoning, you might as well blame the moon for the high tides. The levees are supposed to protect the city, and they did not
THE ACOE has a system of rating flood protection, and New Orleans' is 1.3- the same as pastureland. Cows, yet. ACOE thinks people of NOLA are no better than farm land. Think about it.
The killing point is this- The ACOE, LA, the hurricane center, all warned Bush over and over about the deterioration of the levees. Levees need to be maintained- they erode, they sink, flaws are discovered. NO danger there IF the repairs are made. But what did Bush do? He cut taxes for the top 1% of America, then made up the shortfall by reducing the levee rebuilding money to less than one fifth. There was work going on, on the Lake side & Industrial canal levees. The cuts STOPPED work in progress. In short, had the money there for the AOCE to spend on inspection & repairs, the flawed levees would have been repaired. SUre, the ACOE had not built substandard levees. But that is not the issue: money, and where it went to, is. Heck, even Bush's regime has admitted that the flooding of New Orleans is their fault.
And make note that Bush refused to put emergency services in place before Katrina hit. And also note that he flat out lied to Louisiana leaders before during and after the flood about helping the city. And still lies and tried to cover it all up, from sending help to the people in the Superdome, to the formaldehyde danger in the trailers to helping the insurance companies avoid payouts.
It is that simple: It is Bush's fault that New Orleans flooded. It's all well documented, in all of its horror- how Bush destroyed New Orleans because of his greed and stupidity. And this idiot thinks he is just going to leave office and waltz away from what he did to America.
Posted February 25, 2008 | 11:07 AM (EST)