Katrina Anniversary

As the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, Time examines why New Orleans still is not safe and why another disaster could sink the city. The article turns fault to the shoddy planning US Army Corps of Engineers and coastal erosion. Louisiana is losing its' precious wetlands, which absorb hurricane storm surges, at the rate of a football field every 8 minutes. In addition the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MrGo) channel, which was built by the Army Corps to provide a direct, deep shipping route from the Gulf to New Orleans, allowed flood waters to speed towards the city. Finally, the mass media understands what New Orleans citizens have known for years.

"The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city's defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks. We never would have heard the comment "Heckuva job, Brownie." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (fema) was the scapegoat, but the real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city's man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government's response, but they still haven't come to grips with the government's responsibility for the catastrophe."

More here:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1646611_1646683_1648904,00.html