BEYOND KATRINA: A Call for Awareness and Action by John Pecoul

Address delivered at Lusher/Fortier Campus, November 10, 2007

There are many Katrina stories.

Hearing those about people who were evacuated, flooded, or displaced by Katrina is essential, especially when told by the very persons affected. Stories of disaster response excite, and visions of a better city and region inspire.

Still, another story must also be heard. It is the complex story of public policy and private business decisions over the previous century that set the stage for the disaster that occurred. It is the story of actions needed to remedy and substantially improve hurricane protection to guard against future disasters. All Americans and others on this planet need to learn more about this policy history, about its context in the Gulf coastal environment, and about the need to become citizen advocates urging the White House and Congress to correct the hurricane vulnerability and flawed protection exposed by Katrina. Doing this is no small task, especially as efforts continue to grapple with the human suffering caused by the storm and with our nation’s perennial challenge to end arbitrary racial and economic barriers to human achievement. Yet it is a task that must be completed.

KATRINA’S ENABLERS

In various ways, all Americans today and others before us were Katrina’s enablers. The storm was a destructive natural phenomenon, like all strong hurricanes, but its impact in southeast Louisiana was immensely worse due to the actions of businesses, of national, state, and local governments, and of individuals here and throughout the country in the 20th century.

In less than 100 years, some of those actions disrupted the Mississippi River’s 10,000 years of building new land at its mouth. Ocean erosion now washes away many more square miles of coastal wetlands in Louisiana than the river builds each year, for a net loss of 10.3 square miles per year, or one football field every hour and a half. Loss of coastal wetlands on the Gulf of Mexico is a crisis, not only for the intrinsic ecological and economic importance of these wetlands, but also because they serve as buffers to mitigate the height and power of storm surges like those caused by Katrina. (Some experts say that every mile of wetlands crossed by storm surge reduces it by about one foot.)

Human intensifiers of coastal erosion and Katrina’s impact include:

1. LESS SILT. Dam and lock construction along the upper Mississippi and its tributaries reduces the amount of silt and sediment carried to build the delta and new land in the Gulf of Mexico.

2. LEVEES TOO CLOSE TO RIVER’S MOUTH. Massive levees were built along the Mississippi and streams flowing into it. Precipitated by the Great Flood of 1927(See John M. Barry’s book, Rising Tide), their goal was to prevent river flooding. Near the river’s end, however, the levees extend too close to the mouth of the river and create a “chute” effect, propelling much of the silt that still reaches the delta into deeper Gulf waters rather than allowing it to settle in shallows and build new land.

3. SALT WATER KILLING WETLANDS THROUGH OIL AND GAS CANAL DREDGING. Energy companies dredged hundreds of canals for their drilling barges in fragile coastal lands with little or no remedial or restorative action. For most of the 20th Century, they sold and we Americans bought cheap oil and gas without covering the cost to correct the damage done. That damage takes many forms nationally but in Louisiana and parts of coastal Texas, it includes the intrusion of salt water via the oil and gas canals into healthy wetlands. More salinity kills trees, marsh grasses and other vegetation whose roots hold soil in place, resisting coastal erosion and reducing storm surges.

4. SHIP CHANNEL WORSENING SALINITY, WETLANDS DECLINE AND SURGE.        At mid-century, port and ocean shipping interests and the Army Corps of Engineers secured congressional and state funding to dredge an enormous channel, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) to shorten the distance from the Gulf for ships heretofore using the Mississippi River. Once complete, MRGO did not attract sufficient ship traffic to be an economic success, but its side effects were major. MRGO increased salt water intrusion, destroyed more wetlands, eroded its own banks, and became an ever widening funnel for storm surges to reach levees in St.Bernard Parish and the sprawling 9th Ward of New Orleans.

THE WORST ENABLER: BOTCHED FEDERAL GOVERNMENT LEVEE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION.

Since Hurricane Betsy in l965, which flooded the Lower 9th Ward and
Bywater areas in New Orleans, St. Bernard, and other coastal parishes, the US Army Corps of Engineers has been “upgrading” levees and    floodwalls along the lakes and drainage canals of the N.O. region. Many of those “improvements” failed catastrophically during Katrina, according to studies by a variety of independent professionals such as the American Society of Civil Engineers, the University of California(Berkeley) team funded by the National Science Foundation, and the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center. The studies document how, during the last three decades of the 20th Century and beyond, the safety of human lives has had to compete with a “culture of cost cutting” in presidential, congressional, state, and Corps of Engineers funding decisions, and in Corps flood control and hurricane protection design and construction processes.

In the New Orleans area, these studies fault dysfunctional tradeoffs of safety for savings that produced poorly designed and constructed levees and floodwalls which collapsed from a storm surge most were supposedly built to withstand.

The federal promise of secure hurricane protection proved worthless when Katrina came to New Orleans. The result was more than 1500 deaths and a nearly lethal wound to the lives, cultures, and livelihoods of more than a million and a half people in or near a great and historic American city. 

KNOW MORE, DO MORE: A CALL FOR CITIZEN AWARENESS, ADVOCACY, AND ACTION

Human decisions and actions created the conditions which magnified Katrina’s destruction, and human action can change and rectify those conditions. Many in the ranks of local citizen and community-based groups active in the recovery of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region hope to see more advocacy and support at the national level from friends, family, and concerned citizens and their organizations across the country.

Short term disaster “relief” is not enough, and much of the federal effort of that kind has been wasteful, inept, or tainted by political favoritism. The need for strategic federal funding and policy improvements is glaring in the wake of Katrina.  Meeting that need requires nationwide messages of support to Congress and the White House. Priorities include sufficient federal resources to: rebuild housing and community infrastructure devastated by Katrina(and Rita in southwest Louisiana); begin and expedite coastal wetlands restoration; and, build hurricane protection systems able to withstand not just a Katrina but the even stronger Category 4 and 5 storms predicted as oceans warm and rise, and hurricanes become more frequent and more powerful.

Despite much rhetoric about rebuilding New Orleans and its region, actual federal aid has been slow to arrive, smaller than required, and snarled in red tape. For example, many people are not aware that it took the previous Congress until June 2006--nine months after Katrina--to pass funding which only partially financed reconstruction of housing(including affordable purchase and rental units), restoration of businesses, jobs, and utilities, rebuilding of local government facilities and services, and initiation of large scale levee improvements(beyond the quick fixes made for the 2006 hurricane season). Funding for eligible homeowners in the Road Home program was not enacted until late 2007.

Over two years after Katrina, in November 2007, the first significant funding for coastal restoration and some major storm protection structures was finally authorized, though not funded. Even that vital step required the current Congress to override a presidential veto--the first override of the Bush administration. (Note: The struggle for a full and safe recovery of the New Orleans region can be followed online in the Times-Picayune at www.nola.com . The New Orleans daily won two Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of Katrina and its protracted aftermath.)

For those who want to learn more and offer support, there are many needs that require attention. Just three are:  

1. ACTION TO FUND GULF COASTAL RESTORATION
Congress and the White House in December 2006, after nearly a decade of pleading from Louisiana, finally approved U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu’s legislation to dedicate a small portion of the government’s revenue from oil and gas pumped from Gulf federal waters to coastal restoration and hurricane or flood protection in Louisiana, Texas, and other offshore oil producing states. Even after this action, mountain states still receive much larger proportions of federal revenues from oil or gas drilling on federal lands in the western US than coastal states receive from such revenues in federal waters off their shores. Giving coastal states a comparable share and restricting its use to coastal restoration and storm protection would be a major change to expedite a healthier coastal environment and safer communities as well. Let the White House, Congress, and federal agencies know you want full funding for coastal restoration. (Note: This website, www.americaswetland.com, is a good information source on these issues, and often provides messages that can be e-mailed to relevant public officials and media outlets. Learn more about coastal restoration and hurricane protection and how you can help by clicking on the Resources section of the America’s Wetland website, and by visiting other websites such as www.healthygulf.org and www.saveourlake.org/wetlands.htm.

2. HOLD THE CORPS ACCOUNTABLE
The US Army Corps of Engineers must be held accountable, have its culture and policy revamped, and have funding sufficient to make protection of human lives a top priority. Are you aware that its spending decisions about the strength, size, and safety level of levees have not considered loss of human life but only narrowly defined economic impacts? Are you aware that dams are built with much higher margins of safety than levees, even when those levees are ostensibly protecting urban areas with thousands of people? Levee safety is not an issue just in Louisiana and along the Mississippi River and its tributaries from the Rockies to the Appalachians. Levee failures could also inundate locations such as the northeast Bay Area and the Sacramento area in California, and the area around Lake Okeechobee in Florida.

In 2006, the Independent Levee Investigation Team, composed of leading engineering/flood safety experts from universities and other entities, funded by the National Science Foundation, and led by Ray Seed, geotechnical engineer at the University of California(Berkeley) proposed a major overhaul of the Corps of Engineers and creation of a National Flood Defense Authority independent of the Corps. This authority would oversee levee projects from design to construction to assure safety standards and watchdog the Corps. Messages to Congress from citizens need to urge such drastic changes of Corps practices and funding. See also the website of www.levees.org  for more information on what  can be done to hold the Corps accountable and revamp it.

3. SEAL MRGO AND REMEDIATE ITS WETLANDS DAMAGE
Support closure of the Miss. River Gulf Outlet(MRGO), the ship channel that devastated wetlands southeast of St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans for a half century before Katrina and helped funnel Katrina’s surge direct to inland levees unprepared for the onslaught. For more information and action options, visit the website of the Coalition to Close the Miss. River Gulf Outlet at www.ccmrgo.org .

NEW ORLEANS AND THE CENTRAL GULF REGION NEED ADVOCATES NATIONWIDE

The people of southeast Louisiana and the New Orleans area have been moved to tears by the outpouring of aid and sympathy from millions in the United States and around the world in the wake of Katrina. Our tears continue as we confront the enormity of the challenge to make our part of the world safer, more equitable, and more able to thrive and sing songs of joy again.

We need support and advocacy from all parts of our country for federal and private funding to re-build lives and housing for families, and to restore businesses and institutions. We need messages to Congress and the White House to assure substantially improved safety in hurricane protection (levees, floodgates, pumping capacity, and coastal wetlands restoration). If top flight storm protection does not receive high priority, full support, and prompt action, then all the current investment to re-build places for people to work, live, and celebrate life will be at the mercy of nature’s vagaries every hurricane season.

Human lives have been at risk from a major storm for years along the Central Gulf Coast, but the few truth tellers sounding the warnings were largely ignored. Now, there is no longer any doubt about the great danger that lurked---and still lurks. The difference is that after Katrina, no one should be able to get by with saying they were not aware of the deadly potential.

Citizens of every state and nation must join to assure a better and safer future for people of the New Orleans/Central Gulf region.

(Revised, 1/22/08)
John Pecoul (japecoul@yahoo.com)

(Now retired, Pecoul was a Vice President and political science faculty member at Xavier University of Louisiana, and formerly an executive staff member for two Mayors of New Orleans, Moon Landrieu and Ernest “Dutch” Morial.)

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In addition to the websites mentioned in this essay, and the Times-Picayune website www.nola.com Katrina flooding maps we projected in the Fortier library, two other recovery plan sites are links of interest:

www.unifiedneworleansplan.com

www.nolarecovery.com

The first has the comprehensive citywide plan, UNOP. It was developed by hundreds of residents and top national and local planners in a series of community workshops over a 6 month period in fall and winter 2006-2007. It also contains the more detailed plans shaped by neighborhood residents and planner teams for some dozen parts of town, both the flooded and the dry(or slightly wet!).

The second focuses the initial implementation phases of the UNOP in the 17 recovery zones and the citywide infrastructure upgrade projects to which federal, state, and local public funds, now finally being released, will be targeted for construction.