Living on Earth takes up race and flood repairs

"Living on Earth" just aired a conversation ("New Orleans Flood Risk and Racial Disparity") with Nathalie Walker of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, in New Orleans, and Colonel David Berszeck of the Army Corps of Engineers on where the ACE has puts is most significant efforts against future flooding and their unfortunate coincidence with race in New Orleans. NDBP blogged about this last week and it's nice to see that it's getting play.

Feel like greenin' it up!

It's important to remember that not all the news is bad news. There are, in fact, numerous creative, engaged, and inspiring people and communities in New Orleans. Unfortunately they keep hitting road blocks from the city, the state and the feds. If government and insurance would get around to doing the right thing, I have no doubt New Orleans would rise like a phoenix. Check out Ariane Wiltse's great story in last week's Gambit Weekly on the efforts in the Lower Ninth Ward to rebuild green and rebuild for the 21st century. The work of Charles Allen III (the new president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association and also the assistant director of the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane and Xavier universities) and the resident of Holy Cross is moving.

From Day 1 after the federally-constructed and managed levees failed I wondered why we couldn't rebuild a New Orleans that preserved its character while giving it a 21st-century infrastructure. New Orleans should be a showcase of building best practices: efficient, adaptive, fair, and green. Anything less tells is a disgrace.

We need more than band-aids

According to a widely reported-on analysis ("Excess Mortality in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: A Preliminary Report," Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness 1(1) 2007: 15-20), the New Orleans mortality rate has climbed nearly 50% since Katrina. Less frequently cited is the editor's note at the end of the article:

Our disaster medicine colleagues who respond to catastrophic public health emergencies worldwide have educated us on the nuances of the prolonged effect that such disasters have on the community. Following the prototypical wars that destroyed their countries’ public health infrastructure, the decay factors that cause preventable deaths continued for many years after the shooting had stopped. Years later, retrospective studies recorded many more deaths from indirect causes, and those that suffer the most typically are women, children, old people, and people with disabilities. Ninety percent of excess deaths were preventable.

The US is not a developing country, but the uncomfortable reality of the public health impact and management of Katrina is painfully similar. The authors’ study has exposed that glaring deficiency—that an attentive and proactive surveillance and response mechanism is justifiably obligated from state and federal agencies.

We couldn't agree more. If the deaths are preventable and the agencies and officials don't do anything, aren't they responsible?

Clearing up road blocks?

Our roads were never too hot to begin with, but they have been buckling and sinking in unimaginable ways since billions of gallons of water flooded across them after the federally-constructed and mismanaged levees broke. The City of New Orleans needed lots of money and help to repair them and FEMA initially balked, claiming (like the sewer damage) that they'd need proof of actual flood damage for each and every repair. Now FEMA claims to be chomping at the bit to do the repairs and is blaming the city for not getting off its duff to get them the list.

It's another round of he-said-she-said. While I know Mayor Nagin has been a terrible steward of the post-disaster recovery, it's important to remember that the city has very limited resources (more repairs than we can handle, a smaller tax base, an exodus of professionals) and that we faced a disaster of unprecedented proportions. The mantra may get old for some folks, but it's still true: "The federal government broke the city, the federal government should pay for the repairs."


Photo by Chris Granger from the Times-Picayune (Friday June 22, 2007). A car slows down to go over a crater hole in the middle of the 6300 block of Argonne Blvd. in Lakeview.

Who's getting soaked?

The Times-Picayune published copies of new flood maps from the Army Corps of Engineers, along with a long analysis of what has and has not been done since the levees broke. Apparently if you're rich and white, you get flood protection first.

It took a little work, but I pulled together a comparative map of flood risk pre-Katrina and today (based on the ACE's maps: the bluer the area, the greater the flood risk) and layered it on top of the 2000 census map of percentage of African-American households (the greener the map area, the higher the percentage). Look carefully at the two maps and you'll see what I mean. Perhaps more shocking than the fact that Gentilly, New Orleans East and the Ninth Ward haven't gotten any flood protection relief is that the protection afforded to the Broadmoor and Mid-City areas is greatest in the areas with the smallest African-American populations.

Map 1 (pre-Katrina)

Map 2 (post-Katrina)

FEMA: Helping us to get back on our knees

WDSU is reporting that FEMA has agreed to help repair the New Orleans sewer system, sort of. The city's pipes were overwhelmed by the water running through them and crushing them from above after the federally-designed levee system collapsed. Post-levee-collapse, 100 million gallons a day were pouring out of our destroyed system. But FEMA refused to help, claiming that the damage wasn't hurricane related. So out of our own overly taxed budgets, the local Sewerage and Water Board has worked to repair the system and it now leaks just 50 million gallons a day.

Now FEMA has changed its mind, but only a bit. FEMA is not going to repair what the government destroyed. Instead they've agreed to get us back to the crappy system we used to have, which used to leak 36 million gallons a day. Even if this were fair, how do you do this? Repair just a certain percent of the pipes? Repair just certain parts of the city? Repair at random until we reach the 36 million gallons figure? We await their Solominic wisdom.

UPDATE: The Times-Picayune has a fuller analysis of the issue. If only FEMA had come to its senses earlier, we might have been able to make greater progress on infrastructure by now.

The road to tell is paved with good intentions

FEMA rightly felt that insurance payouts needed to start flowing to homeowners sooner than later. And one way to do that was to cut the red tape for flood insurance claims. Unfortunately they cut so close to the quick that we're all bleeding money as the insurance agencies take us and the rest of America to the cleaners.

Why do we get bubkis?

California estimated that the rebuilding of the on ramp to San Francisco's Bay Bridge would take 50 days. C.C. Myers Inc. did it in just 17 days. The contract built in incentives to hasten completion and California worked to assure both quality and reduced bureaucracy. As an article in the New York Times explains: "Within 24 hours of the devastating crash and fire, the federal government approved some emergency reconstruction money; not long after, the state settled on a design plan."

So why hasn't New Orleans seen anything like this? Why does school reconstruction lag so terribly? Why did garbage fill the streets for more than a year? Why did flood protection work take so long and still not work?! Why are there still street lights on the fritz? Why does our sewer system continue to spill water into the ground?

The world watched as New Orleanians were treated like trash after the levees broke. Americans were ashamed. Well, guess what? You should still be ashamed. New Orleans certainly shares some of the blame, but unimaginative and overly-bureaucratic state and federal government agencies and officials have turned a blind eye to the misery caused by the worst catastrophe in American history. A disaster caused by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Out of sight, out of mind.