If we ever accept that our federal government is responsible for the Katrina disaster, by building obviously faulty levees, we have an absolute responsibility to rebuild the levees, doing it right.  I don't think that would be popular with the majority of Americans, who much prefer the drama of Jon Benet's whodunnit, or the next season of TV. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

Off topic, but I never heard "money honey," apparently she doesn't mind it.

On topic, it is really that unusual that CNBC would focus on the economic aspects on the story, and not the levees? You could have picked CNN -- I went through many of the transcripts from today, and not a mention of "levees" could be found.

Dissent Protects Democracy.

To answer your question, its because any form of accountability or responsibility is anathema to America's ruling class.

"That's why this blog is named 'After the Levees', not 'After the Storm'. The catastrophe in New Orleans was man-made"

I am starting to hear these sorts of talking points with more and more frequency, and it's getting distressing. 99 percent of the time, it's conservatives who believe their own BS, but on this one, liberals seem to be getting into the myth-making game.

Yes, I know, the levees were poorly designed and did fail. But the catastrophe in New Orleans had a lot of causes, and the bad levees were only one.

That city is in a dangerous place. The entire Gulf Coast is susceptible to major hurricanes. New Orleans has gotten whacked before; so has Galveston, so has Pensacola.

New Orleans is also sitting right next to a river that is threatening to change course and drain through the Atchafalaya swamp instead.

New Orleans also contains lots of neighborhoods that are well below the level of the river and thus susceptible to flooding with or without a levee break.

It has taken tremendous feats of engineering to even make New Orleans relatively safe to live in, and if it ever faces a direct hit from a stronger storm than Katrina (a distinct possibility, thanks to all the CO2 we put in the atmosphere), all bets are off, no matter how high the levees are.

There seems to be a great desire of many people to live in denial about these facts. Note that this does not deny the truthfulness of some of the left-narratives. It is quite true that racial prejudice has tainted the rebuilding process. It is quite true that the levees weren't as strong as they should have been. And it is, of course, tragically true that the current presidential administration is playing all sorts of politics with disaster aid and rebuilding programs.

Nonetheless, denying the role that Mother Nature played in Katrina is, for lack of a better word, unmitigated crap. The fact is, that is a very dangerous place to put a city. And the fact that there is one there that has been somewhat depopulated raises very difficult questions, questions that, frankly, I am not sure that our political process is capable of answering. It is so easy to fit the issues into our preexisting political narratives, either here on the left about poor people and blacks getting the shaft, or on the right about corrupt urban governments and the purported inability of persons of color to run cities.

But at least we can start by admitting that the initial cause of the disaster is Mother Nature. The levees are a mitigation scheme. They were inadequate. But that makes them one cause, not the only cause.

Back in the 1980's I was leading summer Elderhostel Groups in Scandinavia. (the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish part is partnered with the organization with which I was an exchange student in the late 50's, the Scandinavian Seminar.) At the end of one of my group tours the Elderhostel Rep asked if I would go to Holland and take up a group where the leader had fallen ill. The last week was all about Water Management in Amsterdam. So I went, and led that group, and of course I learned a hell of a lot.

First off -- George Bush should join this Elderhostel tour in Holland, because he needs to know what they teach.

Similarly, the ordinary folk of New Orleans need to take this tour too -- because they too have much to learn from it.

One of our first lectures was about how great civilizations had totally fallen apart when their ability to manage water had failed. When the Roman Acquaducts were breeched, when Mayan Agricultural irrigation systems were destroyed, when Sri Lankan systems were destroyed, the Story of Chaco Canyon, and much else -- when the government of a society that requires water management cannot perform, the civilization falls. That is how the Dutch understand it all. That is why their founding myth is about the kid who sticks his fist into the leak in the dyke till his friends can bring help.

Now I have toured the underground of Amsterdam where some of the piles are old Oak that was harvested in New Amsterdam -- i.e. Central Park way back when -- and the new stuff is high tech piles made of cement and re-bar. Some of it is in between technology. The point is the Dutch keep working the matter, and keep making improvements. And while they do tend to have a good time in Amsterdam, they do not avoid the responsibility for water management as a central feature of all politics.

I've probably watched or listened to about six hours of TV and Radio today about Katrina, and I have heard virtually nothing about any sort of thesis about Water Management. I have heard a lot about class and race and the psychology of survivors and all the rest, but Water Management -- not a hell of a lot.

I was none too popular on this blog back a year ago when I suggested that one ought to study the idea of governance about water management that was incorporated into TVA. I must make the point -- at age 18, I did a seminar and instructed readings class with one of the first Trustees of TVA, Arthur Morgan, and I think far too little about him. his ideas, and his pioneers has been written into known American History. But I want to restate the point. The Tennessee Valley and the Cumberland Valley were economic wastelands till, after nearly 40 years of debate, they were incorporated into an authority that took away powers from state and local government on water management matters, and accorded it to TVA. They were then developed across state and county and other juristictional lines, and wo-laa, they got healthy economies and much else.

The Gulf Coast does not need an authority so as to measure the production cost of electricty -- one of the key TVA Missions -- but it needs an authority stretching from the Mexican line to the Keys in Florida so as to rationalize waterfront built environment use. How many millions of folk who are retired and maybe don't drive all that much, do you want to put in high rise condo's on the coast? How many hundreds of thousands of them do you want needing to evacuate with their breathing machines? Where do they hook up? The Gulf coast has been sold as condo land for the retired -- and we need to reveal that the back up is not available.

The Philosophy is Grover Nordquist's bathtub analogy/ make the obligations of government small enough that you can drain them down the bath drain. One must totally oppose this, fight it to the death. It is the crux of the matter, not just a fancy of the right. Follow Nordquist and you would throw the Katrina folk into the grinders of the pumps, and let the pulp sink to the bottom of the lake. Doesn't pass moral standards if you will.

What we need is an authoritative notion of how to manage water in the interests of our civilization. Let's hear it.

There's a lot of merit to Sara's comment as the antidote to the know-nothing "well, they do it in Amsterdam so they can do it here" response anytime anyone mentions how dumb it is to have a huge city in New Orleans' location.

Yes, if you have a complex program of water management, you can have people in dangerous areas. But only the number you can evacuate. And that's a rather different calculation than "let's rebuild the Ninth Ward at all costs because anything less can only be a result of racism".

Again, though, as I said above, I don't think our political system is capable of thinking outside the old boxes. Which is why we are likely to simply muddle along in our entrenched positions until the next storm kills another 2,000.

That, my friend, is why the full quote I keep hearing is "The first four days were a natural catastrophe, but the next four days were a man-made catastrophe."

The catastrophe that Katrina wreaked was amplified by a gutted FEMA, by unheeded warnings, and by an uncaring federal leadership.

Yes, but...

When you have nowhere else to go you live in spite of the risk. Consider the Netherlands.

The Mississippi, having been channeled by the Corps for the benefit of the whole country, now cannot keep depositing silt on Louisiana and Mississippi, so both states are sinking. Shall we abandon them?

Remember that while a large hurricane spreads over a huge area, the highest wind speeds and largest storm surge are much smaller. Katrina did not hit New Orleans.

The levees are not the sole cause but they are the one we can address. If we begin to see significant sea level rise this argument is going to sweep up all our low-lying cities. If we relocate who is going to give up real estate to accomodate refugees?

It's a fact of life that some of the most fruitful real estate is kind of risky. A seacoast is a good place to make a living, ditto volcanic soil, ditto river floodplains.

1. "Nowhere else to go" is true but misleading. Yes, the poor of New Orleans had, for the most part, nowhere else to go (though now that the storm has destroyed their homes many have gone elsewhere). But that's rather different from whether the United States had nowhere else to put hundreds of thousands of people than in one of the most dangerous places in the country. This is a rather larger country than Holland, and there are, literally, plenty of safe places to put people.

2. See Sara's comment on the Netherlands. The Netherlands is being held out by too many on the left as some sort of cure-all for hurricanes. It isn't. It is a demonstration that if you do comprehensive water management, you can have more people living in unsafe areas. But there is still a limit and there are still places you wouldn't want people to live.

I'd add one other thing about the Netherlands. They pour a lot of concrete and channel a lot of water to do what they do. There are going to be huge and legitimate wetlands preservation and other environmental issues with doing something like that in Lousiana-- indeed there are already huge wetlands preservation issues with what the Corps of Engineers currently does to prevent the Mississippi from draining into Atchafalaya and to prevent New Orleans from flooding.

3. Your approach doesn't answer your own questions. I hardly think that the fact that it is difficult to get people out of coastal areas militates in favor of just keeping them there and letting them get killed in the next disaster.

As I said in my first post, I don't think the political system can answer these sorts of questions. There's no way that we can move rich white people en masse because they have too much power, and there's no way we can move poor black people en masse because there's too much of a sorry history and no way to avoid charges of racism.

I acknowledge all that. But that means we just keep on with business as usual, build the levees a little higher (the one thing that can get consensus support) and wait for the next disaster to clobber us. And meanwhile we utter platitudes about how it didn't have anything to do with putting hundreds of thousands of people in harm's way, that it was just the inadequate levees.

Somehow, for all this talk of the Netherlands, I doubt that is how the Dutch do things.

How many millions of folk who are retired and maybe don't drive all that much, do you want to put in high rise condo's on the coast? Sara

What's the big deal?

Put a diesel generator in the high rise. No high rise has ever suffered serious damage in a hurricane.  And if you build one below the first marine terrace, put it on piers.