Sunday Editorial From the NY Times

With the two year anniversary of Katrina rapidly approaching, the situation in our beloved city continues to be untenable, as described in an editorial in Sunday's New York Times. There will likely be a ton of coverage of New Orleans two years later in the media over the next few weeks.

Editorial
New Orleans Still at Risk

Published: August 19, 2007
How quickly the sense of urgency flags. Even as Hurricane Dean heads toward the Gulf Coast, New Orleans is frighteningly far from being prepared to withstand a storm with even a fraction of Katrina’s power.
As John Schwartz reported in The Times on Friday, New Orleans is still a city very much at risk. The task of rebuilding its rickety system of levees has proved hugely difficult, while the government’s efforts have been far less than what was promised and what is needed.
The Army Corps of Engineers has taken a piecemeal, disorganized approach to the reconstruction of the city’s defenses. It built up a defensive floodwall on the east side of the Industrial Canal — to protect the largely abandoned Lower Ninth Ward — while leaving the more heavily populated Gentilly neighborhood on the west side exposed behind a lower wall. Other projects — in particular, floodgates erected in relative haste to protect more prosperous neighborhoods — have raised charges that the corps is more concerned about the rich.
And though most of the task remains to be done, the corps seems to have lost its sense of urgency. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, which experts say funneled floodwater into the city, has not been closed off. The corps says it is waiting for proposals from contractors to do the job, which might not be finished for years.
The corps says it aims to build up a defense system able to withstand a 1-in-100 storm by 2011. But that is still four years, and four hurricane seasons, away. Moreover, it will require more money from Congress: the plan is likely to cost about double the more than $7 billion that has been appropriated so far. But many members of Congress seem to have lost their enthusiasm.
Tens of thousands of battered residents who abandoned homes and lives are not going to return until they can be assured that they will be safe, while the people who stayed are still at risk. Two years after Katrina, that is shameful — and not what President Bush, Congress and the corps promised.