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The problem with the rebuilding plan, which designates more devastated and lower-elevation portions of the city as candidates for razing and green space, is that it presumes that the flooding was a natural event doomed to be repeated. This is a correct premise in many unprotected floodplains. It is an incorrect premise in New Orleans, however. For many decades, our city has been protected from levees that keep water out and by one of the most technologically advanced pumping systems to get the water out that comes in in the form of rain. What flooded our city was not the natural effects of Hurricane Katrina, but the human ineptitude of those who built "new and improved" levees and floodwalls in the early 1990s. Make no misttake about the identity of those builders, either. It was not local politicians or fragmented levee boards, decried far and wide by those who know no better as the corrupt engineers of our demise. It was the federal government, in the form of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, that oversaw the design and building of those levees and floodwalls that failed, pouring devastation into our city. Hence, it is not the footprint of the city that is inherently broken and in need of alteration, but the man-made protections of the city that should be overhauled.
To the extent that there is financial hardship to providing services now to these devastated areas of the city, it is the same actor -- the federal government -- that is culpable and should be liable for making this city whole again. But, as the feds are slow in everything involving response to this man-made disaster, we are absolutely right to take risks and work into our own hands and start rebuilding ourselves.
