The delays and refusals to commit to the kind of levee-improvement and service restoration which would enable the

exiles to return and rebuild makes me wonder: could there

be an element of Political/Ethnic cleansing in all these

non-plans? A lot of the Black Exiles from NOLA were Democratic

voters, and keeping them away tips Louisiana from a Red-Blue

voting balance to a Deep Red majority. Plus, the "legal theft"

of their houses and lots for resale at a penny-on-the-Franklin

or less to developers would give a big unearned windfall to

someone. Maybe the plan is to turn the 9th Ward and etc. into

one big Ship Canal.

What if Black America comes to the same suspicion? What if

they say " No 9th? No Orleans!" What if they decide to try

organizing tourist boycotts against the "White Heights" of

the French Quarter? Wouldn't it be better to plan for and

execute Dutch Seawall quality dykes and levees around New

Orleans itself to save the culture and avoid that bitterness?

Of course, if return-prevention really IS the plan, what if

the NOLA exiles were to thwart the electoral-balance aspects

of it by all moving back to Lafayette, Baton Rouge, Morgan City

and etc., and establish a bunch of New Orleans in Exile-type

neighborhoods? Louisiana would retain its Red-Blue balance,

and chunks of the culture would be preserved in nearby cities.

As a native New Orleanian, thank you for continuing to report on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It's not over, not by a long shot.

I am encountering a lot of compassion fatigue where people's attitudes seem to have gone from “you poor thing” to "you got what they deserved - living there." I don’t hear anybody bitching about how the Netherlands are below sea level. California has earthquakes, mudslides, wild fires, and the possibility of Tsunamis, yet, no one has called for everyone to vacate that area. I’m sure if some disaster struck, people would claim they knew it was coming all along. Hindsight is 20/20. Have some compassion, people.

I completely agree with the idea that the city needs to get smaller, and tough decisions need to be made. But the TIME it is taking to make these decisions is completely unacceptable. My house was flooded with 7’ of water. My husband’s job moved, so it is unlikely we could or would return. But SIX months after the storm and we still don’t know what to do with our former house. Should we pay to gut it? Should we tear it down? Can we feasibly sell it? That poor thing still has all our things that we wouldn’t salvage (which is almost everything) sitting in there molding away, the fridge laying on its side, never yet (hopefully never ever) opened to the rotting former food within. We can’t make well-informed decisions until they decide which neighborhoods get the axe and until the FEMA flood maps are done. For someone who is decisive and likes to move forward - this waiting is unbearable.

And frankly, yes, the city is sentimental. That’s what made the city special, not the French Quarter bars that tourists puked in. People are fiercely loyal to their neighborhoods. We knew our neighbors and probably their parents, too. The people seemed as permanent and as rooted as the homes. We could walk to locally owned businesses in our pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods. And losing that is why I am so sad I had to move to America.

Sorry Tad, but for many decades you haven't had many hurricanes to be protected against. For many future decades, you will. Since many of them could be Cat 4 or 5 it will be extemely expensive and difficult to protect the low-lying areas. Get out while the gettin's good. The country will quickly tire of rebuilding every few years.

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.

I guess I'm just feeling defensive but I have a problem with John McIlwain's statement that if New Orleans residents fight for their homes and neighborhoods then the city might end up like . . gasp . . DETROIT!

The implication is that if the situation in New Orleans is allowed to worsen then it might get as bad as Detroit already is. Detroit has serious problems, to be sure, but it's a completely different scenario. I haven't actually seen New Orleans but Detroit can't possibly be that bad.