Four years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans still needs us

Errol Louis

Sunday, August 30th 2009, 4:00 AM

On this, the fourth anniversary of the destruction of New Orleans, let us resolve to replace the political heat of accusation with the penetrating light of reason.

The single most important thing to know is that the city remains vulnerable to another big hurricane strike. Its flood protection system must be completely re-engineered, a project that will cost billions.

It takes work to think the matter through. Like many who fell in love with pre-Katrina New Orleans, I find it hard to avoid getting carried away by sadness and rage.

My family in the city included an aunt who lost everything, a cousin on the police force and another who is a social worker.

In fact, my family held a reunion in the city a few weeks before the storm. The personal loss, for us outsiders, is only a shadow of what Gulf residents have suffered. Still, it hurts.

And for those remaining locked into the stale narrative of blame, there is more than enough to go around.

We all know there was poor preparation by local agencies (mostly Democrats) and a famously botched response by federal emergency officials (mostly Republicans).

We know that heroic media reporting, particularly by the Times-Picayune newspaper, was accompanied by wild, false rumors of cannibalism and vigilante violence.

Four years later, New Orleans has taken impressive steps toward recovery. Following a drastic reduction in population, the number of households in the city now stands at 77% of its pre-hurricane total.

While blight remains a problem - 31% of New Orleans' residential housing stock remains unoccupied - the city issued 1,420 permits for new construction in May this year, nearly double the number issued in the same month last year.

That's some of the good news. The bad news is that the city's system of protective levees and canals remains inadequate.

The key to understanding the disaster is the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet - "Mr. Go" - a 75-mile commercial shipping channel created in 1968.

Mr. Go was a boondoggle: only about eight ships a month used the too-shallow canal, which eroded year after year. The deteriorating channel took wetlands and other natural flood barriers with it, as environmentalists had warned.

"It was not just a simple matter of a storm coming through and flooding a city. The fact is that a huge 30-foot wave came up a man-made canal and inundated the city with water," says filmmaker Leslie Carde, a former science reporter at a New Orleans television station.

Mr. Go is now closed to boat traffic, but that's not good enough. The billions it would cost to fill in the channel permanently would be money well spent.

The Army Corps of Engineers does not have sole responsibility for protecting the city. The federal body often clashes with local authorities like the Levee Board and the Water and Sewage Board, which exercise independent control over floodgates, levees, pumping stations and drainage canals.

An exhaustive 700-page study by the National Science Foundation concluded, in part, that "no one group or organization had a monopoly on responsibility for the catastrophic failure of this regional flood protection system."

One step in the right direction is a fascinating study by New Orleans architects, engineers and urban planners who invited their Dutch counterparts to help design a whole new way of dealing with storms and floods.

The results, online at dutchdialogues.com, offer fresh thinking about how to integrate canals and wetlands into the fabric of the city.

Learning from the Dutch will, perhaps, help New Orleans - and America - break through the cycle of sadness and blame and speed the rebuilding of a city that remains in great peril from the next big storm.

elouis@nydailynews.com