Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
As of 2010, much of Katrina's devastation in southern Louisiana still
remains, and it is not clear how much of it will ever be repaired.
15
Large
parts of the city remain empty tracts, and mainstays of the economy in
medicine and education have not recovered. Reduced staffs and below-
normal enrollment have hindered the full recovery of universities. Hos-
pital closures have left a major gap in health care. Capacity is down by
25 percent, and the city continues to experience a major loss of skilled
medical jobs. Consequently, physicians continue to leave the area fi ve
years after Katrina struck.
Because of delays in recovery funds, slow insurance payments, and
not enough labor to work on repairs, rehabilitation of existing housing
has been slow. Planned reconstruction is just beginning, and some com-
munities may be lost forever. Reconstruction is expected to take at least
ten years. In August 2009, four years after Katrina, 33 percent of the
public schools were still closed, as were 48 percent of the child care
centers. There are still 63,000 vacant and abandoned properties, 20,000
families still live in temporary mobile homes and apartments, and a
housing shortage has driven up rent by nearly 50 percent. In May 2009,
FEMA canceled its plan to phase out its trailers as temporary shelters
and will donate them to the 3,450 families still living in them. The dona-
tion has helped alleviate a major shortage of affordable housing, a situ-
ation that has become increasingly desperate as the Federal Housing
Administration proceeds with its plan to demolish 4,500 public housing
units and replace them with mixed-income, mixed-use development.
In 2009 the inspector general in the Department of Homeland Secu-
rity reported that the government remains unable to provide emergency
housing after large-scale catastrophes such as Katrina and must do
more to prepare survivors of such disasters for permanent relocation.
He told the Congress that “FEMA does not have suffi cient tools, opera-
tional procedures, and legislative authorities to aggressively promote
the cost-effective repair of housing stocks.”
16
An additional headache for residents of the area affected by Hur-
ricane Katrina is the spread of pollutants over the area.
17
Southern
Louisiana is heavily industrialized, and the storm surge spread noxious
materials over the populated areas of New Orleans, including arsenic,
lead, petroleum hydrocarbons, and industrial chemicals.
Climatologists anticipate that sea-level rise, combined with sediment
compaction and consequent high rates of subsidence in the three-state
area affected by Katrina, will make much of the existing infrastructure
more prone to frequent or permanent inundation.
18
They anticipate that
