Lessons from Katrina

How can a community rebuild following a devastating flood? That question has taken on increasing urgency in the Midwest, as rising waters continue to wreak havoc in a growing number of Mississippi River towns. A new study, commissioned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, may provide some answers. Over the last two years, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York, has issued a series of reports examining the many facets of the planning and rebuilding efforts undertaken in both Mississippi and Louisiana. Past reports have focused on such issues as the role of nonprofits, the capacity of the states to fix themselves and the status of the public-school system. The sixth and final report, issued earlier this month, focuses on the specific role of community rebuilding plans. It also serves as a final, encompassing look at the recovery effort, nearly three years after it first began.

The report acknowledges progress in some areas, especially as money and rebuilding plans finally began to coalesce over the last six months. But its authors find much that still needs to be done in the Gulf Coast—a region that sadly, the report concludes, will take much longer to heal itself than was initially imagined. Despite a great deal of work, Army Corps of Engineers officials say it will take three or four more years to secure the levees around New Orleans. As the Army Corps works to address flooding now along the Mississippi River, officials say that Katrina offers only limited lessons about levee protection and flood relief. "The answer for New Orleans is not the answer for Iowa," says one Army Corps of Engineers official. Still, judging by the early response, the specter of Katrina appears to be fresh in the minds of emergency workers and FEMA officials, who have prioritized the large-scale delivery of essentials and organized manpower to the field over the last two weeks, including nearly 600 million liters of drinking water, 116 water pumps and 4 million sandbags.

NEWSWEEK's Matthew Philips spoke to Richard Nathan, co-director of the Rockefeller Institute, about the study and its implications for those suffering in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri.

NEWSWEEK: Nearly two years after you issued your first report on the recovery effort in the Gulf Coast, what is the big conclusion you can draw now that you've completed your sixth and final report?
Richard Nathan: The story of the Gulf Coast recovery is one of missed opportunities, intergovernmental collisions and a lack of will. Almost three years after Katrina, we can step back and ask, "Did America have the will to dramatically build back up New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast?" The answer is irrefutably no, it did not.

Do you base that conclusion on the amount of funding that's been generated?
Mostly, yes. There are people, lots of them, who have demonstrated extraordinary willpower and fortitude in this recovery process, and my heart goes out to them. I admire them tremendously. But they have to have perspective because the funding isn't there. If, for example, you look at what some of the Persian Gulf countries are spending on reconstruction and safety projects and levee systems, it's trillions of dollars. But when it comes to our gulf, the federal government hasn't mustered a 20th of that. And as a result, the markets have worked and people have left.

Can you spell out more on the missed opportunities you see?
Well, for starters, we missed the opportunities to protect the canal waterways. There was ample evidence and research for years leading up to this event that suggested more should have been done. In terms of the recovery process, it's a laundry list of missed opportunities. But ultimately it's about missing the opportunity to fund the sort of recovery effort in a timely manner that would have brought people back. The whole region has voted with its feet. They left and they haven't come back and aren't coming back. The population of New Orleans is a third of what it used to be. I think you'll see that steadily trickle up, but not by much. The people who went to cities like Houston and Atlanta, they've found jobs, they've found housing. They're not coming back. New Orleans will continue to be a destination city, a tourist attraction. But it will never be what it once was.