Should the lower ninth be rebuilt?  Hastert was wrong when he questioned whether New Orleans should be rebuilt, but I think that it's worth asking whether there should continue be a lower ninth ward.  It appears to me that this is working against nature -- the Mississippi drains a substantial part of a continent.  The marshland south of New Orleans should be allowed to replenish (it has been reported that at present an area the size of Manhattan is lost to the Gulf of Mexico every ten months due to the interference of man-made structures -- the levies, canals, etc.)  Instead, the neighborhoods of the lower ninth ward should be moved to higher ground away from the river, and the land in the lower ninth should revert to its natural state -- marshland, grassland, etc., to be part of the buffer that absorbs the yearly flooding from the river and hurricanes.  None of this appears to be given any consideration -- work continues on rebuilding the levies and making them better than they were before.

In addition to the expensive of rebuilding all of the housing in situ, much of the land needs to be de-toxified before people can live there safely.

Former President Clinton was on C-SPAN recently.  He proposed that we make New Orleans the first "green" city.  Unfortunately, he didn't elaborate on what he meant by this.

This is an election year, and the closest one to when Katrina struck, so there's a (small?) chance of getting a good plan funded, but after this year, it's unlikely that anything will happen before 2009, unless Bush leaves office before then.

Sounds about right to me.

Notice that as the floodwater level dropped, the barge sat down on the bus. You can see the damage effect on the floodwall from the way in which the steel piling that formed the wall has been flattened and pushed out into the Ninth Ward.  (The original position is where the white stone levee has been placed to the left of the picture). We drove from that wall directly away from it and found that houses were moved off their foundations for more than ten blocks.

Don't forget this horrific family tale.

Imagine This Was Your Mother - Unbelievable.http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/30/131417/53

Thanks, both of you.

http://63.243.21.112:8083/VESSINPORT.HTM

Thanks for your pictures.  I went down to New Orleans for the first time since Katrina last Thursday, and drove down to the lower 9th, lakeview, etc.  I thought your pictures did a good job of capturing the devastation.  I had to visit to really internalize the scope of the problem.  We probably drove about 15 miles from the lower 9th through gentily past UNO to Lakeview and we could have taken pictures like yours almost anywhere along the drive.

We stopped in the lower 9th along the levee away from the overflow / breaks.  Sitting up on the grassy levee was surreal.  There was almost no noise at all - we could have been out in the country but we were looking at destroyed homes as far as we could see.  

On the blocked we stopped, the former residents had dug out their damaged christmas decorations and decorated a tree at the foot of the levee and decorated their destroyed houses.

Then we got to the French Quarter which was busy for New Years eve and had to drive around for about 20 minutes to find a parking space.