Twenty Years after Hurricane Katrina and the failures of the federal levees: Are We There Yet?

Twenty years on, Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federal levees continue to be the defining points of reference for metropolitan New Orleans and coastal Louisiana—and for good reason. The massive storm and resulting floods in August 2005 delivered more than historic winds, rain and water into the city and surrounding metropolitan region; they transformed how we live and govern here, in Louisiana and across the United States.

Indeed, they changed how we see and define ourselves. As immense and powerful as the hurricane was, it was not the deliverer of most of the death, destruction and displacement that followed in its wake. No, it was the failures of governance, engineering, law, science, and civics that we have to look to for those devastating results.¹

When I say failures, it is not to suggest that anyone wanted bad things to happen or that corruption and malfeasance reigned, though the results would scarcely have been different had that been the case. Much has been written and said about how decades of bad planning, poor engineering and construction, civic and governmental disfunction, and wishful thinking invited disaster.² Everyone knew that living in New Orleans involves living with risk, but nobody thought engineering malpractice, structural collapse, and institutional failures were the risks. That fact alone is an important benchmark for measuring progress in New Orleans.

On August 27, 2005, New Orleans was not on the road to resilience and sustainability but was, in fact, unsustainable as it had become reliant on infrastructure and governance models that were myopic, unfocused, and unaccountable. The region’s vulnerability to water was baked in. It should not have taken Hurricane Katrina to expose that, but it did. And how we as a nation, state, city, and region responded was nothing short of historic in the most positive sense of that term.

Piecing New Orleans back together demanded more than pumps, roofs, and patience. It required a hard look at what went wrong and why. It required governmental agencies that lacked any meaningful accountability to at least acknowledge their failures and that the flooding of our city was not just local failure or just a federal one but an American one, one that needed to be fixed.

Now, 20 years later, as we survey things as they are now and consider how important it was to do things smarter, better, and with greater public purpose and accountability, the question is: Are we there yet? More specifically:

• Does the region have more honest and reliable storm surge protection?
• Is the region better able to prevent and manage flooding?
• Have the city and region succeeded in professionalizing resilience and risk management planning?
• Are we making progress with our coastal protection and restoration efforts?

The overarching answer, unsurprisingly, is no, but that is not the end of the story since we are really talking about a process that never ends rather than a destination. Indeed, if the question is whether New Orleans and its metropolitan area are better prepared today than 20 years ago, then the answer is yes, albeit a qualified yes. But that level of inquiry is really not very helpful since the matter of resilience and sustainability is not simple yes or no question, but rather a combination of intertwined questions presented in this essay that deserve to be addressed— and are followed by a series of recommendations to close out the report.