(NO) Levee improvements bring flood of suspicion

Source: ChicagoTrib

In New Orleans, black districts remain most at risk to a big storm

NEW ORLEANS -- The Lizanos and the Baileys, two upper-middle-class New Orleans families, lost their homes when Hurricane Katrina sent torrents of water coursing over the floodwalls that were supposed to protect them. And each family painstakingly rebuilt their house soon after the floodwaters receded.

But if another major hurricane strikes New Orleans this year, the Lizanos, who are white, can feel confident that their house will survive, while the Baileys, who are black, can expect to lose their house once again.

Almost two years after Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, destroyed more than 100,000 homes and killed more than 1,000 people, progress on repairing and improving 350 miles of weak and shattered floodwalls across the region has been slow and uneven, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concedes.

And what work has been completed so far benefits some of the city's wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods more than its poorer and mostly black areas, according to an extensive set of flood-prediction maps released last month by the Army Corps.

Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-levees_tuejul17,1,5694013.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

believe that there wasn't a little ethnic cleansing going on down in NOLA? Did they expect that they would rebuild the 9th Ward so the people who lived there could come back in safety?

and then bring in the developers.

I guess the imploding real estate bubble caught up with their plans to gentrify the ward.

Then they'll try to be sneaky and sell off the lots that already belong to somebody else. Too bad that 'somebody else' was either poor or the wrong damn color.

edit: or both

some people will always refuse to see it, deny it when they do see it, and pretend it's not there.

There are many reasons, but no excuses, for why white neighborhoods are better protected. x(