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Five Years After Katrina, An Important Lesson Goes Unlearned
Posted Aug 30, 2010 by Sandra Postel
[Excerpt] It's getting harder and harder to blame Mother Nature for the disasters that befall humanity. While hurricanes, floods, droughts and storm surges are natural events, to be sure, the degree of disaster that unfolds when such events strike is often now heavily influenced by human activities.
When Hurricane Katrina smacked the Gulf Coast in August 2005, the protection from powerful storm surges provided by coastal wetlands and barrier islands had gradually been whittled away. Since the 1930s, Louisiana had lost 1.2 million acres of coastal wetlands. More than two dozen dams and thousands of miles of levees on the Mississippi River had trapped sediment that otherwise would have replenished them. At the same time, wetlands were drained and filled to enable oil and commercial development in the Gulf region. Even as the Army Corps of Engineers failed to adequately maintain levees to keep the floodwaters at bay, this loss of natural protection worsened the catastrophe.
Originally posted August 20, 2010 at National Geographic as part of their Freshwater Initiative.
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