DEFEND NEW ORLEANS TUMBLR: New Orleans water system needs a systemwide fix: An editorial
New Orleans loses 50 percent of its drinking water to underground leaks - a mind-boggling fact, no matter how often it’s repeated.
Many of those leaks are the symptoms of an old network of pipes that already needed substantial repairs before Hurricane Katrina, especially on the east…
Source: defendneworleans
DEFEND NEW ORLEANS TUMBLR: Will Smith expected to play Katrina hero in 2011 movie
A movie expected to be released next year will be set in Mid City New Orleans. The script is based on the story of a Hurricane Katrina hero, a resident in an apartment building along Bayou St. John who made sure the hundreds of people inside stayed safe while floodwaters raged all around them.
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Source: defendneworleans
Katrina, a year later by Vincent Laforet
Hundreds of years ago, when I first started working at Time, I was taught that anniversary stories are some of the lowest forms of journalism around, and that Time would never stoop to them (clearly, that publication is in a much different place now).
But for Katrina, I think it’s important to suspend this rule, because it really was a critical moment. If there is any real, fundamental danger to America (as opposed to all of Fox’s made-up stuff, that is), this is it: That the country will fail because its government does not provide even minimally competent services to its citizens.
Look at Vince’s pictures—they’re fantastic; see NOLA’s really nice five year’s after coverage (and remember what an amazing, essential job that paper did in 2005); watch ABC’s livestream from there today.
You can find Newsweek’s Katrina coverage here, and we second the plug for ABC’s livestream coverage from there, starting at 12:30 EST today.
Source: kateoplis
Click through for an incredible photo essay.
Five years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, photographer Julie Dermansky tours the Lower Ninth Ward, where many homes and businesses still stand vacant and ruined, frozen in time.
Source: theatlantic
Spike Lee Returns to New Orleans for Katrina Follow-Up Film
Apparently four hours just weren’t enough… Spike Lee is returning to New Orleans this month for a follow-up for his epic Hurricane Katrina documentary When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. The sequel will air on HBO later this summer, sometime around the five year anniversary of the disaster (which will be on August 29th).
The plan is for Lee to revisit some of the subjects who appeared in the first film, but also to expand beyond The Big Easy and look at the effects of Katrina along the Gulf Coast as well. Considering that the tragedy has probably already faded from a lot of people’s minds, it will be a good chance to remind people about what happened, and also to evaluate whether or not such a thing could potentially ever happen again.
Source: defendneworleans
Probe: New Orleans flood control pumps not reliable
WASHINGTON — Huge flood-control pumps installed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina don’t protect the city adequately and the Army Corps of Engineers could have saved $430 million in replacement costs by buying proven equipment, a federal investigation finds.
The investigation by the federal Office of Special Counsel finds there was “little logical justification” for the corps’ decision to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the “untested” hydraulic pumps, which are meant to empty millions of gallons of water from the below-sea-level city during storm-related floods.
Citing the corps’ $430 million plan to replace the hydraulic pumps by 2012, just five years after they were installed, the special counsel concludes that a “proven” direct-drive pump design would have been less prone to corrosion and breakdowns. Based on an independent engineering review, the counsel says direct-drive pumps could have been purchased “more quickly, more reliably and without planning for pump … replacement.”
Hydraulic pumps are powered by pressurized oil. Direct-drive pumps use solid drive shafts.
The findings, previously unreported, were sent to President Obama on June 12.
Source: defendneworleans
