Craig E. Colten

RECONSTRUCTION OF NEW ORLEANS AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA: A RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE

Four propositions drawn from 60 years of natural hazard and reconstruction research provide a comparative and historical perspective on the reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Decisions taken over its 288-year history that have made New Orleans so vulnerable to Katrina reflect a long-term pattern of societal response to hazard events—reducing consequences to relatively frequent events, and increasing vulnerability to very large and rare events. Thus Katrinas consequences for New Orleans were truly catastrophic—accounting for most of the estimated 1,570 deaths of Louisiana residents and

Three Years after Katrina: Lessons for Community Resilience

40–50 billion in monetary losses. A comparative sequence and timing of recovery provides a calendar of historical experience against which to gauge progress in reconstruction. Using this calendar, the emergency postdisaster period appears to be longer in duration than that of any other studied disaster. The restoration period, the time taken to restore urban services for the smaller population, is in keeping with or ahead of historical experience. The effort to reconstruct the physical environment and urban infrastructure is likely to take 8–11 years. Conflicting policy goals for reconstruction of rapid recovery, safety, betterment, and equity are already evident. Actions taken demonstrate the rush to rebuild the familiar in contrast to planning efforts that emphasize betterment. Because disasters tend to accelerate existing economic, social, and political trends, the large losses in housing, population, and employment after Katrina are likely to persist and, at best, only partly recover. However, the possibility of breaking free of this gloomy trajectory is feasible and has some historical precedent.

The Resilience Activation Framework: a conceptual model of how access to social resources promotes adaptation and rapid recovery in post-disaster settings

WWW.ENVIRONMENTMAGAZINE.ORG VOLUME 50 NUMBER 5 N ew Orleans proved that it could recover from 27 major floods before Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed its levees in August 2005, flooding 80 percent of the city, causing some 1,300 deaths, forcing an extended evacuation, relocating (perhaps permanently) 100,000 residents, seriously damaging 70 percent of the city’s residences, and disrupting basic municipal services, economic activity, and social networks. The monetary loss to the city is estimated at

Shrinking New Orleans: Post-Katrina Population Adjustments

40–50 billion. Three years after Katrina, levees have been partly rebuilt, the equivalent of two-thirds of the pre-storm population has returned, building permits for 30 percent of residences have been issued, and the hospitality economy has been restored. But large areas of the city are empty tracts, mainstays of the economy in medicine and Three Years after Katrina Lessons for Community Resilience

The Hidden Landscape of Yosemite National Park

A number of governmental agencies have called for enhancing citizens’ resilience as a means of preparing populations in advance of disasters, and as a counterbalance to social and individual vulnerabilities. This increasing scholarly, policy, and programmatic interest in promoting individual and communal resilience presents a challenge to the research and practice communities: to develop a translational framework that can accommodate multidisciplinary scientific perspectives into a single, applied model. The Resilience Activation Framework provides a basis for testing how access to social resources, such as formal and informal social support and help, promotes positive adaptation or reduced psychopathology among individuals and communities exposed to the acute collective stressors associated with disasters, whether human-made, natural, or technological in origin. Articulating the mechanisms by which access to social resources activate and sustain resilience capacities for optimal mental health outcomes post-disaster can lead to the development of effective preventive and early intervention programs.

The American environment : interpretations of past geographies

The flooding caused by hurricane Katrina in 2005 acted as a catalyst for an abrupt change of the demographic landscape of the New Orleans metropolitan area. New Orleans city proper has been a shrinking city for the last half century, but its population loss was balanced by expanding suburbs until 2005. Based on a comparison of the newly released 2010 census data with the 2000 data, this paper discusses the major population adjustments that have resulted from the disaster. Hurricane Katrina has caused the entire metropolitan area to shrink much faster than previous declines. Five years after the storm, New Orleans displays some limited signs of resilience, although the storm seems to have accelerated its population decline. Furthermore, a close examination of the available data shows us that Katrina has provoked a major change in the citys ethnic landscape.

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON INDUSTRIAL WASTES AND GROUNDWATER CONTAMINATION

National parks share many obvious landscape characteristics. One of them goes largely unnoticed—infrastructure to provide water, sewerage, and garbage services. This paper traces the gradual adoption of romantic-era concepts about shielding human intrusions in parks from public view by Park Service landscape designers during the early twentieth century. It focuses on sewerage, water, and garbage facilities which were essential to serve growing numbers of visitors, but highly antithetical to the idea of wilderness parks. After several years of ad hoc practice, the Park Service ultimately crafted specific guidelines on how best to sequester sanitation and other intrusive facilities from view. These largely unnoticed utilities safeguard the public health of visitors and contribute to the consistent landscape of the park system.

The Rusting of the Chemical Corridor

Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Early Explorations in Impact and Policy Chapter 3 Primary Economies and Resource Exploitation Chapter 4 Management and Environmental Change Chapter 5 Playing With Nature

Oil Spills and Community Resilience: Uneven Impacts and Protection in Historical Perspective†

Reconstructing the progression of geographical understanding has an important role in current environmental litigation. Determining damages for past contamination of groundwater by surface discharges of hazardous sub- stances requires knowledge of developments in groundwater hydrology. A re- view of the scientific literature on the motion of subsurface fluids, public health, and sanitary engineering indicates that by 1940 knowledge was sufficient to argue against surface discharges of harmful fluids. Legal precedent, though inconsistent, proved there was ample awareness of the physical processes and financial liabilities before 1950 to expect careful disposal of liquid wastes to a land surface. UMANS make decisions about how to use their habitat based in part on societal understanding, however imperfect, of environmental con- ditions and processes. One topic of special significance is groundwater contamination. The discharge of potentially harmful industrial wastes and their subsequent percolation into the water table can render subterranean waters useless for domestic, agricultural, and industrial purposes. Since the 1920s, manufacturers have faced increasing restrictions on the release of liquid wastes into watercourses and have thus turned to ponds and pits known as surface impoundments for disposal of effluents. These sites allow for evaporation or percolation of their contents. In recent years this situation has become of great concern because of increasing reliance on subsurface water supplies and because of escalating evidence of groundwater pollution. When contamination occurs, crucial questions arise that center on past knowledge of hydrologic processes. Ex- istent environmental laws have sharpened interest in historical develop- ments in groundwater science. The Comprehensive Environmental Re- sponse, Compensation, and Liability Act and the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act make property owners retroactively responsible for contamination. Determining damages under these laws raises several fun- damental questions about past geographical knowledge. Were creators of

Social justice and mobility in coastal Louisiana, USA

Numerous locational advantages spurred and sustained several decades of industrial development along the lower reaches of the Mississippi River in Louisiana. In recent years, some of the attractive features of the region have lost their luster and decline has set in. Much of the industrial growth occurred when abundant oil and natural gas reserved existed both on shore and in the Gulf of Mexico and during lulls in extreme weather events such, most notably hurricanes. Yet declining reserves and the shift of production to outer continental shelf locations have made production more susceptible to disruption due to storms. Increasing costs associated with environmental regulation and cleaning up past disposal sites has reduced the regions lure. Sharp spikes in natural gas prices have caused the closure of several plants using that resource as a raw material. In 2005, hurricanes Katrina and Rita followed a series of tropical storms in previous years causing major disruptions to oil and gas production, along with petrochemical processing. These related factors are producing the early signs of rust on the chemical corridor.