To the Editor:

We urge that the new Congress make Katrina—and the prevention of another Katrina—a priority.The many Americans struggling to rebuild their lives and their homes after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita need to know that Congress has not forgotten them.  Hope was provided when three members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee flew to New Orleans in January to re-focus attention on the progress – or lack thereof – of rebuilding efforts.  

As a member of Law Students for Government Accountability, a national organization dedicated to working with Congress to prevent another Katrina-like disaster, I will in Washington, D.C. on March 14 to meet with our representatives to ask them to sign a non-partisan Statement of Principles pledging to take the steps necessary to prevent another Katrina.  

The crafting of sensible policies requires the correction of three common misperceptions.    

• First, the aftermath of Katrina is not merely a local crisis; it is national problem.  The importance of the Mississippi River is difficult to exaggerate. The river is our only natural national transportation system for the movement of exports and imports. 
  

• Second, Katrina was not a “natural disaster”; it was a human-made disaster triggered by natural events. There has been too little focus on what could have prevented it from happening in the first place. The flooding, caused by the breaching of the levees, was the direct result of human mistakes and neglect.

• Third, the federal government was responsible for the causes of the human-made catastrophe, not the people of New Orleans. Over decades, our government made decisions that eliminated the wetlands as the natural buffer against storms and allowed the water surge to devastate New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region; it enacted mistaken policies for the use and protection of the entire river; it designed and constructed levees which were known to be inadequate; and it failed to develop policies of environmental justice for poor and minority populations.
  

What is needed is not merely assistance, but rather accountability. We urge that the new Congress make Katrina—and the prevention of another Katrina—a priority.

Brian Aurelio,
Washington, D.C.
March 7, 2007