I will say, though, that levee protection has its pluses and minuses. Levees don’t just keep water out, they can also server to keep water in, or let it get higher, for longer, inside their area of protection. My home, for example, is in a suburb called Metairie, to the West of the city on lands that were primarily used for farming, by plantation but mostly by sharecropping (Metairie is French for sharecropping, I believe.) My house is above sea level, but even so I got up to 6 inches in my home all because nobody was manning the pumps that are required to keep water that gets through our levee system from being held in and rising.

Honestly, though, even that 6 inches wouldn’t have been that big of a deal if the Parish government would have only let us back in to our homes right away. 6 inches of water (especially when it was only in the house for less than a few hours) is quickly, easily and relatively cheaply repaired. You mainly need to just toss any carpeting, wash down the legs of furniture and spray down the lower walls with a mild bleach solution and you’re done.

6 inches that is allowed to soak for weeks, however, is another story. The mold invasion that occurs is massive. Drywall must be cut out 4′ up the wall (it could probably be cut a bit lower, but drywall sheets are 4′ on the short side and therefore it’s cheaper to just cut out at 4′.) Wood begins to rot, mold treatment and de-humidification has to occur throughout the house and anything unlucky enough to have been on the floor in that kind of damp for that long is pretty much a loss. Books, furniture, clothing. All of it goes to the curb and none of it had to if we would ahve just been let back in. And that exceptional added expense is something you will probably never find on any of the reports of government screw-ups for Katrina.

Good to see you made it back okay.

My personal belief that that we citizens of Louisiana and, by extension, the United States, have often come to rely on the state as some form of pretective barrier for all of our needs. We cannot, and must not, fall to that mindset and must remember as individual citizens that it ultimately falls to us to watch out for ourselves and our community, not a governmental agency.

I would disagree that state governments do not have a place. Perhaps there is some legitimacy to such a statement if you believe the Federal Government really should have as much absolute power as it already holds (and continues to grab for). However state governments as originally concieved, while still an evil to be reconciled, would at least be more localized and responsive to the citizens of their region. As it stands now the individual States seem to be little more than entities competing for Federal funding and “matching dollars” and such kow-towing to the Feds makes them far less responsive and capable.