New York Times Editorial - New Orleans: A tribute for the living

New York Times Editorial - New Orleans: A tribute for the living
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: August 29, 2006


After the monuments have been dedicated to commemorate the drowning of New Orleans one year ago, it will be time to engage again with the tribulations of the survivors. Officials from the U.S. government down to city leaders must address the pressing needs of an exhausted, frayed populace.

It is hard enough to live among gutted or collapsing homes in eerily empty neighborhoods. But disruptions to basic services like water, sewage and electricity - not to mention the indignities of trash rotting uncollected on the curb and seas of weeds taking over public spaces - reinforce a feeling of abandonment for an already traumatized group of survivors. Much of the hopelessness stems from a sense that progress has ground to a halt.

After a year, the adrenaline is gone. There is improvement, but it is hard for locals to see at the end of a grueling summer. Burnout is setting in for many residents. While the crescent of high ground from the French Quarter to the Garden District is brightly polished and welcoming back tourists, people outside that lucky strip of territory say their quality of life is deteriorating.

Right now fewer than half of the 460,000 people who lived in New Orleans before the storm have returned. Their leaders cannot expect more to come back, or even that those who are here will stay, without proof that their trust, their investment and their sweat will not go for nothing. They are not looking for miracles, just consistent, incremental progress.

The planning process has unfortunately been fitful and delayed. Thus far there has been no political will to break the bad news that some neighborhoods will not be coming back anything like they were before the hurricane. Fortunately, even without a comprehensive plan, more rebuilding activity has taken place in the areas best suited for long-term revival: the city's core and in the neighborhoods that suffered lower levels of flooding.

The government can encourage those trends by focusing the limited resources in safer areas. Not quietly or on the sly, but with clear announcements about where services will be available so that residents can make informed decisions.

President George W. Bush's Katrina czar, Donald Powell, needs to push utilities to the fore. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has money available, but the process of channeling complicated grant applications helps explain why things have moved so slowly. Over all, just $44 billion of the highly touted $110 billion in U.S. aid has actually been handed out.

It is time to heal and renew, not to hunt for scapegoats. This is about children growing up in travel trailers. It is about the elderly exiles fretting that they will live out their final years away from the only home they ever knew. They are the reason efforts cannot flag as time marches on.