Nearly TWO YEARS after Katrina and houses are empty, picnic tables are still on roofs where they landed after the waters receeded, FEMA trailers are all in rows--empty, in many areas no electricity unless the government set it up with a huge wire in the front yard, in many areas no stores are open, houses still remain off their foundations and, most haunting to us---no people.
The ecological destruction is immense as well. Where the Mississippi River Gulf-Outlet (MR-GO), (built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1965 to serve as a way for large vessels to travel between the Mississippi River and the Gulf), stands, the brackish water has created a virtual dead forest. It looks like a huge ghostly "stick farm." Like something out of Harry Potter.
According to many, the MR-GO levees were breached in approximately 20 places along its length, directly flooding most of Saint Bernard Parish and New Orleans East. Storm surge from MR-GO is also a leading suspect in the three breaches of the Industrial Canal. Following the storm, an engineering investigation and computer modelling showed that the outlet intensified the initial surge by 20 percent, raised the height of the wall of water about three feet, and increased the velocity of the surge from 3 feet per second to 8 feet per second in the funnel. The shoaling of the MR-GO has caused it to be unpassable for deep-draft vessels. In May of 2007 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers went public with a request to close the MR-GO to all traffic and to build an earthen dam to block it.
