Twenty-one years ago, Katrina reshaped my life and the lives of many in New Orleans.
Loss, tragedy, classism, and racism were flung in our faces. To solve this nation’s greatest sins, the country left us with only our willpower and tenacity.
For two decades, I’ve fought to help tackle our cities’ most pressing water challenges.
Water is complex and knows no bounds. It is gentle yet powerful in its rage, and more so, it remembers every act of kindness and every act of malice.
As I grappled with the dichotomies that water holds, I worked tirelessly to educate everyone I encountered. No matter one’s background, every person deserves clean water and to live in a world free from the burden of floods every time a storm cloud forms.
We have always been at odds with our landscape, blaming the swamp and our marshes for what they are, while demanding more of them daily — more seafood, more shipping, more energy extraction — while draining it dry of water, the very thing it needs.
“The problem is not a lack of solutions.
We have studied, discussed,
and reported ourselves into oblivion.
The world watches us,
while we drown under the weight
of cowardice and ignorance.”
As sea levels rise and storms get stronger, communities have stepped up to the challenge. Local community leaders and residents across New Orleans have figured out how to turn anything into the sweetest lemonade, with or without sugar. And yet, as we wipe the literal and figurative sweat off our brows, the people elected to fight for our communities have chosen, time and time again, to turn their backs on us.
Our state has a history of bravery and ingenuity, from our ancestral heritage of indigenous communities and enslaved Africans. To Acadians, Sicilians, Jews, and, more recently, Vietnamese and Palestinians, each community fled persecution to help build the beauty that makes New Orleans the most irreplaceable city in America. Unfortunately, our elected officials are falling short.
Sadly, if that doesn’t change soon, the most important city in the nation will be lost to ineptitude.
Our grassroots efforts alone are not enough to save the region. To save our beautiful, unique city, we need those who represent us to step up.
New Orleans communities, working with scientists, have done what we could. We created solutions, through water plans that help our land absorb excess water. But those solutions remain unimplemented because too many of our elected officials are stuck in climate denial or lack the will to confront the escalating climate threats Louisiana residents live with every day.
Though people know what needs to be done, elected officials falling short
Louisianians do not lack information about the challenges facing our communities. If there is any group of people that can comprehend life’s many complexities, it is us. But somehow, our elected leaders have chosen to do anything but what’s right.
A recent poll by the Mississippi River Delta (MRD) Coalition found that 76% of voters oppose canceling the sediment diversion projects, with 47% strongly opposing it. Yet not long after taking office, the will of the people was ignored and canceled overnight.
A prior poll by the Restore the Mississippi River Delta coalition found that 72% of Louisiana voters feel climate change is already having a serious negative impact on the state. Yet again, too few elected officials have acted with the urgency or scale these challenges demand.
In New Orleans, significant budget deficits led to cuts to the Office of Resilience and Sustainability, even as climate risks continue to grow. As they say, the saxophones are getting louder.
We cannot deny the climate change that shapes our everyday lives
Climate denial is not an option when Louisiana residents are already living with the consequences.
We know families are confronting housing and insurance crises that make it harder to stay in their communities. We know our coast is disappearing, our communities are sinking, and increasingly intense rainfall is overwhelming infrastructure built for a different climate.
Residents, scientists, engineers, advocates, and government agencies have spent decades studying these problems, proposing solutions, and working hard to prove that these issues not only matter but also can be solved. We’re no longer discussing feasibility; we’re long past that reality. We know what is needed, but we are missing the political will to act on what we already know.
On July 11, an intense rainstorm flooded streets across Mid-City, Lakeview, City Park, Hollygrove and Uptown, among other areas. Some neighborhoods received more than 3.5 inches of rain in less than an hour, while problems at two drainage pumping stations worsened flooding in parts of Lakeview and Mid-City. The flooding renewed important questions about whether our pumps were working, stations were adequately staffed, and drainage infrastructure was sufficiently maintained. Those systems matter, but they cannot be our only answer to flooding.
Yet too often, the conversation after a flood begins and ends with “Are the pumps on?” It makes for a great headline, but it does little to address the larger problem. Blaming a historically underfunded utility built for a city of 600,000, but funded by 300,000 people today, while the federal government claws back funding for flood mitigation and resilience, will not solve it either.
Pumps and drainage systems are not enough.
Creating a holistic approach, where water is absorbed not left to be pumped
New Orleans needs a holistic approach to water. We’ve spent over a century and billions of dollars trying to engineer the city into an ecosystem it simply is not. The most beneficial approach is to work with water — rather than solely trying to pump it away — by investing in nature-based solutions such as native plants, trees, and green spaces that can absorb it where it falls.
In 2013, the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan proposed taking the burden off of our already aging pumps by giving water somewhere to go. Implementing these nature-based solutions would capture rainfall where it falls while also improving quality of life, reducing negative public health outcomes, increasing economic development, and cooling neighborhoods, especially in historically redlined communities.
When put to work, these solutions have worked to help stop flooding in key areas. But they are not being used with regularity. The Urban Water Plan is not being implemented by our elected officials.
Time and time again, the people who could lead the way in making our city and state a thriving place to live for children and families have turned their backs on the facts in favor of short-term wins, political favors, and social media views.
There’s proof that these solutions work. The Gentilly Resilience District demonstrates how green spaces can be integrated into our stormwater system. The Sankofa Wetland Park and Nature Trail in the Lower 9th Ward restored approximately 40 acres of wetlands and community space. The Urban Conservancy’s Front Yard Initiative helps residents replace excessive paving with permeable surfaces and native plants, showing the capacity of individual properties to contribute. Groundwork New Orleans, Thrive New Orleans, and Louisiana Green Corps have also connected this work to green workforce development, training local residents for careers to build and maintain the infrastructure our communities need.
Louisiana is already implementing nature-based solutions at a much larger scale through the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority’s Coastal Master Plan. It is still the only Gulf state with an office dedicated to researching, protecting, and restoring our disappearing coast. Sediment diversions protect Louisiana by reconnecting the Mississippi River with surrounding wetlands and working with natural processes. Years of research and collaboration between businesses and communities have been ignored for a short-term win for some fisheries who will eventually succumb to the very thing they hope to avoid.
The city’s biggest investments in green infrastructure were made possible by federal funding
All of the City of New Orleans’ largest public green infrastructure investments have depended on federal funding provided following disasters. The Gentilly Resilience District, for example, was made possible through more than $141 million awarded through HUD’s National Disaster Resilience Competition following Hurricane Isaac. Those investments have been transformative.
But we cannot wait for another disaster to fund the infrastructure we need to protect us from the next one, leaving the most vulnerable to shoulder the burden of recovery.
The problem is not a lack of solutions. We have studied, discussed, and reported ourselves into oblivion. The world watches us, while we drown under the weight of cowardice and ignorance.
It is a matter of whether we have the political will to truly invest in our future.
Twenty-one years after Katrina, we know the cost of waiting for catastrophe to expose vulnerabilities we already knew existed. We need dedicated, recurring funding for our entire stormwater system, investment in our water champions and future workforce, and a willingness to work with our natural landscape rather than against it. We have the data, plans, science, and solutions. Communities have been telling us what they need for years.
The clock is ticking, and we’re running out of time.
Those who know me know I say this often: our culture, food, and traditions will mean nothing if they are underwater. We cannot second-line, play a trumpet, or sing a song under the encroaching Gulf of Mexico. Our communities have worked tirelessly to make this place a home worth fighting for. We need elected leaders willing to meet the moment and stand with us.
We cannot pump our way out of every storm, wall our way out of rising seas, or grant-fund our way into a thriving city. We cannot acknowledge the realities of a changing climate without making the political choices necessary to prepare for it. Katrina taught us this lesson, and every storm keeps singing the same song.
The beat may change, but the lyrics are clear: Climate denial is not an option. Neither is political inaction.
Dandridge-Smith is executive director of The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans. She has dedicated her life to community advocacy and campaign development for organizations seeking to be socially, economically, and culturally inclusive. Dandridge received her B.A at Xavier University in Political Science and her M.A in International Affairs with a concentration in security in conflict from The New School for Public Engagement in New York City. Since 2005, she has worked for, or in collaboration with dozens of organizations in Greater New Orleans.
