Don’t let disaster recovery perpetuate injustice : Nature News & Comment
▻http://www.nature.com/news/don-t-let-disaster-recovery-perpetuate-injustice-1.22668
In Louisiana, recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 enabled private companies to capture public housing. Homes owned or occupied predominantly by poor evacuees were declared a nuisance, marked for demolition and resold at cut-throat rates. When the federal government allocated billions of dollars to the Army Corps of Engineers to fix, upgrade and rehabilitate levees and flood walls, this served only to entrench, rather than eliminate, vulnerability among some poor communities. To hasten repairs after Katrina, environmental and air-pollution standards were relaxed: hazardous wastes were not properly stored and open burning was allowed. Clean-up efforts concentrated toxic pollution and debris in particular landfills or alongside communities of colour. Sediment left in the wake of floodwaters contained high levels of arsenic, raising its concentrations in soils at playgrounds and schools in minority neighbourhoods. Although some long-term restoration planning is worthy of praise, there is plenty to criticize. The rebuilding of canals and roads further eroded environmental buffers (such as wetlands) crucial to future storm-surge mitigation.