Hurricane Katrina
RESEARCH PAPER
Our environment and ecosystem allow us to live and enjoy our world. Natural disasters are not dependent on when man desires them or not. They can occur at any time in any place and we won 't necessarily be expecting them. But we can decide on how we preserve our environment by taking the proper precautions for these natural disasters. The levee failure of New Orleans greatly devastated the aquatic ecosystem of the nearby lakes from Hurricane Katrina. The failure of the levees caused the water to rapidly breach the area and become contaminated with the city 's sewage, chemicals, medical wastes and human remains which the city then pumped into the nearby lakes greatly destroying much of their ecosystem. During and following Katrina, water carrying all types of contaminants was pumped in to any available destination, as long as it didn’t submerge the city. Aside from Katrina wreaking havoc, one of the biggest failures of the government and the Army Corps of Engineers was the protection and efficiency of the levees. With the disastrous results of the levees and the water eventually engulfing the city, the damage on the environment was only amplified. We have to understand that the current "levee solution" causes more harm than good and must be reconsidered in how it is used. Thomas O. McGarity and Douglas A. Kysar from Cornell Law School quote the Association of State Floodplain Managers that states "There are only two kinds of levees, those that have failed and those that will fail" (3). Levee structure and design must be changed drastically in order to ensure and protect our ecosystems better.
The levees ' protection was disastrous and counterproductive. New Orleans sits on a very complex piece of land. Sherwood M. Gagliano 's testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works states that this complex piece of land is made of "faults" which are "components of regional linked tectonic framework" (4). A fault is "a fracture
Our environment and ecosystem allow us to live and enjoy our world. Natural disasters are not dependent on when man desires them or not. They can occur at any time in any place and we won 't necessarily be expecting them. But we can decide on how we preserve our environment by taking the proper precautions for these natural disasters. The levee failure of New Orleans greatly devastated the aquatic ecosystem of the nearby lakes from Hurricane Katrina. The failure of the levees caused the water to rapidly breach the area and become contaminated with the city 's sewage, chemicals, medical wastes and human remains which the city then pumped into the nearby lakes greatly destroying much of their ecosystem. During and following Katrina, water carrying all types of contaminants was pumped in to any available destination, as long as it didn’t submerge the city. Aside from Katrina wreaking havoc, one of the biggest failures of the government and the Army Corps of Engineers was the protection and efficiency of the levees. With the disastrous results of the levees and the water eventually engulfing the city, the damage on the environment was only amplified. We have to understand that the current "levee solution" causes more harm than good and must be reconsidered in how it is used. Thomas O. McGarity and Douglas A. Kysar from Cornell Law School quote the Association of State Floodplain Managers that states "There are only two kinds of levees, those that have failed and those that will fail" (3). Levee structure and design must be changed drastically in order to ensure and protect our ecosystems better.
The levees ' protection was disastrous and counterproductive. New Orleans sits on a very complex piece of land. Sherwood M. Gagliano 's testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works states that this complex piece of land is made of "faults" which are "components of regional linked tectonic framework" (4). A fault is "a fracture
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