An American flag has been strategically placed on one of the massive beams supporting the Lake Borgne Surge Barrier, part of the New Orleans region hurricane and storm damage risk reduction system.
Completed in 2009 to close off the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the barrier is designed to decrease damage to the metropolitan area when a major hurricane pushes water from the Gulf of Mexico into the lakes that surround the city and neighboring parishes.
The flag on the wall symbolizes pride and mourning, a reminder of the people it protects and a memorial for those who died 20 years ago when Hurricane Katrina hit. The failure of the federal levee system Aug. 29, 2005, claimed more than a thousand lives, displaced nearly a million people in the region and left permanent scars on New Orleans.
A go-to term emerged to praise New Orleanians and their neighbors who persevered through the catastrophe and took part in the unprecedented rebuilding: resilient. But as various recovery programs faltered and efforts to ensure disaster history would not repeat itself stalled, “resilient” or “resiliency” now elicit bitter feelings among locals.
“I think people have gotten tired of the word. Not just because it’s become cliché, but because people have begun to understand it as an excuse for lack of preparation or execution, lack of planning or execution,” said Michael Hecht, CEO and president of Greater New Orleans Inc., a regional economic development group.
Hecht came to Louisiana in 2006 from New York, where he led a 9/11 small business recovery program for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. After directing the state’s post-Katrina business recovery efforts, he was chosen to lead GNO Inc. in 2008.
“We had been knocked down by an unprecedented event,” Hecht said. “It was either be resilient or die, so we were resilient.”
The world has watched as New Orleans fundamentally changed, having lost a significant portion of its Black working class and attracting an upsurge in mostly white transplants from out of state. With more than 484,000 residents before Katrina, the city’s population plummeted below 344,000 in the 2010 census. The number climbed above 391,000 in 2020 and has since fallen about 4% as of 2024, according to various estimates.
Most who have stayed are ardent defenders of the city’s culture, of which resiliency fatigue is quickly becoming a feature. It’s reflected in Louisiana’s slow progress to rebuild coastal land and improve the adaptability of cities to match what post-Katrina boosters envisioned.
Restoration resistance
After Katrina, more emphasis was placed on rebuilding Louisiana’s vanishing coastal wetlands to protect residents from the increasing threat of hurricanes. A state Coastal Master Plan has taken shape over the past two decades, gaining official approval in 2023, to tie together restoration efforts and shield wetlands from sea level rise, subsidence and worsening hurricanes.
“We learned from Hurricane Katrina that levees alone aren’t enough,” said Alisha Renfro, a coastal scientist with National Wildlife Foundation. “We also need a healthy natural ecosystem sitting out in front of those levees to protect the structures that protect our communities.”
But the master plan encountered a huge setback in July with the end of what had been its keystone project, the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project. Gov. Jeff Landry led pushback against the project for its feared impact on fisheries and nearly $3 billion price tag.
So far, the state’s Coastal Restoration and Protection Authority has spent $600 million to harness the power of the Mississippi River to bring fresh water and sediment to wetlands in the Barataria Basin – only to shelve the diversion.
“It was probably one of the most innovative, forward-thinking things in terms of being a resilience hub for the world,” said Amanda Moore, senior director for the National Wildlife Federation’s Gulf program.
A lifetime Gulf Coast resident, Moore moved to New Orleans from the Tampa, Florida, area in 2009 to take a job as a community organizer with the National Wildlife Federation. She joined the wave of thinkers, scientists and planners who came to the city after Katrina with the hope of bringing relief from the constant threat of flood.
“For people who live on the Gulf Coast – and especially South Louisiana – it’s exhausting,” she said.
The federation was among the voices that influenced upgrades to the region’s storm risk reduction system in the years after Katrina. Moore led efforts such as the MRGO Must Go Coalition, advocating for reversal of wetlands damage attributed to saltwater intrusion from the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.
“You’re helping to alleviate maybe some of that exhaustion that people are personally feeling when you do the coastal restoration,” Moore said. “You’re adding this layer of protection, you’re helping it create a healthier environment that’s safer, so that does help people really be more resilient and not burnt out.”
Funding momentum peters out
As Katrina and its aftermath garnered worldwide attention, the recovery money streamed in from Washington and charitable foundations. The federal government directed $76 billion to Louisiana projects.
But keeping up the pace of investment after post-disaster attention spans waned became a problem for state and local leaders. Even with billions of dollars put into infrastructure, billions more would be needed for upkeep and replacing outdated systems. Stormwater drainage and drinking water in New Orleans, for example, rely on a power supply and mains that, in many spots, are more than a century old.
Charles Allen, Gulf Coast community engagement director for the National Audubon Society, recalls the vast amounts of federal and philanthropic dollars directed to the region in the years immediately after Katrina – and the dropoff that followed. It revealed the inability of state and local governments to sustain the level of rebuilding needed.
“It’s like anything in life, you know?” Allen said. “We gotta maintain our bodies, and we have to invest in whatever it takes to do that.”
The 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon just off the Southeast Louisiana coast reopened wounds in the region that had yet to heal from Katrina’s trauma. Like the levee failures after the hurricane, It was considered another manmade, preventable disaster. Eleven crew members were killed, and the catastrophic oil spill tainted wildlife and habitat in all five Gulf Coast states. Livelihoods that depended on the Gulf were sidetracked for months, if not ended entirely.
Petroleum giant BP, which contracted the drillship, reached a $20 billion settlement with the federal government and impacted states. In Louisiana, it provided the long-sought financial foundation for its coastal master plan.
But with the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion shelved – and seemingly no other major restoration projects in the queue – Allen and others with vested interest in coastal flood protection fear Louisiana has become dependent on disaster recovery funding to pay for critical infrastructure that should already be in place.
“Let’s not wait for another storm because then it’s always too late when that happens,” Allen said “You gotta invest in it, you gotta support it, you’ve got to fund it.”
“It’s a lot of reactive disaster-related funding that’s allowing Louisiana to do this work,” Moore said. “We’ve got to figure out how to get out of that cycle.”
‘People can just be people’
Katrina recovery funds paid for upgrades to the massive pumping stations at the end of New Orleans’ outfall drainage canals that pump stormwater into Lake Pontchartrain. Beyond that, however, the city hasn’t engineered a way to handle street flooding from routine heavy rainstorms.
One project was held up as a way for New Orleans to adapt to the regular influx of rainwater, rather than fruitlessly attempt to pump it away. The Gentilly Resilience District called for turning neutral grounds in the neighborhood into retention areas. Residents would be encouraged to add features such as rain cisterns and permeable driveways, with grants to cover their cost.
The centerpiece of the district was the Mirabeau Water Garden, planned for 25 acres of land that were once home to a Catholic convent. The Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph donated the land to the city in 2015 on the condition it be used to enhance and protect the neighborhood. It was designed to divert and hold up to 10 million gallons of stormwater in ponds and constructed wetlands, with a pedestrian path and other amenities to invite the public into the space.
The architecture firm Waggonner and Ball designed the water garden using best practices for how to integrate water into a coastal urban setting. The idea came out of a trans-Atlantic collaboration after Katrina called the Dutch Dialogues, in which New Orleans experts tapped into the Netherlands’ experience living with water.
The federal government provided $141 million to the city in 2017 to bring the Gentilly Resilience District to life, with a completion date set for September 2022. But as of 2023, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development noted that only 15% of the money had been spent. The water garden remains largely unfinished.
HUD’s inspector general designated the city a “slow spender” in a project audit, noting that its elements “did not always improve the program participants’ ability to withstand future extreme events.”
In addition to his role with GNO Inc., Hecht was named chairman of the governor’s committee to prepare New Orleans for the 2025 Super Bowl, played in February at the Superdome. Part of Hecht’s charge was to track progress on city infrastructure projects. And while the Gentilly Resilience District is well outside the city’s tourist zone, its lack of progress was noticeable.
“It’s happening. It’s been accepted as a concept, but it’s been extremely slow,” Hecht said. “And that’s just been execution failure, oftentimes on the part of the city.”
The communications team for the city of New Orleans did not respond to a request for comment on the timeline of finishing the Mirabeau Water Gardens.
The Mirabeau Water Garden’s status is considered by residents to be symbolic of New Orleans falling well short of the post-Katrina vision that boasted resilience as a key component of its new economy. Much like the Netherlands, it was thought that the Crescent City could become a beacon of expertise for how to adapt to climate change.
“We thought we were going to be able to really build a sector around selling our experience post Katrina with water management and environmental management around the world,” Hecht said. “If we’re being honest, it has not materialized much as part of our economy.”
It has happened in a small way, he said, citing the Water Institute in Baton Rouge. The independent research center focuses on the Mississippi River Delta and Gulf Coast, and it has applied its expertise to several projects in the region.
“But I think there’s still a lot more,” Hecht said.
Allen believes the opportunity to make Louisiana that hub of water management and resilience still exists, but he acknowledged it is still far from materializing 20 years after Katrina.
“This story of restoration, it’ll never end, which is a good thing,” Allen said. “This kind of work fuels jobs, environmental research and teaching.”
Until or unless that sector develops, the vulnerability of southeast Louisiana to future disasters will continue to place a strain on its residents, observers say, and climate change only heightens that risk.
“That is the goal … building structures, either literally or metaphorically, strong enough so that in a world with climate change and weather volatility, when things happen, either natural or man made, we don’t have to be resilient,” Hecht said.
Renfro, the coastal scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, said it’s wrong to keep placing the same burden of recovery on a population forced to accept conditions beyond their control.
“Asking the same people again and again to be resilient … it feels unfair,” she said. “People can just be people, and infrastructure can be resilient.”