The insurance company has announced it's not renewing policies in the NO area next year.

And that's being linked with the fact that the levees won't be rebuilt to withstand Category 5 storms?

And the connection? If work started today on bringing the levees up to Category 5 standard, how many years would it be before that could be achieved?

A piece from August has LSU's hurricane guy saying that

Category 5 protection is possible...for a total outlay of $30 billion over 10 years

A lot of water will flow under the bridge, as it were, before then.

Perhaps the Federal government should reinsure catastrophic risk for insurance companies which would otherwise redline Katrina-hit areas. (What has it done in the past in such circumstances, I wonder?)

Perhaps it should rebuild the levees to Cat 5 standards.

Clearly no one in said Federal government is in effective charge of the situtation (big surprise) and, to judge from the attention devoted to Katrina in the long version of New Direction (two namechecks), the Dem hierarchy is not overly anxious to rush in with a plan. (And you could understand a degree of reluctance given that any such plan would be entrusted to the same idiots who screwed up in the first place.)

The insurance situation in both Louisiana and Mississippi is inexcusable. For those who can even get insurance (which will not be many after the St. Paul pullout) the rates are astronomical.

In Missisisppi some insurance companies have red lined a large area of 1 mile or so from the Gulf of Mexico and adjoining bays, rivers, bayous, etc. Those who can actually get insurance are faced with premiums often as high as $10,000 a year. That stalls rebuilding in a large area of the most prime real estate.

Before the St. Paul pullout, there were articles in the past several months about small businesses in Louisiana such as stores and restaurants are looking at premiums of $70,000 a year for 2007. Needless to say not many businesses can pay those types of premiums and be able to stay open nor can they get financing without insurance.

I own properties in several of the areas hardest hit by Katrina. While there is little recovery of homeowners and small businesses going on there is a big push by condo developers, large investors, etc. who are pushing ahead with their projects which will target high rollers from out of state. Most of the condo projects will have prices that start at $1 million and up. Mississippi has so far done a lot more (under a GOP governor) toward recovery for homeowners and small businesses but obstacles on the federal level, insurance company lawsuits, insurance pullouts and rates, etc. are beyond the control of local and state government.        

We will eventually see a recovery but New Orleans will most likely resemble the upscale neighborhoods of San Francisco  and Mississippi will resemble the upscale areas of Miami. Same place but different faces.

Thank you for giving visbility to this.

I concur that Mr Go has gotta go - and that this is a man made problem that requires a national will (and a national sense that 'this is us, not them') to resolve. Many people are writing quite wonderfully about this. But how do we translate that into constructive, concrete Netroots action steps?

One point - real flood protection requires rebuilding the swamps and the outshoor islands and removing the houses from them, so they can act as sponges and a buffer zone.  To save New Orleans will require getting serious about restraining sprawl around New Orleans.

That would be very unpopular, but it is necessary.  Levees only go so far.

I live in Biloxi, MS, and I can say, I doubt that the Gulf Coast or New Orleans will ever build back to the same degree. You can STILL drive on 90 and see destroyed houses and parking lots where businesses used to be. Heck, I live about 100 yards away from buildings which have been gutted, whose owners I presume left them to be abandoned. Who's going to jump in to take over THAT bit of prime real estate? I don't know of many willing to take a risk that big...

I think a lot of it will be back.  The question is how long til it does, and will it be back in a form that isn't heartbreaking?

Then again, Galveston never really came back.  But Kobe came back.  Dresden came back.  San Francisco came back.

If there is the will, and there is the money, it will happen.  Sadly the GOP's reputation for being the Party of Resolve and the Party of Financing is all a sham...when the shit hits the fan, they're supremely ineffectual in exactly the areas in which they claim to be experts.

Whether the Democrats are any better, we shall see.

Meanwhile down here we'll continue to do the job ourselves.  But secession sounds better every day.