Major Environmental Problems Plaguing Louisiana

Within occupied south Louisiana citizens were torn in their loyalties, goals, and visions for the future. Since The city fell early and did not suffer from Battle, most citizens were not driven by fear to want in into the war. They refused to give up hope for a southern victory and thus were cautious to contribute with Union forces. It was very hard for the African-Americans to live in Louisiana at first, after the civil war it got way easier. Before the Civil War, Louisiana was a major slave state. In 1860, 47% of the population was in slavery. However Louisiana also had one of the largest free black populations in the United States.

Numerous different aspects were altered due to the ruckus of Hurricane Katrina. The first major aspect was housing and location. Katrina nearly demolished 300,000 homes. The ascending sea level along the coast resulting from onshore winds is a storm surge. With a twenty-two foot storm surge in New Orleans and a twenty-seven foot storm surge in Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina averaged a shocking twelve foot storm surge. As a storm surge’s footage increases, the surge will continue to move inland farther and farther. Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge is documented as moving inland a total of twelve miles into the state of Mississippi (FAQS, 2013). Hurricane Katrina impacted a total of seven states. Five of these states were Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Kentucky and Ohio were two more states affected but in a different way. Because of the tremendous amount of water, Kentucky and Ohio were victims of the Mississippi River flooding. Some states experienced more extreme destruction than others. Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana experienced Hurricane Katrina’s wrath firsthand. These three southern states were affected the worst by the massive storm (FAQS, 2013). Mississippi’s forest industry experienced a great amount of destruction losing 1.3 million acres of valuable forest land. The main cause of destruction in New Orleans was blamed on the failure of the levee system to stand its ground

“There are natural hazards, but disasters are the result of human actions that put people and property in harm’s way” (Cigler 2007: 64). Throughout history New Orleans has been continuously altered by the presence of humans through the creation of levees and canals, the introduction of artificial irrigation systems, and through human induced processes that have ultimately accelerated the process of land degradation and erosion. While a natural hazard struck New Orleans in 2005, the disaster portion resulting from Hurricane Katrina was a result of human induced interactions throughout the history of New Orleans.

In the late summer of 2005, a terrible tragedy occurred that changed the lives of many in the south-east region of the United States. A Category 3, named storm, named Hurricane Katrina, hit the Gulf Coast on the 29th of August and led to the death of 1,836 and millions of dollars’ worth of damage (Waple 2005). The majority of the damage occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana. Waple writes in her article that winds “gusted over 100 mph in New Orleans, just west of the eye” (Waple 2005). Not only was the majority of the damage due to the direct catastrophes of the storm but also city’s levees could no longer hold thus breaking and releasing great masses of water. Approximately, 80% of the city was submerged at sea level. Despite the vast amount

3) A heavy rain pour down the city of Houston on June 19, 2006. According to the article from NBC news, there was a lot of cars stall and many neighborhoods flooded. There was as much as, “10.5 inches of rain reported,” and in some areas there was six inches of rain which caused delays in airports. The Houston city is no stranger to floods yet the amount of rain that poured as such little time was surprising.

On Sunday August 28, 2005 the National Weather Service warned the storm would make southeast Louisiana “uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer” and also warned of “human suffering incredible by modern standards.” This same

On August 12, the Americans of Louisiana woke up with water in their houses. A week passed, and now thousands evacuated the flooded regions around Baton Rouge. 40,000 homes were ravaged, and several were found deceased. People were stranded on highways and rooftops, trapped in deep waters infested with rodents and snakes, and floating through the destruction onto mattresses. The state has been declared a disaster area. However, national media seems entirely uninterested with this flooding - after all, it was not the first time Lousiana had to endure through a natural disaster. A multitude of critics advocated for the abandonment of Louisiana. Because Louisiana is prone to natural occurrences due to its location, critics believe that it is wholly pointless to rebuild a state that is always sinking. However, the abandonment of Louisiana would result in the movement of all the

Packing 145-mile-an-hour winds as it made landfall, the category 3 storm left more than a million people in three states without power and submerged highways even hundreds of miles from its center. The hurricane’s storm surge — a 29-foot wall of water pushed ashore when the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast — was the highest ever measured in the United States. Levees failed in New Orleans, resulting in political and social upheavals that continued a half decade later. (Laforet, New York Times)

On the morning of August Twenty-ninth, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region. The storm brought the water to about twenty feet high, swallowing eighty percent of the New Orleans city immediately. The flood and torrential rainstorm wreaked havoc and forced millions of people evacuate from the city. According to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, Katrina caused approximately one hundred and eight billion dollars in damage. Hurricane Katrina was one of the most destructive disasters have ever occurred in the United States, but it also revealed a catastrophic government at all levels’ failure in responding to the contingency.

“During the early 1900’s the discovery of oil and natural gas in areas around Baton Rouge attracted chemical companies to the city” (Reilly). Since the beginning of the 1900’s Louisiana has been a large refining state, one may say one of the best, but also one of the most damaging. It can be safely said that since the start of refining in Louisiana well over a billion pounds of pollution has been released. In 2011 alone over a million pounds of chemicals were released into the air and a separate 1.3 million had been released into the water. All of Louisiana’s 17 refineries reported accidents contributing to these chemical spills (Sturgis). The numbers that have been presented so far may not seem out of the ordinary

"In addition to endangering the wildlife and economic prosperity of an area, the loss of wetlands also puts humans at risk. Wetlands serve as a natural buffer zone against storms and hurricanes, slowing down the storms and reducing their force before they move inland. However, as the wetlands disappear, some cities are becoming more exposed. The city of New Orleans, Louisiana, has already suffered the consequences of this gradual depletion of wetland buffer zones. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest and most destructive hurricanes in the entire history of the United States, hit the Gulf Coast. There were more than 1,800 casualties, with the greatest number of them concentrated in New Orleans. Eighty percent of the city was flooded, and there were more than 700 dead. Many blamed the destruction of New Orleans on the failure of the levees, which are manmade barriers that prevent water from flooding into a city. However, scientists and researchers believe that the hurricane would have done far less damage to the city if the surrounding wetlands had been intact. Since the storm, there has been a greater national focus on preserving and restoring the wetlands on the Gulf Coast. Preserving our wetlands and maintaining a buffer zone against storms will only become more crucial in the future, as climate change may increase both the frequency and the severity of extreme weather events such as hurricanes. " There are so many

“In the entire flooded region, 50 percent of all animals--half of all the mules, horses, cattle, hogs and chickens--had drowned. Thousands of tenant farmer shacks had simply disappeared.” Said exactly from John Barry, the writer of the book “Rising Tides,” or the book all about the Mississippi River Flood of 1927. This quote explains the whole concept of this flood. Everybody near the Mississippi River were affected, and became devastated in some way. That could be by losing a loved one, or by losing a home. This flood was the worst one in U.S. history. Death, destruction, and depression were served to everybody.

Flooding has been a major concern in the area of Caddo-Bossier Parishes, especially in the last month where the Red River crested at close to 37 feet on 11 June. This caused the shutdown of major highways, moved people out of their homes, and the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, declaring a state of emergency. This has been the highest the river has been in 70 years and is going to have a lasting effect on the 450,000 people that live in this area. (Jones, 2015).

Katrina hit New Orleans, Louisiana on August 29th, 2005, but the failure of the local government started before this day “by allowing building and growing in areas in low flood lands.” The local government did not regulate these land areas that have always

Attention-Getter: Can you imagine how much damage 6,900,000,000,000 (6.9 trillion) gallons of rain in one week can cause? According to Holly Yan, this much water is enough to fill more than 10.4 million Olympic-size swimming pools. Well, this is the amount of rain that bashed Louisiana between August 8 and August 14 (Yan, 2016).