Protection from Displacement

Under the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, governments are responsible for preventing and avoiding conditions that might lead to displacement of persons, and for taking all measures possible to minimize displacement and its adverse effects. They have a particular obligation to protect against displacement of groups with a special attachment to their lands, such as indigenous people. The U.S. government failed to meet these obligations in the case of Hurricane Katrina.

Warnings Went Unheeded

For years prior to Katrina, various experts had warned that the Gulf Coast—and particularly New Orleans—was at risk of devastation from a major hurricane. In August 2001, FEMA participated in an emergency training session where participants discussed the three most likely disasters to strike the United States: “First on the list was a terrorist attack in New York,” the Los Angeles Times later reported. “Second was a super-strength hurricane hitting New Orleans. Third was a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault.”⁵⁴

The following year, the New Orleans Times-Picayune published a prize-winning series of articles detailing how the below-sea-level city was vulnerable to a strong storm. “Without extraordinary measures, key ports, oil and gas production, one of the nation’s most important fisheries, the unique bayou culture, the historic French Quarter and more are at risk of being swept away in a catastrophic hurricane or worn down by smaller ones,” it reported.⁵⁵ And that was not the only published warning: Scientific American ran an article in October 2001 describing the consequences should a major hurricane strike the city⁵⁶, while an October 2004 story in National Geographic magazine accurately predicted many consequences of a major storm hitting New Orleans—including severe flooding in 80 percent of the city and as many as 200,000 people left behind.⁵⁷

In fact, local, state and federal emergency officials had practiced confronting a virtual storm that bore remarkable similarities to Hurricane Katrina. “It’s eerie how close it is,” the president of the FEMA contractor that led the simulation told reporters after Katrina.⁵⁸ Dubbed “Hurricane Pam,” the exercise that took place in July 2004 aimed to help officials develop emergency response plans by simulating a virtual Category 3 storm with 120 mile-per-hour winds, 20 inches of rain, breached levees, and hundreds of thousands left behind.⁵⁹ Pam was even more deadly than Katrina, causing an estimated 60,000 deaths.⁶⁰

But while this effort was made to prepare for the oft-predicted disaster, it was clearly insufficient since more than a year after the exercise took place government at all levels was still fatally unprepared for a real storm. “With Hurricane Pam’s striking resemblance to Katrina in force and devastation, many have been left wondering at the failure to anticipate, and plan for . . . essentials,” concluded the U.S. House of Representatives in its official report on the failed Katrina response.⁶¹ “Is a plan that leaves 300,000 in a flooded city and results in 60,000 deaths acceptable?”

Despite the clearly understood and widely publicized storm risks for the New Orleans area, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—the federal agency in charge of flood protection projects for the region—not only failed to take extraordinary measures such as building a system like the one protecting the Netherlands’ port of Amsterdam from a 10,000-year flood event; it didn’t even build and maintain New Orleans’ relatively modest 100-year-flood protection system properly. In its own study of post-Katrina structural failures, the Corps concluded that the levees constituted an incomplete and inconsistent patchwork of protections, faulty in design and construction. “The hurricane protection system in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana was a system in name only,” the report concluded.⁶²

Responsibility for the levee system’s failure is shared by the top ranks of the U.S. government, which provided inadequate oversight and funding. In the two fiscal years before Katrina struck, for instance, President Bush cut the budget for Corps projects specifically designed to strengthen New Orleans’ levees.⁶³ Though Congress restored some of the funding, it was a fraction of what the Corps had requested and resulted in the delay of at least seven construction contracts.⁶⁴ In total, federal funding for all Corps projects in the New Orleans district from 2001 to 2005 dropped by 44 percent.⁶⁵ Clearly, the government could have done more to protect the city from the catastrophic flooding that occurred after Katrina.

Inadequate Coastal Protections

Besides levees, another critical element of hurricane protection is coastal wetlands, which are disappearing in Louisiana at the alarming rate of 25 to 35 square miles per year.⁶⁶ At the time Katrina hit, the federal investment in Louisiana coastal preservation efforts through the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Prevention, and Protection Act was about $50 million per year.⁶⁷ But the estimated cost of the comprehensive restoration program to sustainably protect the state’s coastal communities is $14 billion.⁶⁸ Two years after the storm, federal coastal restoration efforts still remained severely under-funded. For example, the $21 billion federal water resources bill that Congress approved in November 2007 after overriding a presidential veto devotes only $1.9 billion for coastal restoration projects in Louisiana,⁶⁹ a fraction of the total amount needed.

The U.S. government’s failure to take adequate steps to protect Louisiana’s coast from hurricanes also implicates Guiding Principle 9, which holds that governments are under a “particular obligation” to prevent the displacement of indigenous people. South Louisiana is the homeland of the Houma people, who are indigenous to the region’s bayous and fishing communities. Coastal land loss threatens the very cultural survival of the tribe, many of whom maintain ancient hunter-gatherer traditions that bind them closely to “Yakni Houma”—Houma land. As historian and United Houma Nation Vice Principal Chief Michael Dardar has written, “If settlements are abandoned and populations are allowed to disperse, with them goes the cultural integrity of our people.”⁷⁰ The Guiding Principles make clear that the U.S. government is obligated to ensure this does not happen. In Louisiana, its efforts came up short.