Katrina Victims: Justice is Coming

The ancient Greeks believed in the power of prophecy. The word derives from the combination of the Greek word for before (“pro”) and speak (“phanai”)—speaking before or foretelling. Apollo was the God of Prophecy.

The Spirit of Apollo descended upon St. Bernard Parish in 1957.

The local residents had learned that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had secured Congressional approval for a 76-mile ship channel from the Port of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico. The waterway—650 feet wide and 36 feet deep—would dissect the parish and cut through 43 miles of pristine cypress-tupelo swamp and marshlands.

Alarmed that this man-made navigation route posed a danger to the neighboring environment and population, the St. Bernard Policy Jury (predecessor to the Parish Council) appointed a blue ribbon committee to investigate and report on its findings. A few months later, the Tidewater Channel Advisory Committee delivered its prescient report. Recommending that St. Bernard Parish oppose the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (“MR-GO”), the panel told its local leaders and fellow citizens that the MR-GO would some day prove to be a menace to life and property in the parish.

The enhanced tidal action caused by the channel directly connected to the Gulf of Mexico “will have adverse effects on the entire marsh area with consequent [corrosive] action and the intrusion of high saline content into areas normally fresh or only slightly brackish.” The salt water—plus more land excavation than occurred during the construction of the Panama Canal—would kill tens of thousands of acres of hurricane surge buffering cypress trees and wetlands.

The Committee foresaw the deadly consequences of this folly.

“During times of hurricane conditions, the existence of the

channel will be an enormous danger to the heavily populated

areas of the Parish due to the rapidity of the rising waters reaching

the protected areas in full force through the avenue of this proposed

channel. The danger is one that cannot be discounted. No matter how

small the flood may be, or how small the area to which it is confined,

to the families that have water in their houses, it is a major catastrophe.”

On August 29, 2005, this prophecy came true.

Over one hundred square miles of St. Bernard Parish and neighboring

New Orleans were drowned in flood waters as high as 20 feet. Not a single structure in St. Bernard Parish remained habitable. Over 1,300 people died in Greater New Orleans, and property damage runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

If only the Army Corps had listened.