20 Years After Katrina, New Orleans’ Levees Are Sinking and Short on Money

It has been 20 years since New Orleans’ faulty levee system failed during Hurricane Katrina, causing a flood that claimed almost 2,000 lives and inflicted more than $150 billion in economic damage. The catastrophe was so bad that some doubted the city could continue to exist at all — the U.S. House speaker at the time declared that rebuilding New Orleans “doesn’t make sense” and that much of it “could be bulldozed.”

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