ABSTRACT

A May 2006 report from the Russell Sage Foundation, In the Wake of the Storm: Environment, Disaster, and Race After Katrina, found the groups often experience a “second disaster” after the initial storm. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that negative effects of climate change fall heaviest on the poor and people of color. Hurricane Katrina left debris across a 90,000-square-mile disaster area in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, compared to a 16-acre tract in New York on September 11, 2001. Hurricane Katrina pushed New Orleans closer to the coast because of extensive erosion at the coastal edge. New Orleans, like most major urban centers, was a city in peril long before Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters devastated the city. In May 1986, the US Environmental Protection Agency performed a site inspection in the Agriculture Street Landfill community. Before Katrina, predominantly African-American communities in New Orleans were struggling with the mass closings of shopping centers and grocery stores.