Obama to Travel to New Orleans on Katrina Anniversary

Marking the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, President Obama will travel to New Orleans on Sunday, the White House has announced. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, as well as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate will participate in events throughout the coming week, drawing attention to recovery and restoration efforts in the region. On Sunday, the president will travel from Martha's Vineyard, where he has been vacationing, to New Orleans. He will participate in events that will include remarks by Norman Francis, the president of Xavier University of Louisiana.

Beyond commemorating the disaster that left over 1,300 dead and thousands homeless, the White House hopes to draw attention to progress the federal government has made in rebuilding and reinforcing local infrastructure. The New York Times on Tuesday reported that "Nearly five years after Katrina and the devastating failures of the levee system, New Orleans is well on its way to getting the protection system Congress ordered: a ring of 350 miles of linked levees, flood walls, gates and pumps that surrounds the city and should defend it against the kind of flooding that in any given year has a 1 percent chance of occurring."

New Orleans' new -- and greatly improved -- system of protective barriers, levees and lake walls has been reconstructed to form a single line of defense, or as one civil engineer put it: "It's a comprehensive-system approach. We're not even in the same universe anymore." Still, some analysts have said that even the enhanced protective measures are insufficient, that a greater margin of safety is needed, and, fundamentally, that the protective wetland barriers that reduce the force of storms must be restored. The Times estimates these wetlands are disappearing at a rate of 24,000 acres per year. Said one expert, "We're never going to succeed if we rely on concrete alone."

According to the official White House press release, the president, vice president, Cabinet-level officials and other key agency heads have visited the gulf coast "upward of 155 times" since Obama took office. The visit will also highlight efforts the administration has made to improve disaster preparedness, response, and recovery nationwide.