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I remember exactly where I was 20 years ago when I first read of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. The New York Times had a big spread with photos, and I pored over the reporting on an orange couch in my Philadelphia rental. Within days, editorials starting appearing in various outlets questioning the imperative to rebuild New Orleans. That debate has continued with every storm since, but at least in New Orleans, a city that commands deep and fervent devotion from those who live there and many who don’t, it was never a real question. Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild.

Twenty years later, it’s a work in progress in New Orleans and other impacted cities along the Gulf of Mexico. Infrastructure continues to require investment, projects that promised to increase coastal resiliency have been cancelled, and many who fled the storm have never returned to their homes. 

Desk reporters and friends have been taking stock on this anniversary, which passed on Aug. 29. You can read some of their reporting below. 

For many, this time of year is also a time to reflect on their connection to New Orleans and how the storm changed it. To that end, our friends at WWNO asked listeners to “share love letters to the city, so we can center your voices, your memories and your love for the city, and reflect on what was lost, but also honor what has endured” after Katrina. I loved reading through the responses. 

Myrna Bergeron wrote: “Here I am, a native New Orleanian, living in Baton Rouge since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Baton Rouge is a lovely city, filled with beautiful trees and kind, generous people, but it is not New Orleans. I miss the traditions and culture of old New Orleans that are reflected in the substance of the city, the way we talk, our food, our music, the architecture, the friendliness and joie de vivre. All of these make New Orleans feel different than most American cities.”

Alaná A. wrote: “My love letter is to old Algiers and old New Orleans. When neighbors were family and you could walk and play in the streets without a care in the world. To the days when the ferry was free and a trip to Canal Street to shop was a highlight of a day. From riding the streetcar to walking to the French Market for a nice treat. The days of pre-Katrina New Orleans are really missed! Who would have known that what most thought would be a three-day getaway just 20 years ago would change our lives forever!”

You can read the rest of the love letters on WWNO’s site. 

We share reporting from Desk members and friends below. Meanwhile, if this anniversary is a difficult one for you, I hope you take care.

An artist reclaimed her family’s land 20 years after Katrina and turned into a garden

WWNO – New Orleans Public Radio | By Eva Tesfaye

If you go to the northwest corner of the Lower Ninth Ward, you might wonder what those giant pyramid-like structures are. They’re 9 feet tall, made out of wood and burlap.

“As we fill them in with soil, we will plant on them,” said Utē Petit, a 29-year-old Black woman with long braids and big plans. She’s a ceramic artist and this is her garden.

“My intention is to plant a lot of fruit trees on them, fruit and nut trees, flowers and herbs, all perennial things that will kind of hopefully live long after I’m here,” she said.

Petit said the garden’s structures will honor one of her great-grandmothers who had Indigenous Houma ancestry. They’re called mounds, and Native Americans up and down the Mississippi River built similar ones for all kinds of purposes including gatherings, ceremonies and burials.

At the same time, the garden will honor her other great-grandmother’s Black New Orleanian ancestry too because she used to this own land. Petit’s story is a rare example of how a family, decades after Katrina, got their land back.

Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is still covered with vacant lots, especially in the Lower Ninth Ward. After the storm, Black New Orleanians, including Petit’s great-grandmother, struggled to return to their land and rebuild their homes because of the way the city and the state handled recovery. Now Petit has reclaimed her family’s land by navigating a bureaucratic city program with the help of her community.

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20 years after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana loses $720M in disaster preparedness funding

WWNO – New Orleans Public Radio | By Eva Tesfaye

Tap Bui (left) of Song Community Development Corporation and John Hoa Nguyen (right) of Hung Dao Community Development Corporation stand in front of the vacant land they want to turn into a stormwater park on August 5, 2025.

Research shows climate change intensified Hurricane Katrina, and 20 years later, scientists say hurricanes are growing even stronger due to climate change.

Five years ago, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) started the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program to fund projects that help prevent storm damage from disasters, before disasters happen. Louisiana was set to receive more than $720 million.

Then the Trump administration cancelled the program.

The Coastal Desk’s Eva Tesfaye reports on what that means as New Orleans prepares for future storms.

This story has been edited for length and clarity. 

EVA TESFAYE: On the day I visit the Vietnamese community in Lower Algiers, known as Hung Dao, it’s raining, which is fitting because I’m here to learn about the community’s struggles with flooding. The neighborhood is suburban, with cute houses and nice gardens. But there’s also a lot of abandoned infrastructure like buildings, gas stations, bridges.

JOHN HOA NGUYEN:  Junk, trash and you know, abandoned houses.

TESFAYE: That’s John Hoa Nguyen. He’s one of the board members of the Hung Dao Community Development Corporation. It’s a nonprofit in the neighborhood trying to improve recreation and access to culture. He says whenever it rains heavily for more than 30 minutes, he starts to see flooding. The problem is made worse by houses sinking due to subsidence.

NGUYEN:  Every time we have heavy rain, you can see the water go up to almost to the curb of the street.

TESFAYE: That’s why the community wants to transform ten acres of deserted land into a cultural heritage garden that can also retain stormwater.

The land used to hold low-income housing that was damaged by Katrina. Now, it’s an overgrown lot protected by a metal fence.

Ilegal dumping on Hung Dao’s site Images by Eva Tesfaye

Vietnamese community in Lower Algiers, struggles with flooding and subsidence

Tap Bui is with another nonprofit partnering on the project, Song Community Development Corporation.

TAP BUI:  We have a lot of overgrown and invasive species of like, trees, shrubs, plants. After they demolished the apartments they did leave the foundation.

So there’s some foundation slabs here. It’s currently gated because there was some illegal dumping and it still continues to be illegal dumping on site. As you can see with some like sofas and trash that we have here.

TESFAYE: Hung Dao and Song partnered with the city. Together, they asked for more than $1 million from FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program — or BRIC, for short.

The money would fund a study for how to turn this blighted landscape into an asset that reduces flooding: Think traditional gardens, a pond, but also: a playground.

It’s exactly why BRIC was created – to fund this kind of hazard preparedness, to make disasters less damaging when they hit.

BUI:  Why don’t we transform this 10 acres into, you know, a stormwater park or something around hazard mitigation, but also honoring cultural preservation and identity?

TESFAYE: Almost a year ago, they found out they got the funding.

But then a few months later, the Trump administration cancelled the program. They called it wasteful and said BRIC was more concerned with political agendas than helping people affected by natural disasters. 

The Governor’s Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) says FEMA hasn’t yet specified which projects will lose funding.

Here in New Orleans, Austin Feldbaum from the city’s Hazard Mitigation Office says the city already started working on some of these projects.

AUSTIN FELDBAUM:  Our stance right now is to keep moving, knowing that ultimately the city might be on the hook for, for the cost of the study.

TESFAYE: Feldbaum says he was excited when BRIC first rolled out, which was actually under the previous Trump administration.

Like other FEMA programs, he says it was still slow, bureaucratic and clunky, but it made it easier to fund projects like Hung Dao Gardens.

He says it boosted the money they could spend, encouraged community involvement and justified projects with multiple benefits, not just hazard mitigation.

FELDBAUM: It was important because it was proactive and forward-looking. Being a pre-disaster mitigation program means you’re not waiting around for something bad to happen before you fix a known problem. And I mean, that’s where we need to be getting,

TESFAYE: Alessandra Jerolleman, is the Director of Research at Loyola’s Center on Environment, Land, and Law. She studies hazard mitigation and climate adaptation. She says it’s not just BRIC being cancelled that worries her.

ALESSANDRA JEROLLEMAN: Our expectations about federal assistance are kind of up in the air.

TESFAYE: Losing grants from the Inflation Reduction Act will also impact the city’s efforts to prepare for climate change, she says. And FEMA itself is at risk. 

JEROLLEMAN: And there’s a lot of discussion and debate right now about whether or not, we will or won’t have a FEMA, whether or not we should or shouldn’t have a FEMA, right?

TESFAYE: Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy — who has been wary of criticizing the Trump administration — has said BRIC and other FEMA programs are vital for Louisiana. He spoke about it on the Senate floor in April.

CASSIDY: Preventing homes from flooding that if they do flood, will cost the federal taxpayer billions of dollars. That’s not waste. That’s good planning.

TESFAYE: But the Trump administration has called on states and local governments to find their own funding for disasters. 

It denied disaster aid for tornadoes in Arkansas, flooding in West Virginia and a windstorm in Washington state. 

Loyola professor Jerolleman says local governments are already on the hook for so much of the impact of increasing extreme weather, like flooding.

JEROLLEMAN: The climate is changing. We’re going to see more events that we don’t expect.

TESFAYE: Jerolleman says the federal government still has a major responsibility to help protect its citizens.

JEROLLEMAN: This nation needs a New Orleans, it needs a city at the base of the Mississippi River, and, and we’re all in this together, so having. Federal mitigation funds, being able to support the places that are most at risk is really, really valuable.

TESFAYE: The Water Collaborative is one New Orleans nonprofit that is trying to set up a new way for the city to fund its own hazard mitigation efforts: a stormwater fee. 

Stormwater services are mostly run by the New Orleans Sewage and Water Board and funded by property taxes. But certain properties don’t pay property taxes — including churches, universities or the Superdome. A fee would be a way to get them to contribute to maintaining the city’s drainage system. Jessica Dandridge-Smith is the executive director of the Water Collaborative.

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Sincerely, Irina ZhorovAssistant Director, Ag & Water Desk