What caused such a terrible result from hurricane Katrina?
According to Tallahassee Times Staff Report, Julie Hauserman, everyone from governors standing at lecterns in Mississippi and Louisiana to scientists e-mailing frantically from their university cubbyholes agrees: If we hadn’t destroyed so many coastal wetlands, the hurricane’s impact would have been much less devastating. And if we hadn’t allowed houses and casinos and shopping centers to go up in the wetlands we destroyed, we’d have fewer people dead and a less expensive rebuilding tab. People died because government let developers build in wetlands. And we’re still building in wetlands, more and more each day. We need to stop letting government do that. We need to think about the future and be part of the democratic process and speak out against wrongs and injustices. What do the wetlands do to protect us from coastal storms? Wetlands are a sort of free hurricane insurance. They slow hurricanes down and absorb storm surge. State and federal officials have estimated that every 2.7 mil
