New Orleans won't be safe from another storm like Katrina until we restore this hurricane buffer.

We've been wasting the river, particularly the sediment, directing it offshore. The Corps of Engineers from the New Orleans District Office dredges more river sediment than any other district in the United States. ... The problem is, we don't put it [sediments] where it's needed. We should pipe it across the landscape, putting it into regions where we can build wetlands.

We need funding to partially restore New Orleans.

In September, we had to move up from New Orleans during the hurricane. I like it here because you get the same feeling of both north and south that you feel in New Orleans.

We need to build a little bit of a buffer knowing that the storm probably won't be exactly where we forecast it to be -- it might be a little bit on one side or another.

At one point, early on, some public figures even asked whether it 'made sense' to rebuild New Orleans. Would you let your own mother die because it didn't make financial sense to spend the money to treat her, or because you were too busy to spend the time to heal her sick spirit?