Rebuilt confidence in New Orleans flood controls fuels rebuilding

By Kathy Finn NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - When Angele Givens looks around her neighborhood in the Gentilly section of New Orleans, she is struck by the contrast with 10 years ago, when Hurricane Katrina triggered floods that filled her home and tens of thousands of others with water. Today, more than 80 percent of the structures in her Vista Park neighborhood have been renovated or rebuilt, and work is underway on others. But the area may never have staged its comeback without a rebuilding of confidence in local flood protection, said Givens, president of her neighborhood's improvement association. “I never worried about flooding before Katrina, but after the storm, we had to ask whether it made sense, financially, to come back," she said. Billions of dollars of work carried out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, including the construction of a massive surge barrier just east of the city, helped answer that question, Givens said. "They have done a lot of work on the levees and the canals," she said.

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