March 2008 is month 31 since Katrina. The Corps released a new series of flood risk maps on March 10. The maps show the city is still at risk of flooding in the event of a 100 year storm but the risk of flooding is dramatically reduced by projects scheduled to complete by 2011. A one hundred year storm will barely wet the streets by that time if the pumps work at capacity. A major pumping failure leaves only a few areas in St. Bernard, New Orleans East and the west bank at risk.

The hue and cry surrounding the demolition of four public housing projects continues to be fueled primarily by activists and entities from outside the city. Two members of a United Nations panel investigating New Orleans and the Katrina response issued a press statement claiming that the demolition of B.W.Cooper and other housing projects around New Orleans is discriminatory and violates The International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Later they undermined their own credibility when they admitted they had not visited New Orleans or done any real research but had based their statements on comments from activists in an effort to influence the US Congress. Here is yet another example of an action of government and super-governmental authorities gone awry on so many levels as to defy categorization.

The District Attorney is scratching her head (again) after an Orleans Parish jury acquitted two men of murder charges.  The first was acquitted last fall when his friend shocked the court by confessing to the crime. When the D.A. took the second man to trial he recanted his confession and was found not guilty as well. Both men have now been released while the police and the DA consider what to do next.

News emerged that ICF's $757 million to administer the Road Home Program just was not enough compensation. Blanco approved an increase to $912 million in December just five weeks before she left office. Bobby Jindal has asked the new state Inspector General, Paul Rainwater, to take a look into the matter. The December agreement based the raise on the likelihood that ICF will pay out far more Road Home grants than originally expected. The document says the number increased from 100,000 to about 160,000. Yet the program launched expecting to pay more than 114,000 grants, and estimates for total grants have now dropped to as low as 128,000.