A year and a half ago Barack Obama said,  "I promise you that when I'm in the White House, I will commit myself every day to keeping up Washington's end of the bargain. This will be a priority of my presidency. And I will make it clear to members of my administration that their responsibilities don't end in places like the 9th Ward; they begin in places like the 9th Ward."

The people of this city are taking care of business day to day in their own ways, but the thing they cannot do is restore the wetlands. The US Army Corps of Engineers stands in their way. Mr. President what you can do is to direct the Corps to save the wetlands. Closing Mr.GO and removing the levees below St Bernard might do the trick. Anything less is a waste of time and will result in new catastrophes in the not too distant future.

The Obama administration plans to put either the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration or the White House Council on Environmental Quality in charge of coastal restoration. That might be good if it was not actually the actions of another government body causing the damage. At the same time the Corps announced that it would be spending $400 million to $1 billion to repair the damage that its latest round of levee building has caused.

This environmental disaster is continuing. It is past time to act.

And then in April things got worse. The BP Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil gusher from the broken Macondo well into the Gulf of Mexico took the already sorry state of affairs to a whole new level.