August 29, 2007 6:03PM # Time to Remember the Lessons of Katrina By [Chris Edwards](https://www.cato.org/people/chris-edwards) --- SHARE The August 13 [*Time* cover story](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1649290,00.html) on Katrina begins: > The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn’t a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. The primary culprit was the Army Corps of Engineers, together with its congressional overlords. In the *Time* piece, reporter Michael Grunwald does an excellent job describing the misplaced priorities of the Corps, both pre-Katrina and post-Katrina. As I’ve argued, [the Corps ought to be privatized](https://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb-0510-27.pdf). Alas, the Bush administration bungled its Katrina response and has since missed a big opportunity to push for fundamental reforms of the Corps, FEMA, and other agencies. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).