Though the city’s collective memory of the flood may not need sharpening,  the final play of John Biguenet’s Rising Water trilogy, Mold, transports audiences to New Orleans one year after the disaster, when the city stagnated in its quiet ruin.

by Elaina Patton

At the corner of North Claiborne Ave. and Caffin St. in the Lower Ninth Ward, Mayor Mitch and city officials on Wednesday marked the groudbreaking of four new projects focused on improving the neighborhood's quality of life in  the wake of the Federal Flood. To a crowd mostly made up of local politicians, fire fighters and the occasional onlooker, Landrieu described the projects as efforts to “reaffirm commitment to the Lower Ninth Ward and the city of New Orleans.”

Since the Federal Flood, The Big Easy has made her fair share of headlines. New Orleans’ reputation has evolved drastically throughout the past few years, and the Greater New Orleans Inc. is giving the public a peek through the eyes of our metropolitan counterparts. Continuing a study they began in 2010, GNO Inc. surveyed 1,600 registered voters from Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C. Key findings point to wide variety of public perceptions.

Updated 12 p.m.

The grisly post-K chapter involving the killing of Henry Glover isn't over. Two former NOPD officers convicted for the Algiers resident's death saw some of their convictions overturned by a federal appeals court ruling handed down late last week. David Warren, who shot Henry Glover, will get a new trial. Gregory McRae saw his conviction on one count reversed by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and will be resentenced in U.S. District Court.

Since having a hurricane fall on the anniversary of K wasn't enough, conservative pundits have once again invoked the spectre of The Storm and the Federal Flood. The method this time was through a 2007 video of President Barack Obama that a lot of people already saw during the 2008 campaign. In the speech to a group of ministers, Obama says the feds didn't waive the Stafford Act after the 2005 levee failures, contributing to the slow response and wayward recovery.

At least for now, a group of federal judges washed away hopes of recouping damages after the Federal Flood for residents in the Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans East and St. Bernard Parish. The Army Corps of Engineers is not liable for damages along the MR-GO that occurred during the Federal Flood, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.

by Mary-Devon Dupuy

LOWER 9th WARD -- The Lower Ninth was one of the areas hit hardest in the federal flood, but Mayor Mitch and his team officially reopened the Oliver Bush Playground today in an effort to continue to transform the tragedy into a success story. The shiny facilities at 2500 Caffin Avenue were already full of children climbing on the equipment and dribbling basketballs even before the ribbon cutting ceremony. It was such a joyous occasion that Da’ Mayor himself decided to take a ride down the slide.  

Today, Second Line Sundays return as the Valley of Silent Men make a joyful noise in Central City, the Noisician Coalition's annual underpants party ventures to Siberia and a book of federal flood testimonies launches in Treme. On this day in Louisiana history, Gov. "Uncle" Earl K. Long was born at the Long family homestead in Winnfield (1895), and Hurricane Andrew hit S. Louisiana near Morgan City (1992).

New Orleanians saw FEMA trailers and ever-present dumpsters and many of the houses that looked like they were about to fall over disappear over the last six years of recovery. But there's a version of New Orleans where the remnants of the Federal Flood are still ever-present. Google Street View, the Google Maps feature that offers block-by-block browsing via photographs of the street, hasn't been updated for New Orleans since 2007, and it hasn't gone unnoticed. In order to show Silicon Valley how far we've come, newly up-and-running local blog NOLA Street View is setting out to document what's changed.

As we know all too well, the federal flood of 2005 wasn't only bad because we're below sea level. Shoddy work by the Army Corps of Engineers made the damage worse than it should've been. Well, at least when it comes to MR. Go, the courts seem to agree. Last year, a federal judge issued a 150-page ruling blaming the Corps for the flood damaged sustained in the Lower 9, the East and St. Bernard after Katrina and Rita. Yesterday, an appeals court upheld the ruling, paving the way for a huge settlement with victims. Coverage here and here.