I live in the 9th Ward, but near Lake Pontchartrain. My apartment still stands and it looks as though no looters have ransacked the place. My sister, brother-in-law, aunt, and cousin all have gone to my apartment and they said the whole area looks like Hiroshima. No electricity, no phone service, no water at all. This has been since early September.

What’s been done? Nagin is running for re-election now! He is carefully working to repair the areas where he was strongest in the last election. Everybody knows this. I can’t vote for him again. I know how the city government is corrupt. I don’t trust anything Nagin says.

Nagin has come to Houston twice to ask (beg) New Orleans citizens to come “home.” He was asking us to return to a place unsafe in many ways.

I am a teacher now in Houston. I live in an apartment complex paid for by FEMA. There are many people who have gone back to visit for a day. They come back with the truth.

For 40 years, since Hurricane Betsy (1965) we have been always told that the levees that surround New Orleans make it safe for us. I couldn’t evacuate. My old car would not make the trip. It would break down and leave me stranded. I had no choice but to stay and survive. I beat the hurricane, survived for two days after the storm. I was taken by bus to Houston.

As I said, I found the Militant and on page 2, Sept. 26, 2005, you advertise a subscription: $5 for 12 weeks. I have enclosed a check for this.

Richard Brown
Houston, Texas  
 
Bolivia’s sewage system
The article about Bolivia in issue no. 1 says that less than 1 percent of the population has “sewage service.” I’m not sure what “sewage service” is, but according to one set of UN figures I saw around 45 percent of urban households have private or shared flush toilets, which must represent considerably more than 1 percent of the population. I think what the 1 percent figure may refer to is how much waste water is treated. The population of La Paz alone is a million or so, and it can’t be true that almost none of them have “sewage service.”

Arnold Weissberg
New York, New York

Thanks for the note. According to Habitat for Humanity, a little over half of Bolivia’s 8 million people, or 55 percent, have access to sewage services, that is, removal of sewage through pipes. If a stricter definition of “sewage services” that includes waste treatment is used, however, the 1 percent figure may be accurate. According to the UN Environmental Program, “In Bolivia sewage treatment is virtually non-existent.” This has been a major factor in the resurgence of cholera in that country and elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean.

—Editor  
 
 
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