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not equal opportunity killers. The people who are the most vulnerable every day of the year are also the most vulnerable in times of catastrophe. In that sense, we humans may not cause the wind to blow, but we do determine who gets hurt the most when it does. cades elapse between cat -5 storms, 7 -point earth- quakes, and hundred -year floods. We advertise dangerous places. We weaken or evade building codes, hazard zoning ordinances, and other nui- sances of doing businesses. We demand lower insurance rates. And then.... And when it's all over? First, we care. Federal The Trib was wrong: there is plenty we can do money and charitable generosity flow freely. The in the face of the brute force of Mother Nature. American heart opens graciously and embraces Still, it is hard to write that on this day. Hard to those in need. Here is often when we are at our write about the ordinary in the face of the ex- best as a society. Then, we repeat. So many people traordinary. Hard to write about innocent deci- are so dependent on the ordinary system that it is sions of the past while people are hungry, home - inconceivable not to repair it. The ordinary has less, and grieving. Hard to write about the les- broken down, but in the face of the extraordinary, sons we should learn from one hurricane while we can think of little else than restoring the com- another is already threatening. I do pray that we fortable, the familiar, the deadly. And so federal learn those lessons —that natural disasters are money and private generosity rebuild homes and very much of our own making and that we make other structures in dangerous places. We return to them through the ordinary decisions and actions marginalizing poor neighborhoods and isolating of our lives, decisions that we have much control the elderly. In the process of nobly rebuilding the over. But I pray that it does not take a second best of what has been damaged, we also rebuild its hurricane in one month to teach us. dark sides as well. Finally, we forget. Years or de- Louisiana WRRI Studied New Orleans Inundation he web pages of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute provide a glimpse into the scholarship surrounding hurricanes and the impacts of landfall. Of particular interest are projections of the impacts of flood inundation of New Orleans during hurricane. These and a variety of other resources which were developed for LWRRI under the directorship of Joseph Suhay- da (retired) are available from the web page at www.lwrri.Isu.edu and www. lwrri.Isu.edu /1998_2002WEB.htm. EPA Website Now Offers Water Quality Data n Feburary, the Environmental Protection Agency - Office of Water, released the first ever interactive database of state water quality as- sessment data, which provides the public with easy Web access to water quality information at the state and local levels. The 2002 reporting cycle was a transition period between traditional 305(b) water quality reporting and integration of 305(b) with re- porting of impaired waters under section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act, as outlined in EPA guidance to the states in November 2001. EPA is continuing to call for integrated reporting of 305(b) and 303(d) information. States are participating in an extensive review and approval of the 2002 data. This initial Web release of the 2002 National Water Quality Data- base summarizes electronic data for 32 states. The remaining states should be added to the database by late summer 2005. National summary water quality statistics will be available at that time. The database may be viewed at www.epa.gov /305b/ 2002report and if you have any questions, please contact Cary McElhinny at mcelhinny.cary @epa. gov .