The Los Angeles Times this morning features a long piece from Ann Simmons, a former war correspondent who had been detailed to New Orleans to cover the city's recovery post Katrina. In many ways, it hasn't been much of a recovery, as Simmons reports.

Here we were in supposedly the world's most powerful industrialized nation, yet getting New Orleans back on its feet was so slow. Federal, state and city officials continue to blame each other for the lethargic progress.

My perception of the United States as a democracy that takes care of its own was shattered.

This wasn't Somalia of the 1990s, where the absence of a central government guaranteed a dearth of public services and shoddy infrastructure; or postwar Angola, where broken bridges, land mines and derelict roads and airstrips could be blamed for hampering the transport of supplies or assistance to a populace in need. It wasn't southern Sudan, where aid groups often had to suspend relief efforts because of security concerns.

This was America.

The lack of faith in the government, common among people in the developing world, gradually began to show itself among New Orleanians as they waited in vain for an outpouring of help from authorities.

"It's like no one cares; like we've been forgotten," Marie Benoit, a schoolteacher pre-Katrina, said one day on the way to her home in a park of 500 campers on the campus of Southern University at New Orleans.

Simmons ends her story on an uplifting note about the resilience of the city and its people, which is delightful to read. But NRDC's two-years-later work unfortunately presents an anything-but-uplifting picture.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the floodwaters that swamped New Orleans swept oil, diesel and toxic chemicals from gas stations, industrial sites and toxic waste dumps into residential neighborhoods. Today, residents are still returning to communities laced with hazardous pollution. The latest round of NRDC environmental testing in New Orleans shows that several areas of the city -- including schools and playgrounds -- contain high levels of arsenic in the soil.

The flooding appears to have spread long-buried arsenic from pesticides or industrial processes, or from the muck at the bottom of the canals and Lake Pontchartrain, throughout the city and onto the surface of the soil, where people -- especially young children -- can easily touch it, breathe it, or get in their mouths. NRDC found six schools and two playgrounds sitting on arsenic hotspots -- areas where the level of arsenic exceeds environmental cleanup guidelines. Arsenic can cause cancer, birth defects, neurological disorders and other serious health problems.

A team of NRDC scientists, lawyers and communicators visited New Orleans a few months ago to talk with residents and complete another round of soil samples. You can see their travels in the following video.