Did it really take three years to ask this question?

How Much Responsibility Does Oil-Gas Industry Have in Gulf Coast's Katrina Disaster?

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The delta, formed by the accumulation of the Mississippi River's upstream mud over thousands of years, is a shadow of what it was 100 years ago. Since the 1930s, a fifth of the 10,000-square-mile delta has turned into open water, decreasing the delta's economic and ecologic value by as much as $15 billion a year, according to Louisiana State University studies.

The rate of land loss, among the highest in the world, has exposed New Orleans and hundreds of other communities to the danger of drowning. Katrina made that painfully clear.

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In Katrina's wake, the Army Corps of Engineers has gotten the brunt of the criticism for the disaster. Besides building suspect levees, the Corps' mission to control waterways with spillways, floodgates and other measures has played havoc with nature by restricting the Mississippi's sediment and fresh upriver water from replenishing the delta's wetlands.

There are other reasons for the disastrous wetlands loss: Human development, cypress logging, ill-advised farming on the coast, hurricanes, slipping-and-sliding geologic faults and even a South American semi-aquatic rodent called nutria imported to Louisiana in the 1930s.

But many scientists say the oil industry's 10,000 miles of canals - enough to stretch nearly halfway around the world - and the drilling they supported played a decisive role. Some scientists say drilling caused half of the land loss, or about 1,000 square miles.

"The whole thing was manifest destiny written large on a marshy landscape," said John Day, an LSU professor emeritus who specializes in delta ecologies.

The industry denies that and points to disagreement among scientists over who or what caused damage, and how much.

No one will ever accept responsibility. There are enough fingers to point, enough officials to quote, enough companies to blame. And nothing will be done because it costs money.