Scott Frickel explores the ways in which ignorance and nonknowledge are actively produced in post-Katrina New Orleans. He highlights the ways in which the tools used to examine the construction of knowledge also can be used to probe the knowledge gaps that coexist alongside the vast expanses of what is known. He reinserts politics back into the future by transitioning from uncertainty to the institutionalization of ignorance. He points on two recently concluded studies, both of which examine the problem of urnban soil contamination. The first investigates how knowledge about remnant industrial contaminants in the city may have become hidden and effectively lost overtime while the second investigates knowledge gaps resulting from the US Environmental Protection Agency's post-hurricane environmental hazard assessment.