posted by Steve Ellis, 202-546-8500 ext. 126

TCS Vice-President, Steve Ellis, just got back from touring the Lower Ninth ward in New Orleans. Here is his report:

New Orleans, LA (December 7, 2007) – Pam Dashiell, head of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, asked me how I thought they were doing. I told her I was inspired, but devastated by what I was witnessing. You see, I spent the last couple days in New Orleans and toured the historic Holy Cross neighborhood and other parts of the Lower Ninth Ward.

The aftermath of Katrina is smothering. Houses are still spray painted with the symbols indicating what federal agents found when they checked the structures in the storms’s aftermath. You can stand on the levee next to Bayou Bienvenue and look out over what appears to be an out of place field in the middle of a city, until you notice the concrete foundations where neighborhoods once stood.  All over this area north of St. Claude Avenue in the Lower Ninth you can walk along the street and see driveways leading to nothing.

But at the same time you see hope and resilience.

Just about every vehicle I saw was loaded with construction materials and building supplies. Fats Domino’s house has been restored and the historic Steamboat houses – designed a century ago to withstand floods – stand proudly right next to the house that the PBS program “This Old House” is restoring. For fans of the program, I looked around for Norm Abrams – I didn’t see him, but I saw a lot of work going on. There is Brad Pitt’s first housing effort with Global Green, and a separate enclave of pink structures where his Make It Right project will build 150 new homes. Supposedly when he was asked why pink, Pitt said it was so that people will notice it. You certainly can’t miss it. But what you notice most of all is that everyone is working. It’s not every house, but there is steady work.

I wasn’t there just to gawk and tour the Lower Ninth Ward. Pam had asked me to talk to the news media about a new economic study (pdf-1.6MB) reviewing the Corps of Engineers’ plan to spend $800 million building a new navigation lock on a canal where traffic is declining. It would be like the Corps putting additional lanes on a highway with declining traffic and little congestion. Pam and others have been asking the government for years to scrap the gold-plated lock that would barely be used and put the money into fixing the levees and protecting their communities. Sadly, their calls for help were ignored.

This project and Katrina are inextricably linked. The lock is on the Industrial Canal – the same 5.5 mile canal where the Corps levee failed and inundated the Lower Ninth. And when I say failed, I mean it was overwhelmed by a storm it should have contained.

The canal connects to the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (aka Mr. Go) – the Corps constructed waterway that lead the Katrina storm surge into the heart of New Orleans and sent a wall of water into these neighborhoods. Because of the funnel effect of the channel, this area experienced more water faster than it would have otherwise. Higher water faster equals less time chance to escape and, too often, death.

The lock project is an effort by the Corps, the Port of New Orleans and Louisiana politicians to spend nearly $1 billion on a boondoggle while there are millions of higher priorities. There is the cruel juxtaposition of the failed levee next to a billion dollar boondoggle. In the years leading up to Katrina, Louisiana led the nation in Corps water project spending – by a lot – but too much went to parochial pork instead of priorities like protecting people. In fact, during the press conference, the real priorities were staring me in the face. My back was to the canal and I was looking across the Holy Cross neighborhood where there is so much much left to be done.

People are slowly coming back to this vibrant city. Congress has directed the Corps that Mr. Go must go. And reconstruction in smart, defendable areas continues. I last toured the Lower Ninth back around 2000 with Pam. This time I felt a weird sense of déjà vu. But it was no dream. I had been there before, it just looked so different. I will be back and am confident that it will be better yet. Laissez les bon temps roulez.