Along the Louisiana coast, indigenous cultures and communities remain in peril

Hurricanes, flooding, and coastal erosion continue to threaten many indigenous communities across coastal Louisiana. Albert Naquin, chief of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians on Isle de Jean Charles in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, says it's time for the island's remaining residents to move farther inland, surrendering their way of life to the twin threats of storm surge and coastal erosion, reports the Times-Picayune.

Due to land loss, the island and much of the community is being swallowed by the Gulf of Mexico. According to the Times-Picayune, more than a week after Hurricane Gustav flooded much of Isle de Jean Charles, Hurricane Ike brought a 9-foot storm surge, overtopping the island's 6- to 7-foot levees and swamping homes once again. Although the Native American residents of the island have lived through numerous floodings, most do not have the money to continually rebuild, and the community knows it will never get stronger levee protection.

As the Times-Picayune reports:

Like other bayou communities, Isle de Jean Charles is a victim of coastal erosion, subsidence and sea-level rise. The oil and gas industry's construction of canals for vessels and pipelines enabled saltwater from the Gulf to invade and destroy freshwater wetlands. Levee building also caused southern Louisiana communities to be cut off from the Mississippi River and its sediments, which would have replenished the land and prevented it from sinking.
Island shrinking

Isle de Jean Charles once stretched about four miles wide, but is now a quarter-mile wide.

Coastal and bayou communities throughout Louisiana have been sinking for years, placing Cajun, Creole, and other unique cultures along the coast at risk of disappearing completely, and threatening the livelihoods of entire coastal communities. This land and culture loss is one of the biggest ecological and social disasters along Louisiana's coast.

Tribal leaders and tribal attorneys say the recent storms again sound the alarm that Louisiana's coastal communities need stronger flood protection and more emphasis on coastal and wetlands restoration to reduce surge, reports the Times-Picayune. “These communities are cultural and historical assets,” Joel Waltzer, a tribal attorney for the Pointe-aux-Chenes Indians, told the Times-Picayune, adding that losing the communities “would mean the end of an entire lifestyle and, in this case, the end of an entire people.”

Ike Coverage: Relief workers weather an above-average hurricane season

Hurricane Ike is pushing its way into Texas today and tomorrow, and already hundreds of thousands of people have evacuated to further inland locations. The National Weather Service issued a warning to people living in small houses on Galveston Island that they faced “certain death” from flooding if they remained in their homes. A mandatory evacuation has been issued for Galveston, and hurricane warnings were issued for a 400-mile stretch of coastline that stretched from south of Corpus Christi to Morgan City, La., reports the New York Times.

Disaster relief groups already on the ground serving evacuees affected by Hurricane Gustav are turning toward Texas this week, readying a relief response as Hurricane Ike makes landfall. Non-profit and faith-based relief operations such as Operation Blessing, the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief, the Salvation Army and World Vision have put relief teams are on the ground to begin distributing food, water and other needed items to victims.

Relief workers, overwhelmed but prepared

These groups have been stepping up their activities and providing non-stop relief work in what has been a well-above-average hurricane season. As the Institute for Southern Studies underscored in our recent report, Faith in the Gulf, these faith-based and non-profit relief organizations have become a vital part of relief and recovery work in hurricane-prone areas.

Some of their recent work includes:

• Since Gustav made landfall in Louisiana, thousands of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers operated feeding kitchens at 23 locations in five states. Southern Baptist volunteers have prepared nearly 770,000 meals; completed 275 chainsaw jobs; provided 7,903 showers and 1,138 loads of laundry, reports the Baptist Press.
• In preparation for Hurricane Ike, Texas Baptist Men have activated four teams to serve around the state and will prepare about 46,000 meals a day, reports the Baptist Press.
• The Pentecostal relief outfit, Convoy of Hope, is responding to victims in Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica, after providing in recent days more than $1 million of aid to the Gulf Coast of the United States following Hurricane Gustav. In the United States, Convoy of Hope has distributed 26 semi-truckloads of relief supplies to more than 200,000 people in Louisiana and the U.S. Disaster Response Team is preparing to redirect its efforts to Texas, according to Reliefweb.
• Following Hurricane Gustav, the Salvation Army served more than 100,000 meals throughout the gulf coast area. This includes food service for evacuees, volunteers and other first responders who are helping in the evacuation. The ministry has more than 100 mobile feeding units, two 54-foot mobile kitchens and multiple fixed feeding sites at its Corps and other outposts throughout the region, reports the Salvation Army in a press release.
• Nationally, churches across Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and as far north as Oklahoma have opened up their doors to evacuees following the most recent storms.
  

“We’re in full preparation mode here,” Audrey Black, manager of World Vision’ Storehouse in Picayune, Miss., said in a World Vision press release prior to Hurricane Gustav’s landfall. “We have been seeing long lines at gas stations and stores as people stock up on necessities—but not everyone can afford to stock up. World Vision’s priority is to make sure we're ready to help the region's low-income and forgotten populations.”

In Houma in the days following Gustav, North Carolina Baptist disaster relief units rolled in with six 18-wheelers filled with meal supplies, to cook 30,000 meals a day for delivery to residents by the Salvation Army’s fleet of disaster response trucks, reports the Baptist Press. “People ask, 'Why do you need these guys?’” Kilm Liretta, a Houma reporter, told the Baptist Press regarding the North Carolina Baptists’ feeding operation. “You know what I tell them? Without these guys, we’d be lost.”

In response to Hurricane Ike, nonprofit and faith-based volunteers, staff and vehicles are awaiting deployment with other equipment and supplies to storm-struck areas. The American Red Cross has requested that Southern Baptists Disaster Relief, the third largest disaster relief organization in the United States, be prepared to provide up to a total of 500,000 meals per day, while the Salvation Army has requested another 70,000 meals, reports the Baptist Press. Relief workers have been working with the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and federal and state officials to plan a response in Ike’s expected strike zone.

The steady stream of storms has caused many groups to recruit more volunteers. “One of the problems we’ve been facing is fatigue,” Mickey Caison, director of operations at the Southern Baptist Disaster Operations Center, told the Baptist Messenger. “We’ve been going at it hard all year with tornadoes and floods and ice storms. So we’ve been in a response somewhere all year long. And a lot of those volunteers have used their vacation days already. As we are working toward additional responses, we are looking at whether we are going to be able to mobilize enough people.”

Saving the Coastline

Sharon S. Gauthe, director of southern Louisiana’s Bayou Interfaith Shared Community Organizing (BISCO), a congregation-based community organization part of the PICO national network, has been working in the Hurricane Gustav hard-hit areas in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes to bring attention to the relief and recovery needs of the area. "Please spread the word that we do need to be helped in our communities," she said.

Local faith-based groups such as BISCO continue to engage in advocacy work to ensure that communities impacted by these storms gain better protection. For instance, BISCO is interested in seeing policy that improves the safety of communities in southern Louisiana. “Man has destroyed that protection and now we’re forced to get out to survive,” Patty Whitney, a BISCO community organizer, said in an Oxfam press release following Gustav. “Before, people could prepare. They could board up, stock up on supplies. They knew how to protect themselves from the furor of nature because nature itself provided protection.”

BISCO believes that protecting healthy marshes along the coastline and helping to restore the marshland would provide a level of security and safety so many of these costal communities desire. “The technology is there, but the political will is not,” Whitney said in the press statement, underscoring that BISCO is determined to change the political landscape. “Our goal is to work with communities and networks across the country to help build the will to save the coastline.”

Gustav Coverage: Gustav's Impact on Louisiana and Haiti

By Bill Quigley, guest contributor

Hurricane Gustav killed 18 people in Louisiana and displaced 1.9 million. Over 800,000 homes are without electricity, nearly half the state, and some will not see power for up to a month.

In Haiti, Gustav killed 77 with another eight missing and damaged nearly 15,000 homes. Tropical storm Hanna, which closely followed Gustav, killed at least another 60 people. Tens of thousands of people have sought safety on rooftops and temporary shelters. Rotting cows drift in the flood waters.

Louisiana is the poorest state in the US, home to nearly four million people, with per capita income of around $16,000 per year. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, home to nearly nine million people, with a per capita income of less than $400 per year.

In Louisiana, gas and water are scarce. On Thursday September 4, 2008, authorities reported a three-mile line of people waiting for food and water outside of New Orleans. The evacuation of 1.9 million people in Louisiana went relatively smoothly. The return has been much more difficult.

Reports from community organizations in Haiti say people have not eaten since Monday. Melinda Miles from Konpay reported: "Twenty-four hours of rain drenching the huts of the poor, perched on the cliffs, and drowning the slums, huddled on the edge of the sea. Homes were washed away by overflowing rivers, and others had flash floods tear through their walls. Fields of plantain trees are now stagnant puddles - breeding ground for mosquitoes - and agricultural fields were destroyed throughout the region. Almond trees floated into the sea and coconut trees were uprooted."

Tens of thousands of people in Louisiana remain displaced. A thousand people in one shelter reported there were no bathing facilities at all. People washed up in a bucket. Another shelter reported 30 people arrested outside a nearby convenience store. Buses will start bringing people back on Friday.

Haiti was in deep trouble before being hit by a series of storms. Hunger is widespread. Sky-high food prices sparked riots and turmoil as people could not afford to purchase enough food.

Louisiana had not yet recovered from Hurricane Katrina, three years ago. New Orleans still has over 65,000 vacant and abandoned homes and over 100,000 fewer people since Katrina. Many of the elderly, disabled and African-American working poor remain displaced.

"There is no food, no water, no clothes," the pastor of a church in Gonaives, Arnaud Dumas, told The Associated Press. "I want to know what I'm supposed to do ... We haven't found anything to eat in two, three days. Nothing at all."

Critics question why prisoners in New Orleans were returned by public transportation days before tens of thousands of citizens had the same opportunity.

President Rene Preval of Haiti told Reuters, "We are in a really catastrophic situation. There are a lot of people on rooftops and there are prisoners we cannot guard." In Gonaives, a city of 160,000, half the homes remain flooded, according to UN troops. People begged for food and water outside the UN troop base.

"All and all, the response has been excellent," President Bush told the nation. The US Embassy in Haiti announced it was releasing $100,000 in emergency aid to Haiti.

In Haiti, the situation is critical. "If they don't have food, it can be dangerous," Haitian Senator Youri Latortue told The Associated Press. "They can't wait."

"We expect a surge of evictions and power cutoffs," said Brother Don Everard of Hope House, a social service agency in New Orleans. "People were having trouble making rent and utilities before evacuating for Gustav, now it will be worse because they have spent all their money to evacuate."

Haiti is 1,300 miles away from New Orleans. Other hurricanes are now approaching the Caribbean.

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com.

Gustav Coverage: Birmingham blues

Today I'm traveling back from New Orleans to North Carolina via Birmingham. I stopped in at the main Red Cross shelter for Gustav evacuees that's been erected at the city's Civic Center to see how people were holding up.

Over 3,400 evacuees were brought up from Louisiana to 10 shelters in Birmingham, and many more came in the own cars. Cars with Louisiana plates are packed underneath the expressway running through town.

The Civic Center shelter seemed to be going smoothly, but everyone -- the Red Cross operators, dozens of volunteers and of course the people living there -- was visibly worn down.

Most of all, people were frustrated that they couldn't get back home. In south Louisiana, all but hard-hit Terrebonne and Plaquemines parishes have ended mandatory evacuations and residents are allowed to return. But those who were evacuated by FEMA buses have no say, held hostage wherever the buses and trains took them -- and FEMA has made no announcement as to when they'll be taking residents back.

"I'm leaving tonight -- I don't care how I get down there, I'm getting out of here," one older woman told me. "We haven't heard ANYTHING about when we're getting back," a man with his young son told me.

By all accounts, the evacuation out of New Orleans went smoothly, in stark contrast to Katrina. The fear now is that, if that a frustrating and chaotic return policy will cause people may shun FEMA-run evacuation services next time -- and the Gulf Coast will be right back to where it was with Katrina.

Gustav Coverage: Evacuees return home, powerless and cash-strapped

Reporting from the Gulf, Institute Director Chris Kromm tells us that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal held a press conference this morning during which he discussed the widespread electrical outages affecting his state. According to documents released this morning by Jindal's office, almost 1.2 million electricity customers across the Louisiana remain without power -- 60 percent of all of the state's customers.

In the service area covered by Entergy, the state's largest power provider, there have been more than 825,000 outages. That means Gustav already ranks as the second-most damaging storm in the company's 95-year history, surpassed only by Hurricane Katrina's 1.1 million outages. The company -- which includes Entergy Louisiana and Entergy Gulf States Louisiana -- is preparing to dispatch 9,000 repair workers but warns there have been massive damages to the transmission system, which means the difficulty of the restoration efforts will rival that faced post-Katrina:

"This will be a marathon, not a sprint," said Renae Conley, president and chief executive officer of the companies. "We’re restoring power as quickly and safely as we can, but this recovery will take weeks."

Meanwhile, the economic crunch facing evacuees that Chris discussed this morning on American Public Media's "Marketplace" radio program shows no sign of easing soon. So far, about 37,000 people have applied for personal assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Chris reports -- but reimbursement for hotel stays is still not a sure thing.

Gustav Coverage: Government inaction on coastal protection threatens traditional Louisiana cultures

Hurricane Gustav made landfall yesterday southwest of New Orleans in the historically Cajun community of Cocodrie in coastal Terrebonne Parish. Gov. Bobby Jindal says he's received reports of widespread damage in Terrebonne as well as coastal Lafourche and St. Mary parishes, and helicopter crews will be searching the area for the injured and dead.

Terrebonne residents who stayed through the storm told reporters it was easily the worst they'd ever seen. They questioned whether it was a really just a Category 2.

Ricky Trahan, a 47-year-old shrimper from the Terrebonne community of Chauvin who rode out Gustav on his boat, also told the Times-Picayune that conditions across coastal Louisiana seemed to be getting more dangerous:

"It used to be safe harbor down here," Trahan said. "Not anymore. We keep going further up" the bayou when storms approach.

The increasing danger Trahan is witnessing is due in part to the erosion of coastal wetlands that help soften the blow from tropical storms. And that erosion is due in part to the state's oil and natural gas industries, which are concentrated in Terrebonne and other nearby coast parishes. They have contributed to wetlands erosion by cutting channels in and otherwise developing coastal wetlands for exploration and extraction.

While there are a number of public efforts underway to restore degraded coastal lands and thus better protect Louisiana's residents from storms, none of them comes close to the minimum estimate of $14 billion needed for truly sustainable restoration. If the federal government does not take action soon, the problem will only grow much worse -- and Louisiana's wetlands are already disappearing at the fastest clip in the nation, with up to 40 square miles lost each year.

Tragically, this erosion threatens not only land but traditional cultures tied to that land -- that of Cajun fishers like Trahan, whose name can be traced back to Louisiana's original Acadian settlers, and the indigenous Houma people who live along south Louisiana's bayous and in coastal fishing communities.

Last August, I visited rural Terrebonne Parish to interview United Houma Nation Principal Chief Brenda Dardar-Robichaux about how her community was recovering from Katrina and Rita. The impact of land loss on her community came up in our discussion, as I reported in "Blueprint for Gulf Renewal" (pdf):

"We witness firsthand on a daily basis how coastal erosion affects communities," says Dardar-Robichaux, pointing out that the Gulf of Mexico is now literally lapping at the doorsteps of some tribal members. "It's just a matter of time before some of our communities no longer exist."

As we noted in our recent report titled "Hurricane Katrina and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement" (pdf), the Guiding Principles -- which the Bush administration has explicitly endorsed -- say governments have a "particular obligation" to prevent the displacement of indigenous people due to manmade or natural disasters. Yet the indigenous people of Terrebonne Parish, and their longtime Cajun neighbors, are watching as the Gulf swallows their land, and their government fails to act.

Gustav Coverage: Gulf advocates call on Obama, McCain to debate in New Orleans

As Gustav makes its way inland, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that water is sloshing over the floodwall on the city side of the Industrial Canal that runs alongside New Orlean's Ninth Ward, but fortunately the structure is holding so far. The floodwall failed catastrophically during Katrina three years ago, causing vast ruin in the nearby working-class neighborhoods. For photos of what's happening at the floodwall now, click here and here.

An alert we just received from Gulf Restoration Network Campaign Director Aaron Viles emphasizes just how critical that particular floodwall is for New Orleans -- as well as just how much work needs to be done to help the city and the entire region better withstand future storms:

If the floodwall breaches, the long term future of NOLA could very well be in question. As I watch anxiously, I'm hit by how unneccesary this all is. If we had our coastal wetlands, if the oil companies and the Army Corps of Engineers hadn't set the stage for our massive land loss, we would be far more secure. Levees alone are not enough, we need to restore our coastal lines of defense, our wetlands and cypress swamps.

To that end, Viles is asking concerned citizens to help the people of the Gulf with three simple actions:

1. Watch and share the short film "Blood and Oil" by Walter Williams, about the roots of current coastal erosion crisis;

2. Send a message calling on oil giant Shell to pay for the coastal wetlands it's damaged or destroyed; and

3. Ask leading presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain to take part in the proposed Google/YouTube debate from New Orleans, where they would answer questions from ordinary people. So far, neither campaign has pledged to participate.

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: Building on community driven successes with the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act

By: Jeffrey Buchanan
Guest Contributor

The federal government and national organizations have failed to meet the needs of the Gulf Coast 3 years after Katrina hit. How are local communities coming together to build a new vision for resident-led recovery?

Almost three years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the breakdown of Louisiana’s federally constructed levee system, the media, Congress, the White House, our Presidential candidates and even, surprisingly, the progressive community have for the most part moved on.

Fewer and fewer national media organizations regularly cover the region’s recovery and wall-to-wall coverage of the DNC and RNC Conventions in late August will likely keep media interest in the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina to a bare minimum.

Though Congress passed appropriations this year to provide some funding for flood protection and housing for the chronically homeless, the 110th Congress was unable to address many of the critical environmental, community and human needs still stopping Gulf Coast families from realizing their human rights to return home, to participate in rebuilding their communities and to live with dignity and safety.

The White House, for its part, fought to keep Gulf Coast needs out of supplemental appropriations bills, once again breaking the promises President George Bush made to the Gulf Coast and the nation in Jackson Square nearly three years ago, when he committed to “do what it takes, [and] stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.”

Sources within the Presidential campaigns of Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama believe it is unlikely either candidate will spend Katrina’s anniversary in the Gulf Coast. Neither campaign has even committed to attending the YouTube/Google Forum in New Orleans on September 18th to discuss the region’s recovery, among other issues.

Instead of partnering with community leaders and taking on the region’s recovery, many national progressive advocacy groups choose to co-opt the emotionally charged imagery of the devastation and the Bush administration’s failed response, in order to repackage their pre-Katrina agendas. While issues like global warming and poverty played a role in the disaster and deserve attention, this approach disregards the fact that the disaster was not just a symptom of a larger national problem but a specific continuing crisis where vulnerable populations still suffer from political neglect and deserve targeted solutions.

Each has turned their backs on the opportunity to confront this American disaster, leaving Gulf Coast communities and residents to their own devices in recovery.

While national leaders have failed to meet expectations, local community and faith based organizers have thrived in providing services to those in need, leading some of the most successful recovery projects to date. ACORN New Orleans has gutted thousands of homes for working class, mostly African American families, protecting the frames of these homes from destructive mold and the possibility of having their properties seized or damaged by the city government. Groups like Moore Community House in Mississippi have trained hundreds of low income women for good paying jobs in the construction trades. Mary Queen of Viet Nam Church in East New Orleans helped bring back the majority of its parishioners, helping them to rebuild homes and restart businesses through their successful new Community Development Corporation. These groups have been aided by thousands and thousands of volunteers and the generosity of thousands and thousands of Americans who gave charitable donations in response to the 2005 hurricanes.

In the months after the disaster, many conservatives have pointed to the success of charities and community organizers as a reason to forgo government-led rebuilding efforts. But while these successes have been a bright spot for their communities, they have unfortunately often lacked in scale. With a disaster which caused more damage than our three previous largest disasters combined (Hurricane Andrew, the Santa Lomas Earthquake and the 9-11 attacks) destroying 300,000 homes, leaving $150 billion in damages and displacing tens of thousands of families, even a historic $4 billion in charitable donations and thousands of hours of from volunteers could only scratch the surface of community needs. Also much of these donations went to national relief organizations, some of whom served brilliantly; others like the Red Cross were reported to have squandered funds, where most of their funding went to immediate disaster response, things like food, short term housing, healthcare and giving cash to survivors for their immediate needs. A small minority of funds have focused on long term recovery efforts and funding local organizations. Also while community efforts have flourished at addressing certain needs they have not been able to significantly confront internal displacement of low income families, insufficient infrastructure and affordable housing, and coastal erosion, each of which would require a larger public investment.

Tens of thousands of families remain scattered across the country and lack the resources to return home to reunite with family. Schools still lay in shambles as parents fear not finding classroom space for their children. Cities still lack affordable housing as federal tax credits have not spurred development. Thousands find themselves without homes as they are forced to leave toxic FEMA trailers which emitted unsafe levels of formaldehyde, causing health concerns for which many do not have access to treatment. Public safety suffers as police stations and firehouses run out of FEMA trailers. Death rates spike as hospitals operate at limited capacity. Deficient levees and preventable erosion of natural flood protection, the wetlands, increases the threat of future disasters. Without proper oversight, numerous workers, especially in the immigrant population, have experienced wage theft and sometime brutal labor abuses in recovery projects. Each of these needs further impacts the pace of the overall recovery and ultimately the human rights of the disaster’s survivors.

As we approach the third anniversary of our nation’s largest disaster, national leaders seem unwilling to confront the homegrown human rights crisis in the Gulf Coast.

In recent months a number of community and faith based organizers and service providers from diverse sections of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi have begun coming together to examine local, state and national level rebuilding policy. While the exact nature of the devastation was different from neighborhood to neighborhood (for instance Mississippi and Alabama did not suffer as much extended flooding and internal displacement as did New Orleans and parts of Southern Louisiana) survivors and communities face many of the same problems.

With no real solutions coming out of Washington, community leaders have taken on the responsibility to develop their own homegrown solutions. In one such effort, Gulf Coast community organizers like ACORN, interfaith groups like All Congregations Together, Bayou Interfaith Shared Community Organizing, and environmentalists like Turkey Creek Community Initiatives began meeting and working with academics from San Jose State University including Dr. Scott Myers Lipton and human rights groups like the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial (full disclosure: my employer) to develop a federal policy to empower the region’s greatest assets, the disaster’s survivors, with the resources they need to return and confront many of these issues. The effort, which became known as the Gulf Coast Civic Works Campaign, developed federal legislation known as the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act.

In early November 2007, Representatives Zoe Lofgren, Charlie Melancon and Gene Taylor introduced the bill in the U.S. House as HR 4048. Since then the bill has reached 16 co-sponsors, including one Republican, and has been endorsed by a number of state political parties, including the Louisiana Republican Party and California and Missouri Democratic Parties.

The bill aims to jumpstart Gulf Coast recovery by funding critical infrastructure and environmental projects to create 100,000 job and training opportunities for displaced and current residents. Instead of relying on inflexible bureaucracy, the policy allows residents and local leaders to communicate their needs and play a direct role in the development of their communities. Through local advisory councils, leaders of community based organizations such as neighborhood associations and churches, who best know what their communities need, along with the public, participate in open hearings to determine what infrastructure and environmental projects their communities need to promote sustainable recovery. This way community leaders not only determine how their communities are rebuilt but they can more effectively oversee how federal dollars are being used in their name to add an extra layer of accountability.

Also community based organizations are allowed to contract with the federal government to help recruit and train workers. This will allow the federal government to build on the knowledge and relationships these organizations have built in the recovery to more effectively promote economic development and provide opportunities to working families. The bill also promotes stronger communities through living wage jobs, skills training, and supporting local businesses. It could be a pilot project for disaster recovery or rebuilding infrastructure and restoring the environment in other parts of the country.

The bill builds on the success of community organizations in recovery while leveraging the resources of the federal government to empower survivors of the disaster to realize their rights to return and rebuild. In this way it closely resembles US international disaster recovery programs the US State Department uses to support international human rights laws in the countries of allies like Iraq, post tsunami Sri Lanka, and Colombia after disasters that cause large scale internal displacement. Under the United Nation’s Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, national governments have a responsibility to rebuild after a disaster like the 2005 Hurricanes in a way that supports the rights of residents to return with safety and dignity and participate in the rebuilding of their communities. The United States has endorsed the Guiding Principles on numerous occasions, urging our allies to accept these human rights norms and funding projects to support the rights spelled out in the Principles. In Iraq, the U.S. is funding an ambitious public works plan, guided by the local residents and leaders, employing 100,000 displaced Iraqis to rebuild their communities and help their neighbors realize their human rights to return. Oddly, U.S. officials in 2006 told the United Nations that Americans displaced by Katrina are not guaranteed these same human rights.

If the United States wants to lead the world in human rights, leadership must begin at home. As we approach the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and subsequently as we determine our next President and Congress, we should call on our leaders to support the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act and a new resident led vision for recovery along the Gulf Coast. Supporters of the Gulf Coast Civic Works Campaign have also been working to make sure both Democrats and Republicans refocus on these issues, urging the DNC and RNC Platform Committees to adopt human rights based rebuilding planks. In the coming days national leaders of both parties have an opportunity at their National Conventions to partner with Gulf Coast communities and commit our nation to fulfilling its promises and human rights responsibilities, beginning with adopting the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act as a model for recovery. Supporters of the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act will be traveling to Denver and Minneapolis, accompanied by the KatrinaRitaVille Express FEMA Trailer Tour, to discuss this new vision with both parties.

Jeffrey Buchanan currently serves as information officer of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. He is also a 2008 Taproots Fellow with the Center for Community Change. The opinions expressed in this article represent the opinions of the author and not that of any organization.

Three Years After Katrina: While Republicans and Democrats Gather and Celebrate, A City Still Searches for Recovery

By: Jordan Flaherty
Guest Contributor

As headlines focus on conventions and running mates, the third anniversary of Katrina offers an opportunity to examine the results of disastrous federal, state and local policy on the people of New Orleans. Several organizations have released reports in the past week, examining the current state of the city, and grassroots activists have plans to broadcast their message from the streets. For those who have heard only uplifting stories about the city's recovery, the facts on the ground may be surprising.

According to a study by PolicyLink, 81 percent of those who received the Federally-funded, State-administered Road Home grants had insufficient resources to cover their damages. The average Road Home applicant fell about $35,000 short of the money they need to rebuild their home, and African-American households on average had an almost 35% higher shortfall than white households.

More than one in three residential addresses – over 70,000 - remain vacant or unoccupied, according to a report by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. While workers with Brad Pitt's Make It Right project are working on overdrive to finish the first of their scores of planned houses in the notoriously devastated Lower Ninth Ward, the neighborhood overall ranks far behind other neighborhoods in recovery, with only 11 percent of its pre-Katrina number of households. The same report notes that since the devastation of the city, rents have raised by 46% citywide (much more in some neighborhoods), while many city services remain very limited – for example, only 21% of public transit buses are running.

Divided City

Its not just activists that speak of race and class divisions in New Orleans. A poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 70% of residents feel we're divided by class and/or race. The Kaiser survey also found unity among New Orleanians: we're united in feeling forgotten by the rest of the US. Eight out of 10 said the federal government has not provided sufficient support. Nearly two-thirds think that the US public has largely forgotten about the city.

The survey found large percentages saying that their own situation has deteriorated. Fifty-three percent of low- income residents report that their financial situation is worse today than pre-Katrina. The percentage of residents who say they have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness such as depression has tripled since 2006.

There is a continuing debate about how many people live in New Orleans, with no definitive figures until the next complete census. But last year, the census bureau estimated a population of 239,000. Other analysts – and Mayor C. Ray Nagin – estimate the population to be nearly 100,000 higher. By any measurement, the growth has stagnated, while even optimistic figures report that 150,000 - 200,000 former residents (out of a former population of nearly 500,000) have been unable to return. The once nearly 70% African American city is now estimated to be less than 50% African American, a change reflected in the changing face of electoral politics statewide. While Republicans have been losing across the US, Christian Coalition candidate Bobby Jindal was easily elected Governor last year, and in the city, decades of Black-majority city council shifted to a white majority.

Blank Slate or Burial Ground

Much of the change in the city is led by a new strata of the city's population – planners, architects, developers, and other reformers. Many of them self-identify as "YURPs" – Young, Urban Rebuilding Professionals - in their work with countless nonprofits, foundations, and businesses. Some of New Orlean's newer residents have spoken of the city as a blank slate on which they can project and practice their ideas of reform, whether in health care, architecture, urban planning, or education. What this worldview leaves out, according to some advocates, is the people who lived here before, who are the most affected by these changes, and have the least say in how they are carried out. "It wasn't a blank slate, it was a cemetery," says poet and educator Kalamu Ya Salaam. "People were killed, and they're building on top of their bones."

The vast majority of New Orleans' new professionals have come here with the best intentions, with a love for this city and a desire to help with the recovery. However, many activists criticize what they see as token attempts at community involvement, and a paternalistic attitude among many of the new decision makers.

For example, our education system was in crisis pre-Katrina, and certainly needed revolutionary change. Change is what we have gotten – the current system is in many ways unrecognizable from the system of three years ago – but this revolution has been overwhelmingly led from outside, with little input from the parents, students and staff of the New Orleans school system.

Shortly after the post-Katrina evacuation of the city, the entire staff of the public school system was fired. Not long after that, school board officials chose to end recognition or negotiation with the teachers' union – the largest union in the city, and arguably the biggest outlet of Black middle class political power in the city. Since then, the school landscape has changed remarkably – from staff to decision-making structure to facilities. According to Tulane professor Lance Hill, "New Orleans has experienced a profound change in who governs schools and a dramatic reduction of parent and local taxpayer control of schools."

The school system used to consist of 128 schools, 124 of them controlled by the New Orleans School Board. Now according to Hill, 88 have opened for the fall, and "50 of them are charter schools (privatized management) governed by self-appointed, self-perpetuating boards; 33 are run by the State Department of Education through the Recovery School District; and only five are governed by the elected school board."

"There are now 42 separate school systems operating in New Orleans," Hill continues, with their own "school policies, including teacher requirements, curriculum, discipline policies, enrollment limits, and social promotions. Publicly accountable schools in which parents have methods for publicly redressing grievances are limited to only five schools (5.6% of the total)."

Several recent articles have expressed excitement and admiration for the new school system, including extended pieces in the New York Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. For school reformers, who came to New Orleans with a desire to try out the changes they had imagined, this represents a dream come true. They have media support, federal, state and city officials on their side, and a massive influx of money and cheap (and young, idealistic) labor. Teach for America supplied 112 teachers last year, has committed 250 this year, and a projected 500 next year, while tens of millions of dollars in funding is coming through sources such as the Gates and Walton foundations.

There is no doubt that some students receive an excellent education in the new New Orleans school districts, but critics are concerned that the students that are being left behind, are those that need the most help – those without someone to advocate for them, to research and apply for the best schools. According to New Orleanian Kalamu Ya Salaam, who is director of a school program called Students at the Center, the new systems represent "an experimentation with privatization, and everything that implies."

Although the new charter schools have been able to choose from the best facilities and have used methods such as state standardized tests to pick only select students (including 40% fewer special education students), there are still serious questions over the extent to their much-heralded success. G.W. Carver School, the subject of a fawning NYTimes piece last Spring, received an 88% failure rate for English and an 86% failure rate for Math on state standardized tests.

Anniversary and Commemoration

August 29, the anniversary of the devastation of the city, falls between the Democratic and Republican conventions. While the Democratic and Republican parties crown their nominees, activists on the ground will be on the streets, still fighting for a just recovery. "It ain't to rain on Obama's parade," says Sess 4-5, a New Orleans-based hip hop star and activist, "but the people down here need the world to understand that its still a tragic situation. The rent has tripled, the health care system is in shambles, we have less access to education for our kids. The working class and poor are being exploited, while everyone at the top is getting fat off our misery."

"We think August 29 should be holy day, not a day for business as usual," explains Sess, who is one of the organizers of a Katrina March and Commemoration, starting Friday morning in the Lower Ninth Ward, and marching into the 7th Ward. That march is one of two activist commemorations in the city that day, the other starting uptown, near the BW Cooper development, one of the major housing developments torn down this year. "The Mayor announced to the world that New Orleans was 'open for business' but we're here to tell you that it is closed for families," declares former public housing resident Barbara Jackson, who will be part of the demonstration at BW Cooper, called Sankofa Day of Commemoration. "Five thousand demolished homes. Eight thousand new jail beds. This is their one for one replacement plan for us."

Taking to the streets is not the only agenda of local activists. In New Orleans, people have been organizing at the grassroots, working together to build a movement. In the aftermath of the US Social Forum last year in Atlanta, a broad coalition of social justice organizations began meeting monthly to combine efforts. This group, called the Organizers Roundtable, is an important spot for collaborations and community building.

It's been community, not foundations or government, that has led this city's recovery at the grassroots. Bayou Road - a street of Black-owned, community-oriented, businesses in New Orleans' seventh ward – has rebuilt post-Katrina to more businesses than they had before the storm. It hasn't been government help that has enabled these businesses to come back, but the effort of community members coming together. It was also community, and local support, that has brought back the membership of many local cultural organizations, like the network of Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, who organize secondline parades nearly every weekend throughout the year, as well as benefits that provide school supplies for area youth.

The Right to the City Alliance (RTTC), a nationwide coalition of organizations that focuses on urban issues such as health care, criminal justice, and education, sees the continuing crisis in New Orleans as central to their work. They are co-sponsoring the march in New Orleans, as well as actions in seven other cities, including Los Angeles, New York City, Oakland, Providence, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Miami.

The work of RTTC deserves special notice, as a coalition that has worked to support the struggles of the people of New Orleans, and to bring that struggle and solidarity home to their own communities, while taking guidance from voices on the ground. In this time of many competing visionaries struggling to reshape this city, that willingness to listen to the people who lives are being affected, and to take that struggle and those lessons home to their own communities, may be the radical change New Orleans needs most.

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans, and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience and his reporting on post-Katrina New Orleans has been published and broadcast in outlets including Die Zeit (Europe's largest circulation newspaper), Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now.

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: The Katrina Pain Index: New Orleans Three Years Later

By: Bill Quigley
Guest Contributor

0. Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post-Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant – compared to 116,708 homeowners.

0. Number of apartments currently being built to replace the 963 public housing apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the St. Bernard Housing Development.

0. Amount of data available to evaluate performance of publicly financed privately run charter schools in New Orleans in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years.

.008. Percentage of the rental homes that were supposed to be repaired and occupied by August 2008 which were actually completed and occupied – a total of 82 finished out of 10,000 projected.

1. Rank of New Orleans among U.S. cities in percentage of housing vacant or ruined.

1. Rank of New Orleans among U.S. cities in murders per capita for 2006 and 2007.

4. Number of the 13 City of New Orleans Planning Districts that are at the same risk of flooding as they were before Katrina.

10. Number of apartments being rehabbed so far to replace the 896 apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the Lafitte Housing Development.

11. Percent of families who have returned to live in Lower Ninth Ward.

17. Percentage increase in wages in the hotel and food industry since before Katrina.

20-25. Years that experts estimate it will take to rebuild the City of New Orleans at current pace.

25. Percent fewer hospitals in metro New Orleans than before Katrina.

32. Percent of the city’s neighborhoods that have fewer than half as many households as they did before Katrina.

36. Percent fewer tons of cargo that move through Port of New Orleans since Katrina.

38. Percent fewer hospital beds in New Orleans since Katrina.

40. Percentage fewer special education students attending publicly funded privately run charter schools than traditional public schools.

41. Number of publicly funded privately run public charter schools in New Orleans out of total of 79 public schools in the city.

43. Percentage of child care available in New Orleans compared to before Katrina.

46. Percentage increase in rents in New Orleans since Katrina.

56. Percentage fewer inpatient psychiatric beds than before Katrina.

80. Percentage fewer public transportation buses now than pre-Katrina.

81. Percentage of homeowners in New Orleans who received insufficient funds to cover the complete costs to repair their homes.

300. Number of National Guard troops still in City of New Orleans.

1080. Days National Guard troops have remained in City of New Orleans.

1250. Number of publicly financed vouchers for children to attend private schools in New Orleans in program’s first year.

6,982. Number of families still living in FEMA trailers in metro New Orleans area.

8,000. Fewer publicly assisted rental apartments planned for New Orleans by federal government.

10,000. Houses demolished in New Orleans since Katrina.

12,000. Number of homeless in New Orleans even after camps of people living under the bridge has been resettled - double the pre-Katrina number.

14,000. Number of displaced families in New Orleans area whose hurricane rental assistance expires March 2009.

32,000. Number of children who have not returned to public school in New Orleans, leaving the public school population less than half what is was pre-Katrina.

39,000. Number of Louisiana homeowners who have applied for federal assistance in repair and rebuilding who have still not received any money.

45,000. Fewer children enrolled in Medicaid public healthcare in New Orleans than pre-Katrina.

46,000. Fewer African American voters in New Orleans in 2007 gubernatorial election than 2003 gubernatorial election.

55,000. Fewer houses receiving mail than before Katrina.

62,000. Fewer people in New Orleans enrolled in Medicaid public healthcare than pre-Katrina.

71,657. Vacant, ruined, unoccupied houses in New Orleans today.

124,000. Fewer people working in metropolitan New Orleans than pre-Katrina.

132,000. Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the City of New Orleans current population estimate of 321,000 in New Orleans.

214,000. Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the U.S. Census Bureau current population estimate of 239,000 in New Orleans.

453,726. Population of New Orleans before Katrina.

320 million. The number trees destroyed in Louisiana and Mississippi by Katr

ina.

368 million. Dollar losses of five major metro New Orleans hospitals from Katrina through 2007. In 2008, these hospitals expect another $103 million in losses.

1.9 billion. FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to metro New Orleans for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.

2.6 billion. FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to State of Louisiana for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at Quigley77@gmail.com.

Katrina 3-Year Coverage: NYT story on Louisiana coastal erosion ignores offshore drilling's impact

Since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast three years ago, we've reported extensively on the factors that contributed to making the storm one of the worst disasters ever to afflict the United States. One of the themes that's come up time and again is land loss -- the disappearance of the region's critical coastal wetlands into the Gulf of Mexico.

For decades, Louisiana has been losing up to 40 square miles of wetlands each year, an amount that represents about 80 percent of the entire nation's annual coastal wetlands loss. If nothing is done to slow the current rate of coastal erosion, an additional 800,000 acres of Louisiana wetlands will vanish into the sea by the year 2040, and the state's shoreline will move inland as much as 33 miles in some places. Because coastal wetlands play an important role in absorbing the impact of approaching storms before they hit populous areas, their disappearance will continue to intensify hurricanes' impact on the region.

Coastal erosion is also having a devastating effect on communities and cultures across the Gulf, as spotlighted in today's New York Times story about the impact of land loss on Louisiana's historic Cajun shrimping communities.

The Times report attributes Louisiana's land loss solely to the building of the levee system. And it's certainly true that levees have worsened wetlands losses by preventing the routine deposit of land-building sediments. But there are other critical factors exacerbating Louisiana's land loss that the Times fails to mention.

Like offshore drilling for oil and gas.

Offshore drilling operations carve out channels in coastal wetlands for exploration as well as for transporting resources back to the mainland. Those channels in turn provide a route for Gulf waters to wash inland, the salinity eventually killing trees and other plants that help stabilize land, further exacerbating its erosion.

To date, oil and gas companies have dug an estimated 10,000 miles of canals across the state's wetlands. Since 1983, Shell Oil alone has dredged about 22,000 acres of Louisiana wetlands for placement or maintenance of pipeline canals and other production facilities. Environmental advocates recently tried to present the company with a bill for $362 million for the damage.

At the same time offshore oil and gas operations are eroding coastal wetlands, ocean levels are rising due to global climate disruption, while a warmer atmosphere is intensifying tropical storms and hurricanes. The situation has resulted in an ongoing disaster for Louisiana.

The current bipartisan push to expand offshore drilling along the Southeast coast risks bringing to other states the same problems Louisiana is grappling with. One of the hard-learned lessons of Katrina is that we ignore offshore drilling's destructive impact on our fragile coastal wetlands at our peril.

(Photo from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

What Shell owes Louisiana

As Facing South previously reported, Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal made an important commitment last week to spending a billion dollars in state funds on coastal restoration and protection projects in the coming years.

But many coastal activists continue to point out that in order to restore the coast and to fully protect Gulf communities, much larger investments will have to be made. Since oil and gas companies have played an integral part in destroying Louisiana’s coastline, these activists argue that these companies should have to pay up to restore it.

Yesterday, a group of environmentalists demanded that Shell Oil Co. “fix the coast you broke” when they attempted to deliver the corporation a bill for $362 million for the cost of restoring wetlands that the company has destroyed, reports the Times-Picayune.

Dredging by oil companies such as Shell has contributed to erosion of the coast, leaving the region more vulnerable to hurricanes. The coalition of activists from grassroots groups such as Gulf Restoration Network and Advocates for Environmental Human Rights called on Shell to pay the money to the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Trust Fund, where it could be added to other offshore drilling revenue to help rebuild wetlands and build levees.

The Gulf Restoration Network reported in their blog:

The current estimate to fix Louisiana’s coast and secure our communities is $50 billion, but taxpayers can’t and shouldn’t shoulder that burden alone. Coastal scientists estimate that oil and gas companies have caused 40-60% of the coastal land loss Louisiana is experiencing. Shell has played a major role in placing us in this precarious position, and should be a part of the financial solution.
…
According to records from the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, Shell Oil has dredged 8.8 million cubic yards of pipeline since 1983. These activities alone have caused the loss of 22,624 acres of wetlands in the last 25 years.
…
We feel the current situation in southern Louisiana informs the national debate around expanding offshore drilling on the Atlantic and Pacific Coast. Increased off-shore drilling would be detrimental to coastal communities, which is clear in the case of Louisiana. Decades of oil and gas activity along the coast have left the Mississippi River’s once mighty delta a pale comparison of its former glory.

Funds flow toward coastal restoration

An editorial in today’s NOLA Times-Picayune applauds the financial commitment being made to protect Louisiana’s coast. Last week, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announced plans for more than $1 billion in coastal protection and restoration projects in Louisiana - the largest investment in coastal protection in Louisiana history, reported the Environmental News Service.

Today’s Times-Picayune editorial states that:

There are hardly more important goals for Louisiana's long-term future than rebuilding our coast and improving hurricane protection -- and it's heartening that state officials are committing serious money to those efforts.
...
Louisiana has only a few years to reverse coastal erosion before it is too late. Our state is putting money down to do its part -- and Congress needs to do the same.

The projects represent "one of the largest public works efforts in the world," according to Governor Jindal. In funding the more than 150 possible projects, $300 million will go toward levee repair alone in order to meet a 2011 deadline and another $70 million will be used for floodgates, beaches and marshes.

Coastal activists have long called for more state and federal attention and funding to go toward protecting wetlands in the United States. The devastation wrought by the 2005 hurricanes brought attention to the environmental crisis on Louisiana's coast, whose wetlands are disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico at alarming rates. Louisiana’s 4,600 square miles of coastal wetlands are lost at a rate of about 35 square miles annually, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Many experts say that healthier wetlands and the natural buffers they create could have provided more protection to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast during the 2005 hurricanes.

For a long time, there has been a tension between coastal protection and levee construction in terms of funding priorities. But many environmentalists and coastal activists see the new spending plan as a step in the right direction to supporting both needs.

“We have always said that, in order to keep Louisiana safe, we need both to strengthen the levees we have now and restore the wetlands and coastal areas that serve as our natural hurricane barriers,” Paul Harrison, coastal Louisiana project manager for Environmental Defense Fund, told the Times-Picayune. “This new plan fulfills both of those priorities.”

Photo of wetlands from Gulf Restoration Network.

Gulf Coast shrimping in steady decline

The shrimping industry in the Gulf Coast continues to suffer post-Hurricane Katrina. The 2005 hurricanes, rising fuel prices, and foreign competition has put the industry “at the center of a perfect storm that just won’t quit” reports USA Today this week.

The devastation wrought by the 2005 hurricanes caused severe damage to the shrimping industry’s local infrastructure. Louisiana had an estimated $120 million in damages to its shrimping sector, and Mississippi’s estimated $134 million damages hit shrimpers hard, according to USA Today.

Rebuilding continues to be hampered by rising fuel prices. According to local Texas paper, The Brazosport Facts, rising fuel costs combined with the rising flood of foreign competition has led to a massive decline in the numbers of shrimpers in Gulf Coast waters. As The Facts and USA Today report:

• Licenses to catch shrimp in the Gulf have dropped 60 percent over the past 12 years. Both Louisiana and Mississippi have seen declines in the number of state-issued commercial shrimp-gear licenses. In Louisiana, the number dropped from 22,188 in 2000 to 12,590 in 2007. Mississippi issued 1,069 licenses in 2000 and only 530 last year.
• Since 2000, shrimpers have been threatened by an influx of cheaper shrimp from foreign countries. Shrimp from countries like Thailand, Brazil, China, India, Ecuador and Vietnam account for about 95 percent of the market. These imports continue to force a dramatic drop in the per-pound price of local shrimp.

(Photo of shrimpers courtesy of FEMA)

Congressional hearing targets FEMA on aid distribution

CNN reports that FEMA officials were subjected to sharp questioning in Thursday’s joint congressional hearing that examined how FEMA supplies meant for Katrina and Rita victims sat unused and were ultimately marked as surplus and distributed to other states and federal agencies. Facing South has reported on CNN’s initial investigation that found FEMA had given away more than $18.5 million (a corrected estimate from the original $85 million calculation) in the household goods while Gulf Coast aid agencies were desperately still in need of such items.

FEMA defended the agency's handling of the supplies, but pledged to check with states before any future giveaways, reports CNN. At the hearing FEMA officials claimed the stockpiles, which had been sitting for two years in a Texas warehouse, had been offered to Gulf Coast residents in the aftermath of the storm and were returned to FEMA without being claimed.

But according to CNN, Sen. Mary Landrieu said FEMA never told state officials or relief agencies involved in recovery efforts that the "living kits" meant to resettle hurricane survivors were still available. “How can people ask for something they don't know exists?” Landrieu asked at the hearing. CNN explains:

Landrieu, a frequent critic of the agency since Katrina, said FEMA didn't even contact its own office in New Orleans to determine whether the kits -- which included items such as cleaning supplies, kitchenware and towels -- were still needed before it turned the material over to the GSA as surplus property. She also asked FEMA to explain what happened to a February request by the head of the Louisiana Recovery Authority for $6 million in "household establishment" funds for about 6,000 families moving out of FEMA housing.

Audio of the hearing can be found here.

In other Gulf Coast news, the Times-Picayune reports that a new $24 billion economic stimulus and disaster assistance package unveiled Thursday by Senate Democrats could provide $3 billion for continued Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, financing that was left out of the emergency spending bill enacted in June. The legislation would give Louisiana 30 years, instead of three, to repay more than $1.7 billion as its share of levee upgrades, which Facing South reported on last week.

Coastal restoration funds at risk due to increased federal levee improvements costs

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal proposed using the state’s royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling (OCS) revenues to pay Louisiana's $1.8 billion share of future federal levee improvements.

But at a Congressional tour of New Orleans this week, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected Jindal’s offer to use future OCS revenues, saying that rather than tapping money already earmarked for restoring the state’s fragile coast, she would seek to “find another way” to eliminate the expensive levee burden entirely. As the Times Picayune reported, under Jindal’s proposal:

• Washington would keep future OCS revenues until the $1.8 billion was paid off.
• The arrangement would cost the state about $20 million a year until 2017, and about $600 million or more each year after 2017.

What's the story behind Jindal's sacrifice of coastal reconstruction funds? Last month Facing South reported on the supplemental Iraq war spending package passed by Congress and signed by President Bush last month. It included $5.8 billion to build southeast Louisiana's flood-control structures to 100-year storm levels by 2011. But the House dropped a Senate-passed provision that would have given Louisiana the 30 years it wanted to pay its share of the levee costs. The bill increased the state’s share of the cost by $200 million and allowed just three years to pay it off.

Jindal has acknowledged that the federal government's requirement that Louisiana pay its $1.8 billion share of the Army Corps of Engineers flood protection over three years would undercut critical work on coastal wetlands restoration, something for which the state already has dedicated $500 million. According to the Times Picayune:

Jindal said he never understood why the White House wanted to increase the state's cost-share from its pre-Katrina level, nor why Louisiana was not granted a longer period to pay. Time extensions were granted to California and Nevada following disasters.

Some local leaders are arguing that Louisiana should not be penalized and forced to reimburse the federal government any money for levee improvements, pointing out the unfairness of the policy and the impact upon Louisiana’s ability to rebuild.

Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., called on Jindal to push Bush to grant a "wholesale waiver" for the flood projects. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that the state and local governments shouldn't have to pay anything for the levee work.

“While I support the governor's compromise position on federal funding for this protection and appreciate his advocacy, I believe that this city and this region deserve 100 percent federal funding for this flood protection system,” Nagin told the Times Picayune.

(Levee construction photo by FEMA)

Study finds that wetlands can save states billions

The Times Picayune reported on the new study released by AMBIO, a peer-reviewed science journal, which found that coastal wetlands provide $23.2 billion worth of protection from hurricane-related flooding in the United States each year. As quoted in the Times Picayune:

“Coastal wetlands provide 'horizontal levees' that are maintained by nature and are far more cost-effective than constructed levees,” wrote the authors of the study.

The study also found that:

• Louisiana has lost $29.4 billion in flood protection benefits from the disappearance of 1,927 square miles of coastal wetlands during the past century
• Louisiana lost more than $1.1 billion in benefits as a result of the erosion of 77 square miles of wetlands during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005

Citing the importance of coastal wetlands for protection from severe hurricanes, like Hurricane Katrina, the report concluded that investing in the maintenance and restoration of coastal wetlands will prove to be “an extremely cost-effective strategy for society.”

For more discussion on the topic, check out this post on "horizontal levees" over at the Daily Kos, which underscored that the new "study provides a means of comparing, dollar for dollar, the effectiveness of manmade levees and natural wetlands in protecting against what will surely be more frequent and devastating floods."

New Orleans’ notorious homeless camp cleared

This week the remaining residents were moved from the large homeless encampment underneath the Claiborne Avenue freeway overpass near Canal Street in New Orleans.

The once crowded and noisy tent city had become notorious, as an eyesore to some (in January New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin called the scene “a mess�