Update: Been So Long

A quick update of my experiences in New Orleans. I've been working so much, it's been hard to sit down and write. Even now, I'm supposed to be working with a resident of St.Bernard Parish on a citizen group and their fight to hold Murphy's Oil accountable for their environmental degradation. Yes, well then. Let's begin.

-Two weeks ago we went to protest the commemoration of the opening of the Desire projects in the Lower Ninth Ward. Mayor Ray Nagin was their speaking on the glorious return of residents to the city and to the progress being made. But we were there to remind the audience (and TV cameras apparently) that the contractors who had built those projects had violated federal law by NOT using local workers in the rebuilding process of a disaster area, and instead used illegal immigrants so as to further disenfranchise the local pool of unemployed and at the same time exploit cheap labor-as a side benefit, the black and brown are vying for the same jobs, and so less likely to see their plight as coinciding.

In addition, the Desire Project is going to be mixed-income, which means that some residents of the project, most being low-income, will not be moving back to their houses. And if history is an example, 'mixed-income' is short for 'soon to be middle-income,' much like the experience with the St. Charles Project.

So this is-in brief outline-is how New Orleans is going to rebuild. For mixed-income residents, by illegal immigrants, and of the powerful interests/politicians. Not too sustainable.

-This past week we planted Tall Cut Grass in the Blind River. Tall because the grass is tall-can reach 10 feet; Cut Grass because the edges of the thick grass blade can and did cut our hands; Blind River because, well, I don't know the Blind part, but it was a river. This might strike some as interesting because we are after all doing a wetland planting and rivers aren't wetlands. But actually, right next to the flowing river was stagnant water that abutted the banks. And as we were tramping along the muck in these small wetlands, we would disturb the methane in the anaerobic soils and cause bubbles of methane to float to the top. We added to Global Warming true, but we did plant 800 pots of Cut Grass, with each pot having ~5 grasses.

Hopefully the Nutria, an invasive rat species that ate all the live oak samplings that we planted about two months ago, will leave the Cut Grass the hell alone!

One note about the location of the planting. The Blind River seemed to have some very expensive homes on its shores. Those lots with the expensive homes didn't have any wetland plants to secure the shorebanks, which is why we were there planting. This brings up the question of what were we there to save? The shore banks? For whom? For rich people who didn't want to help preserve the banks themselves?

I think the Wetlands group might be a little more discriminating in the places we are going to do replanting. Avoiding Nutria (curses!) and finding locations that are more likely to benefit from added plants.

Another question: Are rich people alienated from the environment by definition?

-We also met with a group from Univ of Wisconsin this week. They want to make sure that their names are NOT included on any of our literature. They want to do a study on the feasibility of a wastewater assimilation project in the Cypress Triangle. The CT abuts the Lower Ninth Ward to the North--I've written about it before. But their projects will determine if putting secondarily treated wastewater in the CT will help bring back the Cypress Forest that once flourished but has since been diminished by the salt water intrusion.

The project would provide freshwater (not saltwater) to Cypress as well as the Nitrogen and Phosphorus that is available in wastewater. The wastewater would be treated a third time by having those nutrients removed, and the city doesn't have to pay for that remediation. In the long the Lower Ninth Ward would benefit from having a living Cypress Forest to hold back the full force of hurricane storms. Winners all around. It sounds like a very good project, and I hope the study proves positive. I asked the students from Univ of Wisconsin who DO NOT want their names on any of our literature if they had given any thought to the idea that once a beautiful Cypress Forest is brought back to the CT, then housing prices might rise and force residents to leave--basically environmental remediation as impetus to gentrify. They hadn't considered that in their feasibility study. But maybe now it's on their radar. I certainly don't know how to address that conundrum.