Rebuilding New Orleans the best they can
One week shy of a year ago, the Bring New Orleans Back commission unveiled their recommendations for recovery and rebuilding NOLA. The response was underwhelming, as the Washington Post wrote in January 2006:
Hundreds of residents packed into a hotel ballroom interrupted the presentation of the long-awaited proposal with shouts and taunts, booed its main architect and unrolled a litany of complaints. One by one, homeowners stepped to a microphone to lampoon the plan — which contemplates a much smaller city and relies on persuading the federal government to spend billions on new housing and a light-rail system — as “audacious,” “an academic exercise,” “garbage,” “a no-good, rotten scheme.”
[snip]
Some activists have long accused the commission — which was appointed by Nagin — of trying to find ways to abandon predominantly black neighborhoods, such as the Lower Ninth Ward. Wednesday’s unveiling did nothing to assuage their fears, even though commission members promised to give all neighborhoods an opportunity to prove that they should be rebuilt by convening planning groups in coming months. The proposed moratorium would be in the city’s most damaged neighborhoods, and officials would use the four-month period to gauge whether enough residents will come back to make the areas viable.
I wrote about it then, also — and I was furious.
In a sense this plan is a punt, because the commission has effectively said, “We can’t figure this out by ourselves.� Get organized and step up to the plate, people – or all the decision-making power will move elsewhere… and I don’t believe for a minute that New Orleans should be planned by Washington. Do you?
The parts of the plan that seemed fantastical (light rail, for instance) weren’t the problem; those were pie-in-the-sky dreams — a someday wish list. The worries about which neighborhoods could rebuild, and fears of cutting out parts of the population — specifically, African Americans — shot those brutal, impersonal NOLA blueprints down, and not long thereafter, the ULI packed up its plans and went away.
Neither the city’s residents, nor the City Council, ever gave that plan a chance, and as the mayoral election approached, Nagin backed away also.
And here we are, almost exactly one year later:
After Katrina, teams of planners recommended that broad swaths of vulnerable neighborhoods be abandoned. Yet all areas of the city have at least some residents beginning to rebuild. With billions of dollars in federal relief for homeowners trickling in, more people are expected to follow.
Moreover, while new federal guidelines call for raising houses to reduce the damage of future floods, most returning homeowners do not have to comply or are finding ways around the costly requirement, according to city officials.
“It’s terrifying: We’re doing the same things we have in the past but expecting different results,” said Robert G. Bea, a professor of civil engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a former New Orleans resident who served as a member of the National Science Foundation panel that studied the city’s levees.
“There are areas where it doesn’t make any sense to rebuild — they got 20 feet of water in Katrina,” said Tom Murphy, a former Pittsburgh mayor who served on an Urban Land Institute panel for post-Katrina planning. “In those places, nature is talking to us, and we ought to be listening. I don’t think we are.”
How can anyone possibly be surprised? The plans were tossed out with the smelly refrigerators, and in New Orleans, cold, hard logic and external analysis never had a chance in the face of the anger, desperation, and determination of its residents.
They’re angry because it didn’t have to happen — it wouldn’t have happened, in fact, if the levees had been built correctly, and as residents had been told they were. They’re furious that the government, in the form of the Army Corps of Engineers, set them up for this disaster.
They’re desperate because the “Road Home” has turned out to be a pothole-riddled cul-de-sac — a sucking morass of bureaucratic red tape; a Road to Nowhere:
More than 15 months after the flood, the Road Home program has doled out rebuilding grants to fewer than 100 people out of more than 87,000 applicants, though officials said they have calculated more than 10,700 awards.
While people around the country have lost patience, suggesting that New Orleanians are simply waiting for hand-outs or can’t take care of themselves, they’ve been beating their heads bloody against an impenetrable, impersonal wall.
Unfortunately, one can only blame so much of this on the state or federal authorities — because the one thing New Orleans needed, but didn’t have, was a leader who could make decisions — who didn’t waffle in the face of every and any dissenting voice. Instead, they have Ray Nagin, and here we are, a year later:
The chairman of the federal Gulf Coast rebuilding office, Donald E. Powell, said recently that “tough decisions” about where to repopulate this half-empty city are necessary.
“The President and I believe planning decisions should not be made in Washington, but rather at the local level,” he said in a statement. “However at some point, there needs to be strong local leadership, and that includes making tough decisions about the city’s size and the safety of her citizens. Federal tax dollars should not be used to rebuild in places that repeatedly flood or are damaged due to Mother Nature — in New Orleans or elsewhere.”
Full circle.
What else, though, were they going to do? The country wanted to see New Orleanians pick themselves up and move on, and they have been. They’re doing the best they can, with no plan, no leadership, no money… and after well over a year, there’s no more time.
Were they supposed to wait in limbo forever? Maybe it’s time to unfurl those long-abandoned BNOB blueprints and make some decisions.
29 Responses to “Rebuilding New Orleans the best they can”
One of the problems is that all urban areas have some cheap real estate where poorer (usually minority) residents can afford to live. In NO, these were the areas where it truly doesn’t make sense to rebuild because they are flood zones, but many people use this as an opportunity for race baiting. I agree about Nagin’s wishy washiness. As a black leader (albeit one who doesn’t enjoy the full support of the black community), he is in a position to make those tough decisions without the racist accusations sticking. He could also find ways to use the aid/reconstruction money to provide reasonable alternatives for black communities to rebuild in new locations, but he lacks the vision and the guts to do this.
Polimom, are you a civil engineer? Just wondering because you say places wouldn’t have flooded had the levees been built correctly. The fact that the natural protection which Louisiana used to have via the marshes and wetlands are gone. No matter how high we build levees mother nature will always win. The levees breaking certainly contributed, but our destruction of the natural defenses is just as much if not more of the problem. Building higher levees or raising the level of NO isn’t the solution.
Resettling in flood zones as CS points out makes no sense and the federal govt shouldn’t pay for folks to move back in there. Nor should it subsidize insurance for those places.
Jim: Exactly. And although I’m generally not fond of the govt telling citizens what they can and can’t do with their property, I don’t feel there is any way to say “OK, you can rebuild there (and without following the guidelines to raise the structure) but we’re not going to repay you or help you if it gets wiped out again.” because the reality is that when the next storm comes, no one will be willing to say, “sorry, no compensation” to those who didn’t follow the guidelines.
In regards to building in areas prone to flooding, why is New Orleans singled out? Here in a fairly large town, there are homes currently being built in a floodplain and the homes cost are about 3 times more than the median price of a comparable home in other parts of town.
Granted the process is slow, but master planning takes time. Actually spending monies to get facilities constructed also takes time – more than what our “I want it now” population expects. There is however a lack of leadership, especially when the POTUS appoints his right-hand man to become the czar of the reconstruction effort and he is more interested in keeping the Republicans in power. One also must worry about what those vacated areas are going to be done with. Are the lands to become parks, or will they be the locations for new construction for land developers who will see money to be made? Why are people moved out of their “homes” to only have new shopping malls and homes be constructed at a later time?
ES: NO is “singled out” because it is below sea level, surrounded on three sides by water, has eroding natural protection from flooding, has always required federal funding for levees to protect it, and now requires massive federal aid to rebuild it. Sort of a unique situation. And when you mention that in your area, homes built in floodplains cost more, I presume that is because they are being built to a standard of protection against flooding: and that’s precisely the point here. In NO, lots of people can’t afford to rebuild to that standard and so they are either rebuilding without raising the foundations or they are expecting others to foot the bill to rebuild above grade. Given that, I think it’s fair for the taxpayers to have some say in the matter.
Ah, left out one other factor in the litany of uniqueness of NO: it sits in a hurricane zone.
Jim — you’re absolutely right that the deterioration of the wetlands is a contributing factor. So is subsidence (attributed to various causes), and just this week, a new report came out about lateral slippage. (link)
But you bring up yet another source of anger for many in SE Louisiana. The wetlands were sacrificed at the altar of the Oil and Gas gods. Americans had no problem accepting this gift from LA, but it came at a very steep price. There’s a sense of broken social contracts — that their state was good enough to contribute its resources, but is not good enough for the country to help when the bill came due.
Regarding the levees: it’s long-since been acknowledged, both in engineering circles and by the ACoE, that the levees weren’t built to spec, and that the failures along canals were avoidable. This post from March has some info, with some links to elsewhere.
None of which answer the questions about the future, of course, or how and where people should rebuild; I merely offer the above as expansion and explanation.
As it happens, while I have enormous sympathy for NOLA’s residents, I thought much of the Urban Land Institute’s proposal should have been adopted. (more about the neighborhood plans from yet another post here) It wasn’t, though, and here we are.
Great post, Polimon.
I would like to make one observation that I trust you will not take personally as a civic-minded and involved New Orleans resident:
It seems a bit disingenuous to put much of the blame on Mayor Nagin. I have no particular truck with him — and he was re-elected — but pre-Katrina New Orleans was rotten to the core with a deeply corrupt city government and police force. Surely you and others cannot have expected this historic culture of corruption to not have been a major reason why, beyond the tepid state and federal responses, New Orleans has been so ineffectual in healing itself.
No amount of money is too much to rebuild your great city, but I am sorry to say that I am among those who have lost patience with city fathers (and mothers).
Shaun — a quick clarification: I’m a former New Orleanian with many deep ties, still, to the city… and you betcha, the pre-storm city was absolutely riddled with problems.
Those problems set up this mess; some of the old issues have even been magnified since the storm (like the crime). However, this haphazard rebuilding in subterranean locations (to me) belongs squarely at the feet of the city’s leadership.
Polimom.
I have to differ with you on the issue of the country being willing to use LA oil resources. LA and other gulf states profitted greatly from the oil resources but LA squandered most of the profit. I would agree with you that Big Oil should have been made to foot the bill for better levee protection, and that some of the waterway projects were done for short term profit without regard to long term environmental impact, but I fail to see how this too doesn’t reflect poorly on the state and local governments who allowed such decisions to be made.
Polimom: and, given the fact that Nagin was *re-elected*, if it lies at the feet of the city’s leadership, it also lies at the feet of its voters.
aphrael,
I partly agree but I also don’t think there were any good alternative candidates.
Aphrael — that’s also true to some degree. However, it’s also true that everyone in the city didn’t vote for Nagin. There’s even been an attempt at a recall.
For comparative purposes — it’s not dissimilar from saying that Americans deserve what they get because they re-elected George W. Bush. (No, that’s not meant to inflame…)
CStanley — Yes, many states profited greatly from the oil reserves. LA, however, was not compensated as others were. In fact, that’s the primary reason I supported the Offshore Drilling bill that just passed. A quote from WaPo’s article of Dec 12 explains (my emphasis):
Well, fair enough, polimom, but then again, it was still the decision of Long that made it ‘all or nothing’ (bearing in mind that the oil is located under federal waters, so the 50% offer was in line with how states are generally compensated for resources that are on or under federal land).
In a slight paraphrase on a comment I made over at Polimom’s site:
Unfortunately, there are many folks in NOLA who would willingly shoot themselves in the head, if they were convinced that the blood would spatter on their political/cultural/social foes.
I dunno if it is because they dance funny, or they speak funny, or they eat really spicy food, or if it some bizarre holdover from the Napoleonic era – but I have *never* seen a city more hell-bent on self-destruction than NOLA.
~EdT.
Polimom: fair enough. But since nobody from outside the city can step in and remove the city government and/or take these decisions out of the hands of the city government, what can those outside New Orleans do? Other than provide financial support to a recall effort — which might be self-defeating in that outside financial support for local politics tends to trigger resentment.
Polimom, good post, but I too have to take a bit of issue in assigning blame.
Nagin definately shares some blame, but honestly, what he faced was totally new. No mayor ever faced the challenges he did during and in the aftermath of Katrina.
All the carping about school buses flooded and not used for evacuation was rendered mute in my opinion following the disaster that was Houston’s attempted evacuation for Rita. But I rarely heard anyone blaming Bill White for sitting in a traffic jam for 12 hours and covering 8 miles in the process.
Nagin could definately have done better, but no one has ever walked in the shoes nature gave him.
I will be the first to admit that the state and the city government is useless. That is a well known fact. So what does that say about a president whose first words on the disaster are 1.) We will rebuild the levees to their pre-Katrina strenght (George that is what failed us) and 2.) We will let the local folk handle the recovery. Great leadership, Mr. Bush. We were doomed from that point forward.
doctorj,
I see your point but isn’t it a bit of a copout to say that the local and state govt’s are useless and therefore the feds have to take up the slack?
The insurance comapnies left and the US government is leaving to. There is no one to insure them. Next time no one will pay. So, what’s the problem wasting US money again?
doctorj’s comment and CStanley’s response lead me to ask the question:
Since it’s obvious that the local leadership is failing in the face of this disaster, at what point should somebody (feds? other?) step in? Or should they?
CS,
There is no “extra� protection provided by the developers for the homes being built on the floodplain – there are no additional levies, walls, or pumping stations to move waters out of the way. In fact, I live in a town with population greater than one million people with very little vertical buildings for homes, condos, apartments, and whatnot. The only undeveloped land left in the city limits for new home construction and retail space, without having to drive 20-45 miles out of town, is the floodplain.
In fact, the same city is currently using eminent domain to “purchase� floodplain land currently being used as manufacturing, car salvaging shops, light industrial, and so forth to build new high-dollar homes and retail space.
My point is that all areas prone to flooding should not be constructed in. If it is not okay in New Orleans because of a 50-year probability of a category 3 or greater hurricane hitting the coastline, then it should not be okay elsewhere because the same probability of a home in a 50-year floodplain will be devastated. I don’t want to use my tax money to pay for homes in New Orleans, but I am also very adamant about not wanting my tax money being used to replace one of these high-dollar homes. I do not see a difference between the two.
Many people here have placed the blame on local political culture. Whatever the local faults that simply does not square with the facts.
Since about 1930 flood protection has been the exclusive province of the US Army Corps of Engineers. They and Congress have selected the projects to be funded and built.
The Corps has selected the contractors and supervised the work. None of that was at fault. What was at fault is the DESIGN of the levees, exclusively the result of the Corps of Engineers and their consultants, yet the Corps are protected from liability for their error. Presumably that was with the implicit promise that if they failed (which they did and to their credit documented their failure in a 6,000 page report) that the Full Faith and Credit of The United States would reimburse the Citizens of The United States for their failure.
Keep in mind that in addition to Oil and Gas contributed by a poor state to the national economy at enormous environmental cost, everyone in Louisiana paid the same Federal Taxes as everyone else. Meanwhile other wealthy states like Florida and California have prohibited off shore drilling in less environmentally sensitive areas, all the while happily consuming the oil pumped from Louisiana.
The machinery imposed on us to get some compensation has exacerbate the problem and is still not flowing to the people who need help.
If FEMA were competent they could have managed the process themselves, instead that impede every local effort and them blame the locals for not moving fast enough.
I lost my house, and even though I have paid for Flood and Home Owners insurance for many years I haven’t gotten an nickel in Federal Aid, and don’t expect to get any. I still can’t find a contractor to repair my house.
ES,
I see your point but I think the difference is that in the case of your town, you’re talking about new construction while in NO the issue is rebuilding. There simply isn’t enough area to rebuild to allow repopulation of a preexisting city. Yes, in hindsight perhaps NO just isn’t a smart place to locate a city, but then again the location didn’t come about just because people thought it was a cool spot; it was due to strategic positioning at the mouth of the Mississippi. It is a key strategic location for shipping, and of course for basing oil exploration and refining.
mominem,
I agree with you that the faulty planning of the Corps puts major blame on that part of the federal govt. But where the local comes in is that the local levee boards were corrupt and sometimes maintenance was neglected as funds were misdirected (the casino deal, for example). So, even with substandard design, there was then the added issue of alterations and poor maintenance.
And on top of that, even if the design had performed as promised, it was only ever meant to protect against a Class III storm. So, the local govt certainly bore responsibility for better planning in the event of a storm like Katrina that exceeded that. I give them credit for finally getting the car evacuation planning right (it was quite impressive and a huge improvement over past attempts at evacuation- I have family members who had experienced hurricanes in their cars while stuck in gridlock on I-10 during past storms). But the fact that they didn’t complete the planning for the citizens who couldn’t evacuate by car was an abomination.
mominem,
Your perspective is obviously very valuable to the discussion. What are the specific impediments that you face? Shortage of contractors, lack of funds, etc? How do you think FEMA could improve the process?
You are right of course about the Corp’s responsibility, although I also say that the local levee board contributed to the problem through corrupt deals (the casino deal, for example, diverted funds that should have been used for levee maintenance.) So, a bad situation was made worse.
And, the other issue where I feel the local govt bears strong responsibility is in the evacuation planning. Even if the levees had performed according to the plans, they would not have protected against a storm of this magnitude. Knowing this possibility always existed, the city had decades to better plan for the safety of residents (even if they still wouldn’t have been able to protect property). I give them credit for finally getting the car evacuation planning right (it was quite impressive compared to past storms- my family members had ridden out hurricans in their cars while stuck in gridlock on I-10). But it is an abomination that they hadn’t planned for the evacuation of citizens who didn’t have cars.
Er, that was strange. Sorry for the nearly duplicate posts above but I tried to post this hours ago and neither of those posts showed up. I had given up but somehow both versions of my response have now appeared.
ES, You must get elevations on any slab that is built in order to get federal flood insurance. They will not give insurance to anyone building in the 100 year flood plain. With out insurance you will not get financing. Your claim is missing something because it just wouldn’t work as stated.
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