Scientists versus the local community: A case study in post-Katrina

New Orleans

Amy E. Lesen, Ph.D.Dillard University, New Orleans, LA

andPratt Institute, Brooklyn, NYC

City-building in New Orleans: A port city on a floodplain

• 1722 first levee built by French• 1750s French engineers build levees higher and

higher• Early 1800s, after LA purchase, clear economic

value• 1846 LA state engineer warns about flood risks• Huge flood of 1849, levees breached• 1850:Levees-only policy, city engineers• Levees breached 4 times 1849-1874• 1920, N.O. is 14th largest U.S. city• Huge flood of 1927; 700,000 homeless

– End of levees-only policy, spillways and reservoirs

City-building in New Orleans: A port city on a floodplain

• 1930s to 1970s– Beginning of major wetland loss to development– Spillways built, industrial canals built– 1965, Hurricane Betsy

• 1988 New Orleans is #1 U.S. port in tonnage handled

City-building in New Orleans: A port city on a floodplain

• 2005: LA disappearing wetlands: extensively documented by scientists

• Up to 40 sq miles per year– US Army Corps channeling of the Mississippi

River for shipping– Construction of flood-control levees along

the river to protect New Orleans– Canals built by the oil and gas industry– Natural subsidence– Rising sea levels

Disaster and hurricane preparedness in Louisiana

• Large role for scientists• 1998: Coast 2050 Plan for Louisiana

– Links coastal health to storm protection– January 2004: Louisiana Governor Personally Asks

Bush to Fund Louisiana Coastal Restoration Project

– 2005, Proposed budget sliced by Bush admin

• 2004: Hurricane Pam simulation– Louisiana State University scientists– Predicated the post-Katrina scenario– Implementation “incomplete”

“Should a Class 5 hurricane blow water over the [Lake Pontchartrain] levees, the city could find itself under water for months. Evacuation would face serious bottlenecks due to the limited number of escape routes across the water-logged terrain…Recent popular accounts paint a dire picture and suggest that federal authorities might not be willing to make the investment necessary that cannot afford to protect itself.” (Colten 2005)

Environmental Justice in New Orleans

• Louisiana: “Cancer Alley,” chemical industry, oil industry

• Long history of grass roots environmental justice work and activism, environmental health issues

• Documentation of correlation with sea level of neighborhoods and race, all across the south

Role of practicing scientists?

Role of science post-Katrina?

• Civil engineering• Geology• Coastal ecology, wetlands ecology

• “Feasibility” of neighborhoods• Flood maps?

2000

1949

1920

1880

1722

Legend

city of history

source: Campanella 2002, ULI Analysis

source: USGS

predicted land loss 1932-2050

water at the city gates

elevation

St. Bernard Parish

Jefferson Parish Orleans

Parish

source: USGS

flood inundation

source: USGS

owner occupied housing

source: 2000 US Census

Success - an intense & urgent range of

individual to collective actions.

“Greening” New Orleans and the Gulf coast

post-Katrina

• Bullard, 2005: Will it be racially, socially, or economically equitable?

• Community initiatives: Holy Cross neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward

• Global Green project

• The tension between city building and the environmental setting in NOLA- Colten, 2005. An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature.

- Colten, 2001. Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs: Centuries of Change.