New Orleans officials on Wednesday unveiled a controversial recovery plan giving residents four months to prove they will rebuild in the devastated city before their neighbourhoods could be declared off-limits to redevelopment.
The plan calls for a much smaller city, estimating that just half of the 500,000 people who lived there before Hurricane Katrina will resettle in the next two years.
For a neighbourhood to be ruled viable, half the residents must commit to come back, the commission proposed as a guideline. Until decisions are made, a moratorium will be placed on rebuilding in badly damaged sections such as New Orleans East, the waterfront Lakeview and the poverty-stricken Lower Ninth Ward.
The plan calls for improved flood and storm water protection, a high-speed light rail transit network, a single authority to replace the multiple boards that oversee the region’s levee system and closing the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a shipping shortcut to the Gulf of Mexico blamed for much of the flooding on the eastern side of the city.
No one is going to agree on a timetable. That part will take rock-hard leadership. Guaranteeing that the details are governed more by history and human needs than political profit — will be the toughest priority.
This is a smart plan. Lets face it, a majority of the people that had been living in the poorest neighborhoods and who were evacuated are never coming back. They will probably stay where ever they are now, most out of state. Why not return those highly flood prone areas back to nature, so that the rest of the country doesn’t have to shell out billions of dollars after the next flood.
Leadership in this country is sorely lacking when it comes to redesigning a city. It needs to be done, because this active storm cycle could last another 20 years. We almost had a tropical storm form 2 days ago in the Atlantic. The nation can go broke rebuilding coastal cities, and hurricanes aren’t the only major natural threat, as West Coasters are well aware. In making hard decisions, a large percentage of people will be upset. This is the nature of a democracy.
It’s not really the nature of democracy, but it’s what happens when strong leaders do what is right over what is popular. that’s why we elect representatives instead of relying on opinion polls and direct votes for determining government policy.
If the people of New Orleans want to rebuild their city then good luck to them. But do not expect me, as an American taxpayer, to foot the bill. For the next twenty years or so the hurricanes are going to come hard and nasty, the whole levee concept is unnatural and in any case underbuilt and it’s a pretty good bet that whatever survives the next big wind will wind up under water again. Best bet: Knock down the levees and let the mighty river find it’s own way to the Gulf.
I lived in the “dirty dirty” or the Swamp, however you want to call it, for 3 years, and I miss it alot, but the city and the society of the people that live in that city will need to undergo some major changes if ANYTHING is going to happen down there.
A family member was tapped by fema to go down there and administer the madness (logistics, setting up camps for the people employed to clean up, electricity and water system and sewage workers, overseeing catering and bedding arrangements, etc) – anyway – he brought back some very detailed maps, and a lot of pics of the area in and around the city. Basically, nola is fuct… there are vast swaths of the city that are demoluished beyond hope of ever being rebuilt. The areas that are “liveable” are barely that.
What most people dont realize is that the enitre state of Lousiana is a flood plain. The highest point in the entire state is a hill that roughly 35 ft above sea level. It was general knowledge that the city was going to be thrashed if it ever got a direct hit by a hurricane. The Fed knew this, the state and local govt knew this – the majority of the population in the city of New Orelans itself kew about it, anyone who says otherwise is either lying or deaf. Becasue of the messy abortion of a war in Iraq, the administration didnt have the money to fix the levee system in southern Louisiana. The fed is going to have to sink 15 to 30 billion $$$ to bring that area back to a washed out semblance of what it once was.
Mourn for New Orleans, for it is no more…
John,
It’s not as easy as that. The Mississippi river is a strategically important waterway for national commerce. The doorway to that river is the port of New Orleans. Whether or not it’s wise to have a large metropolitan area in that location, the port is vitally important and there still needs to exist the infrastructure to support its operation.
Tailwookie
One small correction. The highest point in the state is Driskell Mountain at 535 feet. Now you know that the land has to be flat to call a 535 foot hill a mountain.
While most of the attention has been focused on New Orleans, what about all the other surrounding areas. Will we continue to support other below sea level communities too?