Muddy water in Chocolate City

7th August 2017   ·   0 Comments

By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor

A haunting line from one of the best post-Katrina celebratory brass band songs has been ringing in my ears of late: “We made it through that muddy, muddy water.”

But it hasn’t been ringing in my head because the 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is fast approaching. No, it’s resonating because of all the trouble rising in Chocolate City as conditions appear to be deteriorating at the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board and residents, community leaders and environmentalists seek answers to ongoing questions about the safety of the city’s tap water and the reason why flooding appears to be on the rise in many neighborhoods.

It is even more troubling that the Landrieu administration has pretended to not notice that something is out of whack at the S&WB and that a winded S&WB chairman tried unsuccessfully to dodge a small group of television news reporters who had lots of questions for him about using the homes of S&WB employees to test lead levels in the water supply.

Given the secrecy and lack of transparency that have characterized this administration thus far, New Orleans could very well be on its way to becoming the “new Flint.” Adding to public concerns is all the whispering about only one of the S&WB’s turbines functioning properly to push rainwater out of the city.

A lack of transparency, glaring ineptitude and the arrival of the peak of hurricane season could be the perfect storm to usher in the city’s next major crisis. The City of New Orleans and elected officials should be focused less on the city’s upcoming tricentennial celebration and more on the health, safety and welfare of its inhabitants. We, the people of New Orleans, deserve to know the truth. Holler if you hear me.

Anyway, I got a few questions for y’all. Here we go:

• Has anyone noticed that the mayor hasn’t seen fit to say a thing about the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board’s role in addressing residents’ questions about flooding in several neighborhoods last month, a report by the New Orleans Inspector General about the exposure of residents to lead in the city’s antiquated water system and S&WB leaders’ decision to measure lead levels in the homes of a number of people employed by the agency rather than random residents?

• How do you fix your mouth to call yourself an environmentally-friendly elected official when you don’t open your mouth to say a peep about schools and community centers being built atop toxic landfills and a water system that has likely been exposing many of the city’s residents to dangers levels of lead for an extended period of time?

• Who thinks the City of New Orleans doesn’t need a new police chief?

• Whose idea was it to make sure that this fall’s City Council elections took place BEFORE council members voted on a proposed new Entergy power plant for eastern New Orleans?

• How many Council candidates will show their hand and tell residents exactly how they will vote before voters go to the polls in October?

• Shouldn’t the people of New Orleans get to decide how many deputy mayors their tax dollars pay for?

• How do we root out the mayoral candidates whose sole purpose for being in the race is to do the bidding of the white business community and those who were recruited to split the Black vote?

• Why do white college applicants who aren’t admitted to predominantly white colleges and universities always assume that it is because of unqualified Black college students and not unqualified white students?

• If local elected officials are serious about addressing violent crime and the rising murder rate, shouldn’t they get serious about dealing with exposure to lead in the city’s water system?

• Do you think a white cop who shows up to court in a T-shirt with a “sun cross,” a white supremacist symbol, should be fired?

• Given what we’ve seen on the evening news and read about on social media, do law enforcement officers really need President Donald Trump to tell then not to be “too nice” to crime suspects when placing them in police cars?

• Fifty years after the tumultuous and deadly Detroit riots, why hasn’t the whole truth about what happened and why still not come out and what could we have learned from that ugly chapter in American history that would have made things better today?

• Why is it so easy for some of us to spend countless hours on social media but so difficult for so many of us to commit to reading a nonfiction book for two hours a day?

• Why are our standards for those who want to serve in local, statewide or national elected office so low?

• Are you using your time wisely, doing your homework and vetting the New Orleans mayoral candidates to ensure that you know who you are dealing with, what each candidate stands for and who is backing his or her political campaign before you go into the voting booth to cast a ballot for the candidate who will best represent your interests at City Hall?

This article originally published in the August 7, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.