Meeting to rebuild ‘The Lower 9’ held

2nd April 2012   ·   0 Comments

By Zoe Sullivan
Contributing Writer

Almost seven years since Katrina, the Lower 9th Ward is still garnering national attention for its dysfunction. The New York Times recently published an article about how the community was being taken over by vegetation, re-absorbing parts of it into wilderness. In spite of this, residents and dedicated organizers are fighting to make the community a safe and comfortable place to live.

The area still only has roughly 25 percent of the population it had before the storm, and issues like a lack of street lights, bad roads, no grocery store and insufficient school facilities have been sore spots for years now. According to 2000 figures from the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, the Lower 9th Ward had a higher level of home ownership than the city as a whole. Local leaders, government officials and residents met at the Lower 9th Ward Village to discuss the state of the community and its rebuilding. Four areas were on the agenda education, infrastructure, housing and economic development. A representative from Senator Mary Landrieu’s office participated along with Council Member Jon Johnson and officials from the Sewerage and Water Board.

Two online initiatives that were discussed include a community bulletin board called Nextdoor. https://lowerninthwardno.nextdoor.com and whodata.org. The former is being introduced by Common Ground Relief to help Lower 9th Ward residents “to keep in touch with each other and keep an eye on each other,” according to Thom Pepper, the organization’s executive director. The latter has been set up by Dr. Michelle Thompson of the University of New Orleans’ urban planning program. Pepper said that while the site only has about 20 members on it currently, he received a message through it from a neighbor the other day asking him to pick up some tomatoes when he went to the store, and he did.

“Nearly 60 percent of those people who owned property north of Claiborne are living in the city,” Pepper told The Louisiana Weekly, “but they’re just not living down here in the Lower 9th Ward.” Pepper says his organization tracked the forwarding addresses for mail from the Lower 9th Ward and found this surprising figure. He says that by signing these former residents up for the bulletin service will allow them to be more connected to what is happening in the community.

“Disappointing” is the word that Laura Paul, executive director of lowernine.org, a home rebuilding non-profit, used to describe her sense of Saturday’s meeting. Paul lamented that long-term recovery isn’t “sexy,” and so it’s difficult to keep people outside of the area engaged. More­over, she noted, almost seven years have passed since the storm, and yet the same basic issues still need to be addressed.

Representatives from the Sewerage and Water Board showed a map to those gathered indicating where streets would be torn up to work on water pipes. Madeleine Goddard also described the work that the agency plans to do in the Bayou Bienvenue area, which will help buffer the area from future storms.

Darryl Malek-Wiley told The Louisiana Weekly that the City of New Orleans has applied for $12 million from the federal wetland rebuilding program to work on restoring the bayou. According to Malek-Wiley, the bayou was gradually transformed into open water after the opening of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet began introducing salt water into it, which killed the trees and other fresh-water plant life that held so much of the soil in place. He estimates that the area now encompasses 430 acres of open water.

Malek-Wiley also told those assembled that the area along the edge of the bayou has become a “place where people hang out.” He also said that he and others would be working to “remove some invasive species and planting oak trees” on the spoil bank.

As an aspect of economic development, Malek-Wiley also said that “there’s one thing we’ve been hammering the state about also. They’re talking about spending $50 billion over 50 years. …Where is your job creation for Louisiana citizens if you’re going to spend that money?” Malek-Wiley also remarked that Nunez Community College has a training program on coastal restoration, which would prepare people for these jobs.

Other topics that participants discussed at the meeting included renovating and re-opening the Sanchez Center, a community center that served senior citizens before Katrina, and a neighborhood grocery store. To try and meet the need for fresh, healthy food, the Sankofa Farmers’ Market opened in early 2011, but it currently only operates on Saturdays. Pepper pointed out, however, that the plans shown for the Sanchez Center are the same plans that were presented in 2009, yet the project has not moved forward yet.

Describing the frustration of New Orleans East and Lower 9th Ward residents who go to St. Bernard Parish and see a new hospital and other new facilities, Pepper said that people’s attitude towards the administration “[i]t’s like put up or shut up. People want to move forward.”

One of the organizers of Saturday’s event, Mack McClen­don, executive director of the Lower 9th Ward Village, told The Louisiana Weekly that he felt positive about the outcome. “It’s a good starting point,” he said in an interview. “My whole thing is that what I realized after Katrina, we can’t stop disasters. We can stop the way we embrace it. It’s not your problem. Anytime you or me or anyone has a disaster, it’s every human being’s problem.”

This article was originally published in the April 2, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper