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

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

• Amy E. Lesen, Ph.D.
• Dillard University, New Orleans, LA
• and
• Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NYC

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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
• 1850Levees-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

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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

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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

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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

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• 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
  terrainRecent 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)

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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?

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Role of science post-Katrina?

• Civil engineering
• Geology
• Coastal ecology, wetlands ecology
• Feasibility of neighborhoods
• Flood maps?

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source Campanella 2002, ULI Analysis
city of history
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source USGS
water at the city gates
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source USGS
St. Bernard Parish
Jefferson Parish
Orleans Parish
elevation
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source USGS
flood inundation
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source 2000 US Census
owner occupied housing
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Success - an intense urgent range of individual
to collective actions.
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Greening New Orleans and the Gulf
coastpost-Katrina

• Bullard, 2005 Will it be racially, socially, or
  economically equitable?
• Community initiatives Holy Cross neighborhood of
  the Lower Ninth Ward
• Global Green project

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• 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.