Listening to the Problems

When I get the chance, i.e., when I'm awake before 9 and in front of a radio, I listen to NPR. I brought the fiancé to her peds rotation early this morning, and listened to it on the way back home and then picked up my old mp3 player which has an fm receiver on it to listen inside. There was a story on New Orleans, shocker I know, about the 9th Ward court issues (listen to the story at this link, up at 10 a.m. today). There's a group of lawyers representing some 9th Ward residents who obtained an injunction preventing any clearing of rubble connected to any household - some of which are literally blocking streets. Obviously what they're afraid of is that the city, under the guise of clearing rubble, will remove wholesale entire homes and neighborhoods. Most of the conspiracy stories originated and are maintained by the former 9th Ward residents who feel as though they have been ignored and sometimes intentionally wronged; I've addressed that theory before.

Due to these beliefs the former 9th Ward residents are very forcefully against any type of change in the 9th Ward without binding promises by the city that their neighborhood will continue to exist as it was pre-Katrina. This is a problem for the city for a couple of reasons: (1) There is no clear plan right now, and no one wants to wait that long to even begin clean up; (2) the city needs to begin to clean up the city, which the injunction is preventing - the infamous disaster tour of the city doesn't even go through the 9th Ward because of the current danger of the streets themselves; and (3) the plan may be to not rebuild in parts of the 9th Ward. The 9th Ward flooded badly in 1965 and again in 2005 and even with the improvements in the levee system following Katrina it would still be the neighborhood most at risk for flooding in future storms thanks to it's low elevation and positioning between waterways.

As part of the NPR story, they discussed the city's plans to raze 120 buildings in the 9th Ward as soon as they can receive court approval to do so. These are buildings which have been inspected and deemed structurally unsound or probably not even standing at all, many of them having slid off of their slabs. It's probably a benefit to the owners of the buildings since they wouldn't have to pay for the demolition and clean up and could put their money solely into rebuilding if they're allowed to do so.

Anyway you cut it, it's a dilemma for the rebuilding of New Orleans. I don't really have a definitive answer for anyone - I can't say I would entirely trust the city if I was a resident of the 9th Ward and wanted to return there, but there may be no viable alternative to at least clearing the 9th Ward for now. There aren't many houses there which can be repaired, most need to start over from the foundation.