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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The article is a fair summary of what is going on in Broadmoor right now, and the author interviewed the right people. But she missed an important fact touched on by one of the other commenters. Yes, this was a manmade disaster. And that is verified by the fact that Broadmoor was completely dry immediately after Katrina passed. It was only after the levees broke that the neighborhood went under.
Since early 2003, Broadmoor has been significantly protected against natural flooding from rains by virtue of the Southeast Louisiana Drainage Improvement Project, or SELA for short. Precisely because it is at the bottom of the bowl, the Army Corps of Engineers and the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board poured tens of millions of dollars into pumping and drainage improvements throughout the neighborhood from 1998 to 2003. From personal observation (and hopefully, objective data, which I am in the process of collecting), SELA works like a charm. This has been left out of nearly every high-level conversation about the city, and I have no idea why. SELA amply demonstrates that local drainage solutions building on existing infrastructure can work just as effectively as abandoning a neighborhood and turning it into urban wetland (an idea which is just totally nuts).
With repair of the levees, extension of SELA (which will happen, since they've gotten over $225 million to spend) and coastal restoration, why should people be made to move out of Broadmoor? Otherwise, we might as well all move into concrete bunkers perched on 200 foot high pilings and be given a lifetime supply of bubble-wrap clothes.
By the way, I'm typing this from my family's house in Broadmoor right now, and so are many other people. And new people are moving into the neighborhood every day.
Also (and this is addressed to inside-the-beltway think-tank dope John McIlwain), we in Broadmoor are not saying, "The hell with you" to the city. As a matter of fact, we are looking at solutions that not only benefit our neighborhood, but the city at-large. It must be nice to be able to paint thousands of people with such broad strokes and not have to worry about what they are actually saying. Also, the plan as laid out by ULI and the city calls for neighborhood planning throughout the city, so I don't know what he's talking about when he says that neighborhoods are pulling against a citywide effort.
John McIlwain was a mortgage financier with Fannie Mae before working for the ULI. Same pack of moneymen and developers trying to buyout our neighborhood; I'm not surprised by his comments as a result.
We don't need to move our houses to higher ground. Our houses were here before the present levees were built. The ground level basement style of housing reflects the consideration of the lower geography: go west, right outside Broadmoor, and the houses are level to the street (not raised like in the picture), the streets crazy low, and there's no planned park. We didn't go off the slabs for the most part like in the Ninth Ward and in Lakeview, so while we flooded it's not fair to call the area unsafe or 'hardest hit' where that means demolish the lot of us. The timber used in our older housing stock is thicker than the post-Katrina construction guidelines recommended for new housing in hurricane areas.
The most important issue here is that we can reoccupy our homes in a city purportedly short of housing stock: faster than Lakeview, faster than Gentilly, faster than getting a FEMA trailer, we can live here. So why would you plan to displace people from existing homes to move them to pricier, more densely populated Uptown housing, when Uptown is not a mile away? Someone already mentioned the SELA drainage project. Kroloff of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission - who lives in the Lower Garden District, to check his statement - stated early on his desire to see condos 'at park's edge' with floodable parking. Hello? If we flood here because of the backwater from the closure of the temporary 17th street canal gates, so will Old Metairie in Jefferson Parish. Are they being bought out too?
I had a nice talk with a traveler at a party today; he is from the Hamptons, and he was telling me about the developers he knew personally in that area. They will say anything to gain land, and 'unsafe' is usually one of the first codes they try. Until they manage to make the land 'safe' again for developing.
80% of the city flooded, so only 20% is technically on 'higher ground', and a good portion of that is across the river in Algiers. If the proposed neighborhood model is to be developed anywhere in New Orleans - and it's not being proposed for Lakeview, where lots would have to be bought out to create the 'center', and Uptown is in no danger of being 'remodeled', and the east is too rural to support utility service (supposedly) - then the most valuable real estate for housing a 'smaller footprint' becomes right where I and the previous poster live.
I am not a whiner, not a native New Orleanian, not even a sentimentalist. I have a four year old child; I don't rightly know that I would build or rebuild by a levee. But if Broadmoor's not safe to live in, New Orleans is not safe to live in. The arguments for turning this area into greenspace are all fallacies.
As I read the article's last page, I wondered if McIlwain was stupid or spinning.
When he said, "... they're pulling against a concerted, cooperative citywide effort ..." and didn't say "that will put their homes at the bottom of a lake" he surely had to be one or the other. Because if people with power were trying to sink your home at the bottom of a lake, wouldn't you, all of you, fight like hell?
My first guess was spinning, and the two letter writers just before me tend to confirm it. The folks in Broadmoor are fighting the tight oligarchies and the corruption that have done so much to harm Louisiana throughout its history. Good luck to Broadmoor; I have the feeling y'all are going to need it.
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