Introduction
New Orleans is a place like no other, it is unique in every sense of the word, beautiful, soulful, hot and humid, overflowing with food, culture, pride, and one of the only places I believe can make anyone feel at home. But I am biased. Being born and raised in a place like New Orleans, Louisiana has given me a world view unlike most people I have ever met. On May 12th, 2021, at approximately 2am, a tornado tore the roof off my house, letting the storm outside in, while my entire family was home. But, despite this, despite being two years old when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged the city, despite the countless other hurricanes, tropical storms and disasters that defined my upbringing, I still love this city like no other. I was raised with the awareness of instability of place and the sense of looming threat that follows any strong breeze, hard rain or darkened sky, I was taught from a young age how Louisiana’s coast was slowly being washed away. I have lived and witnessed houses broken by wind and water, and people rebuilding them with passion and determination for this place called home. I know the people of New Orleans because I am one. Yet, I come from a part of the city that gets disaster relief first, I come from a household that can rebuild when disaster strikes and can afford to send me to university across an ocean. I am immensely grateful for my privileged experience of New Orleans and seek to give back to the city that made me who I am. I can never know the experience of another, but I live the experiences we share as a community and seek to understand the disproportionate ways others are affected, the ways in which we as a community have the power to change that. “The right to the city is not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it after our heart’s desire” (Harvey, 2003, p. 939). I believe as Harvey argues, we make the city and the city makes us, therefore the right to the city not only involves the right to change the physical makeup to more equitably suit its citizens, but it is the intrinsic right to “make the city different, to shape it more in accord with our heart’s desire, and to re-make ourselves thereby in a different image” (2003, p. 941).
Hurricanes, Tropical Cyclones and the Historical Background of Southeast Louisiana
According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from the past 25 years, “the annual probability that New Orleans will experience a tropical cyclone is 92%. Due to its proximity to the Gulf Coast, in conjunction with ongoing coastal land loss and the likely impacts of climate change, New Orleans is especially vulnerable to tropical cyclones” (Ready NOLA, 2023). Broadly the Gulf Coast, and in this context, Southeast Louisiana are some of the most vulnerable regions affected by hurricanes, tropical storms and tropical cyclones (storm strength being the differentiating factor in classification). “Tropical cyclone winds can cause major structural damage to private homes, businesses, and the critical facilities of the signatories through water intrusion or structural failure” (Ready NOLA, 2023). The damage caused by storms of that magnitude is devastating and increasingly common in the region. In Leavitt and Kiefer’s post-Katrina analysis, they discuss how residents and political leaders alike would often describe their fear of “‘the big one,’ a storm that would come in from just the right direction and at the right strength to produce the wind and subsequent storm surge that would wipe out major portions of the region” (2006, p. 307). And they were right, on August 28, 2005, “Hurricane Katrina landed a devastating blow to the infrastructure of New Orleans and surrounding areas of the Gulf Coast. Katrina set in motion a series of failures in the region’s critical infrastructure that rendered significant areas uninhabitable for many months” (Leavitt and Kiefer, 2006, p. 307). There were many causes and reasons the devastation was so bad, many known to the local government predating the hurricane (Leavitt and Kiefer, 2006, p. 309), yet one of the most devastating results of the storm was the tearing of the social fabric of the city. “One of the first comprehensive surveys of the New Orleans evacuee population… determined that 39% of evacuees (some 50,000 households), mostly poor and Black, did not intend to return. If accurate, this will be the largest internal migration of Americans in a generation” (2006, p. 144), Campanella goes on to discuss the devastating ramifications this has, as so much of what makes a city is its communities.
Orleans Parish
The community which this briefing would like to address is that of Orleans Parish. Orleans Parish is New Orleans, but New Orleans is not only Orleans Parish. In other words, I have chosen this specific community because the scope of the Greater New Orleans Area (GNOA) is slightly too broad to address as one, in recent years neighboring parishes that are part of the GNOA such as Jefferson have become more self-determinant in rebuilding and improving infrastructure. Therefore, for this brief I will focus on Orleans Parish, and the neighborhoods within as a larger community that recognizes and celebrates the diversity it holds. Because, as Campanella states, “cities are more than the sum of their buildings. They are also thick concatenations of social and cultural matter, and it is often this that endows a place with its defining essence and identity” (2006, p. 142), and that the people of Orleans Parish do.
Challenges of Inadequate Infrastructure to be able to Withstand the Natural Environment
As discussed in previous sections, New Orleans and the surrounding region are especially vulnerable to, and have been faced with, devastating tropical cyclones and hurricanes throughout their history. One of the primary challenges Orleans Parish faces is the insufficient infrastructure to be able to withstand and bounce back from the onslaught of natural disasters. Along with a lack of environmental justice that Pearsall and Pierce explain as, “characterised as a struggle against distributional inequity regarding environmental amenities…and efforts to increase the access of all populations to environmental decision-making” (Pearsall and Pierce, 2010, p. 570), with an emphasis on the last point of increased access to environmental decision-making. As a result of the lack of adequate infrastructure, New Orleans positions itself increasingly for normal disasters. Leavitt and Kiefer describe the concept of a normal disaster by explaining how it is almost inevitable or “normal” for a disaster to occur because of the reliance on high-risk technologies (2006, p. 307) and the multiple interactions of various complex and linear systems that are both tightly and loosely coupled (2006, p. 307). They argue, “that a normal disaster occurs when there is an event, disturbance, or problem that involves the complex interaction of interdependent infrastructures resulting in the unanticipated failure of multiple infrastructure systems” (Leavitt and Kiefer, 2006, p. 308). Which is exactly what happened in New Orleans in 2005 when the levees broke and the city became uninhabitable for months because of the failures of multiple critical infrastructures (Leavitt and Kiefer, 2006, p. 307). “The combination of normal disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, and complex, interdependent, aging infrastructures does not bode well for the future” Leavitt and Kiefer urge, “substantial investment in infrastructure systems must once again become a national priority” (2006, p. 313) and that it must, if Orleans Parish is to survive. I contend normal disasters are still a major risk the city faces, as seen most recently in the past two months with the heightened attention (Edmonds, 2023) on the saltwater intrusion in the Mississippi River.
The Saltwater Wedge
Dubbed the Saltwater Wedge, in the past two months it dramatically garnered local, and even some national (Chavez, Edmonds, Rojanasakul, 2023) media attention sounding the alarms for yet another type of natural adversity the city faces. As a result of various factors including, “congressionally authorized enlargement of the Mississippi River’s deep-draft channel” (New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2023) and “back-to-back years of drought throughout the Mississippi River valley” (Parker, Hazelwood and Juhasz, 2023). Saltwater has begun to move up the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico. As the New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ website explains, “because salt water has a greater density than fresh water, it moves upstream in the form of a wedge” threatening not only the city’s water supply but over a million residents who get their water from the river (Chavez, 2023). Although this year it seems to have gained wider media coverage, “similar saltwater intrusions have happened about once every decade, including in 1988, 1999, 2012, and 2022” (Chavez, 2023). While initial predictions placed the wedge reaching the main intake pipe for Orleans Parish on October 28, updated predictions show that the wedge will not reach the city (New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2023). Which is good news for Orleans Parish but the cataclysmic damage it would cause if it were to happen extends beyond the drinking water. “Saltwater can accelerate the corrosion of pipes in water distribution systems[and] could corrode lead and galvanized steel pipes, possibly leaching heavy metals into drinking water, depending on how long the emergency lasts” (Chavez, 2023) which potential damages have been compared to the Flint, Michigan crisis. Another vulnerable system that would be heavily damaged, and likely shut down, if saltwater intruded upon it, is Entergy’s (the local power utility company) powerplants along the Mississippi leading to a string of affects within the cities critical infrastructures, a normal disaster. “It’s been a wake-up call for the region to upgrade water plants, expand pipeline networks, and make other improvements” (2023) Chavez says, echoed by Smith saying, “the threat this year has led New Orleans officials to call for a permanent solution to the problem, warning that it may occur more frequently given climate change’s impact on sea level rise and drought. That could involve a pipeline or desalination plant for the region, which would come at a high cost” (2023). A cost the people of Orleans Parish would pay.
Brief Note of the Social Injustices Present in the City and the Vulnerabilities it Creates
“Cities are extraordinarily durable” (Campanella, 2006, p. 141). This sentiment is like that of Harvey’s (2003, p. 939) explaining that cities are what remain, cities are what outlive us. Yet, what gives a city its character, soul and capacity to rebound (Campanella, 2006, p. 144) are its people. When discussing urban resilience in the context of post-Katrina New Orleans Campanella posits, “only with strong citizen involvement at the grassroots level will the rebuilding of New Orleans yield a robust and inclusive metropolis” (Campanella, 2006, p. 141). Which is true, but as previously mentioned, much of the city’s population was not able to immediately return after the devastation, and some not at all. Leading to the irony that, “the recovery of New Orleans as a real and robust city… rests heavily on the shoulders of those most burdened by the catastrophe” (Campanella, 2006, p. 144). Of which those most burdened are the black poor and other minorities within the city, which continue to suffer even after disasters as attempts to revive local economy begin. As Bledsoe and Wright argue, “civil society, therefore, is inherently antithetical to all manifestations of Black social life, yet requires Blackness for its political, economic, ontological, epistemological, and—as we aim to show—spatial coherence” (2018, p. 9). They highlight, “geographic interrogations of racial capitalism have analyzed the role of racist assumptions in implementing neoliberal reforms in the wake of a natural disaster” (Bledsoe and Wright, 2018, p. 11) which is especially poignant in a city as diverse as New Orleans. The capitalist agenda requires constant growth and expansion, so when I place is affect by natural disaster, which disproportionately affect minorities, and the whole mechanism halts and stutters, it becomes that much more imperative to restore it to a state of function as it was pre-disaster. That same pre-disaster state that perpetuates the social injustices that lead to the disproportionate effects on minorities in the first place. There is much more to this crucial topic, as Bledsoe and Wright discuss, so much so that an entire briefing should be written on this subject, but this briefing will refocus on the infrastructural dimension of the city that disproportionately effect the citizen of Orleans Parish.
Recommendations
The primary way forward I recommend is the strong urge for an increased participatory approach to local decision-making, formalized lobbying for the local community to have say in planning infrastructure, other prevention methods and disaster relief. There are many ways to do this at various levels of influence from the bottom up. But for this to be a long-lasting, effective solution, that can be used as a model for other communities similarly affected by disasters, the first step is community education, which I argue needs to start from grassroots. A way this can be done is through grassroots organizations efforts as Irazábal and Neville describe, by empowering and emphasizing local community organizations people can take the power back into their hands. When this has been proven effective, it can then move into lobbying for a formal way of community input and regulatory power in municipal governments for an increased ability to have a say in what is prioritized and actioned by those who feel the direct affects. I would like to note, this is not intended to discount the efforts that have been made since Katrina to bolster the city’s infrastructure, which have been significant, it merely urges that the necessity for long-term change needs to come from the bottom by those most affected.
Increasing and improving community education
Though Sonne’s article pertains specifically to stormwater management, the ideas it argues can be applied more broadly, they state, “creating a supportive community educated about the benefits of such measures will alleviate some of the resistance that new utility fees often garner from the public. A public education program for New Orleans must begin now and must become increasingly aggressive to reach as much of the affected public as possible before any stormwater remediation fee can be successfully implemented” (2014, p. 347). This is a useful idea in the broader context of the city’s afflictions and the need to raise awareness of what they are and what can be done to prevent them. “When citizens have a clear understanding of what it takes for sustainable success in stormwater management, it is easier to embrace the unfamiliar, providing a lasting solution to their common problem” (Sonne, 2014, p. 348), and the same can be said about what it takes for improved infrastructure. The people of Orleans Parish have the capacity to understand the ways in which the infrastructure of the city needs to be revitalized yet require a means to gain that knowledge. Looking now at a historical example of an attempt at this, Leavitt and Kiefer offer us a glimpse of pre-Katrina New Orleans and “a series of regional ‘tabletop’ exercises [that] were conducted in the Greater New Orleans region for the past few years, each exercise examining the physical, geographic, and cyber-interdependencies of much of the region’s infrastructure” (2006, p. 309). Dubbed the ‘Purple Crescent exercises (Leavitt and Kiefer, 2006, p. 309), the ones that did take place were apparently quite useful for highlighting the interdependencies and vulnerabilities of the region’s infrastructure (2006, 309). Which I propose needs to happen once again, in a more sustained way that, hopefully, would not get cut short due to a cataclysmic failure in the exact infrastructural vulnerabilities being discussed (Leavitt and Kiefer, 2006, p. 310). A key opportunity for community oversight is highlighted by the response in the aftermath of Katrina, “although dependent on a system of regional infrastructure for protection, oversight of this infrastructure was fragmented among various municipal governments and agencies, many with long histories of mutual distrust and even animosity” (Leavitt and Kiefer, 2006, p. 311). If educational initiatives are as effective as they could be, local insight could aid municipal government invaluably, combining their lived knowledge and that of new programs about infrastructure. Leavitt and Kiefer urge, “the importance of identifying, understanding, and analyzing…infrastructure interdependencies…if we are to respond effectively to normal disasters. Whenever possible the goal must be to find ways to allow for decentralization of infrastructure systems to promote rapid recovery from disasters” (2006, p.312-3), this decentralization is the perfect opportunity for simultaneous community education, engagement and empowerment.
Emphasis on grassroots organizations empowerment and efficacy
Based on past examples of participatory democracy New Orleans has the base for it to work, there have been and still are many grassroot neighborhood-based organizations that work to better their community (Irazábal & Neville, 2007). Irazábal and Neville discuss the pre- and post-Katrina examples of grassroots planning for community development and reconstruction (2007). They highlight ideas of active citizenship, embracing the culture of New Orleans using that as a tool to transform it in the ways the city knows how (Irazábal and Neville, 2007 p. 135-136). As previously mentioned, there are two major aspects of planning, preventative and post disaster. There needs to be urgent focus on both prevention measures in the infrastructure of the city as well as detailed plans for when disaster strikes. There are limitations for rebuilding after the fact at the grassroots level, as seen during Katrina with the amount of people who returned (Campanella, 2006) not being enough to bolster the efforts of those who remained (Irazábal and Neville, 2007, p. 146). Hence why now it is imperative that people make plans for when disaster inevitably strikes and, seize the opportunity to work on renewing existing infrastructure that is known to be insufficient, whilst people are in the city. We must utilize existing neighbourhood groups, social clubs and other forms of local organisation in Orleans parish to come together and begin to learn and action what needs to be implemented infrastructurally and what is feasible on the grassroots level. Although the Unified New Orleans Plan is a date plan on post-Katrina reconstruction this imperative still stands, “institutionalize the organizational framework of the Unified New Orleans Plan by permanently incorporating community-based planning with coordinated citywide infrastructure planning. In doing so, planners can help formalize neighborhood-level decision making without bureaucratically bludgeoning the democratic instincts and empowered participation of residents” (Irazábal and Neville, 2007, p. 150). The second half of that statement is what the community education seeks to aid in avoiding, although there will always be to some degree the “bureaucratic bludgeoning” of empowered participation a more attuned citizen aware of the issues will be more likely to remain persistent.
Acknowledgement of the Limitations and the Imperative to Continue
To acknowledge the limitations of grassroots efforts as Irazábal and Neville lay out by stating, “the trajectory of recovery of New Orleans also illuminates the limits of grassroots planning in such catastrophic circumstances, and suggests that only larger and more comprehensive efforts, such as those possible for government(s), can create the conditions under which the grassroots efforts may organize meaningfully and effectively” (2007, p. 147). I urge the community of Orleans Parish, that to get to a place where municipal government implements formalized ways grassroots efforts can have a place in prevention and reconstruction, they need to be shown the efficacy and desire for this. Without existing grassroots efforts, that have proven results, there will never be movement towards a formalized participatory democracy more thoroughly than what exists currently. With an informed community that supports, and is involved in, grassroots planning efforts then the formalization limitations can be overcome. It is the people of New Orleans, the “stricken neighborhoods who constitute the lifeblood of the Big Easy, carrying in their traditions, cuisine, musical heritage, mannerisms, and habits of speech what made New Orleans unique” (Campanella, 2006, p. 144) and it is those people who can make coordinated grassroots efforts effective and long lasting.
Conclusion
New Orleans is faced with many natural disasters and, as recent events have re-highlighted many other potential risks to our critical and non-critical infrastructure. The first step in finding a solution is community education, which needs to be done from the bottom up. There are then two primary opportunities to approach these challenges, preventative measures and post disaster/event response. Both these can be affected and improved by local community engagement and participation, as I hope to have demonstrated in this briefing. Although there are many hurdles to be overcome it is only through collective community action that real change is seen. We cannot simply wait for the change to happen, it needs to start from the bottom and be brought to the top for lasting change to be permanently implemented, so the people who are most affected get a valued and deserved voice in infrastructure that is meant to protect them. “Humanity is now considered to be not simply one of earth’s biological factors, but a geological actor too; an actor that shapes geophysical transformations on the earth’s stratigraphy the way only ‘natural’ forces used to do in earth’s previous long history” (Kaika, 2018, p. 1716). If humanity is that crucial of an actor, who also needs take responsibility, in the geophysical transformation of our planet, then there is no doubt that the people of Orleans Parish can reshape their city into a more equitable, infrastructurally sound, community where no one’s right to the city (Harvey 2003) is called into question.
References
Bledsoe, A. & Wright, W. J. (2018) ‘The anti-Blackness of global capital’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37 (1), 8-26.
Campanella, T. J. (2006) ‘Urban Resilience and the Recovery of New Orleans’, Journal of the American Planning Association, 72 (2), 141-146.
Campbell, S. (2013) ‘Sustainable Development and Social Justice: Conflicting Urgencies and the Search for Common Ground in Urban and Regional Planning’, Michigan Journal of Sustainability, 1, 75-91.
Chavez, R. (2023) Why the saltwater wedge climbing up the Mississippi River is a wake-up call to the region. Available at: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/why-salt-water-is-threatening-drinking-water-in-new-orleans-and-what-officials-are-doing-about-it (Accessed: 26 October 2023).
Edmonds, C. (2023) Saltwater in the Mississippi Threatens Water Supply in New Orleans. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/23/us/saltwater-mississippi-new-orleans.html (Accessed: 26 October 2023).
Harvey, D. (2003) ‘The Right to the City’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27 (4), 939-941.
Irazábal, C. & Neville, J. (2007) ‘Neighbourhoods in the Lead: Grassroots Planning for Social Transformation in Post-Katrina New Orleans?’, Planning, Practice & Research, 22 (2), 131-153.
Kaika, M. (2018) ‘Between the frog and the eagle: claiming a ‘Scholarship of Presence’ for the Anthropocene’, European Planning Studies, 26 (9), 1714-1727.
Leavitt, W. M. & Kiefer, J. J. (2006) ‘Infrastructure Interdependency and the Creation of a Normal Disaster The Case of Hurricane Katrina and the City of New Orleans’, Public Works Management & Policy, 10 (4), 306-314.
New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2023) A Saltwater Wedge Affects the Mississippi. Available at: https://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/Missions/Engineering/Stage-and-Hydrologic-Data/SaltwaterWedge/ (Accessed: 26 October 2023).
New Orleans District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2023) An Overview of the Mississippi River’s Saltwater Wedge. Available at: https://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/Missions/Engineering/Stage-and-Hydrologic-Data/SaltwaterWedge/SaltwaterWedgeOverview/ (Accessed: 26 October 2023).
NOLA Ready (2023) About Saltwater Intrusion. Available at: https://ready.nola.gov/incident/saltwater-intrusion/about-saltwater-intrusion/?utm_source=nola&utm_medium=banner (Accessed: 26 October 2023).
NOLA Ready Tropical Cyclones. Available at: https://ready.nola.gov/hazard-mitigation/hazards/tropical-cyclones/#top (Accessed: 26 October 2023).
Parker, H. & Juhasz, A. (2023) We answer your questions about the saltwater wedge in the Mississippi River. Available at: https://www.wwno.org/coastal-desk/2023-09-27/we-answer-your-questions-about-the-saltwater-wedge-in-the-mississippi-river#q-2 (Accessed: 26 October 2023).
Parker, H., Hazelwood, G. & Juhasz, A. (2023) Saltwater wedge moving slower than projected; unlikely to reach New Orleans until late November. Available at: https://www.wwno.org/coastal-desk/2023-10-05/saltwater-wedge-moving-slower-than-projected-unlikely-to-reach-new-orleans-until-late-november (Accessed: 26 October 2023).
Pearsall, H. & Pierce, J. (2010) ‘Urban sustainability and environmental justice: evaluating the linkages in public planning / policy discourse’, Local Environment, 15 (6), 569-580.
Rojanasakul, M. (2023) When Will the Saltwater Wedge Reach New Orleans? We Mapped It. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/29/climate/new-orleans-saltwater-map.html?action=click (Accessed: 26 October 2023).
Skilton, L. (2023) Hurricanes in Louisiana. Available at: https://64parishes.org/entry/hurricanes-in-louisiana (Accessed: 26 October 2023).
Smith, M. (2023) The new saltwater forecast is out for the New Orleans area. Here’s what is shows. Available at: https://www.nola.com/news/environment/new-saltwater-forecast-means-good-news-for-new-orleans-area/article_2624ced4-6e90-11ee-8a93-0747faff9b9b.html (Accessed: 26 October 2023).
Sonne, B. (2014) ‘Managing Stormwater by Sustainable Measures: Preventing Neighborhood Flooding and Green Infrastructure Implementation in New Orleans’, Tulane Environmental Law Journal, 27 (323), 323-350.