Fight Grows in New Orleans on Demolition and Rebuilding

By Adam Nossiter
The New York Times

Friday 06 January 2005

New Orleans - With activists, planners and residents squaring off over which neighborhoods will be demolished and which will be rebuilt, state officials are warning that some low-lying neighborhoods may not be eligible for federal rebuilding assistance.

Sean Reilly, a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the state body formed partly to manage the flow of federal money to the state, castigated city officials on Wednesday for assuring residents that every neighborhood flooded after Hurricane Katrina would be rebuilt.

Mr. Reilly made it clear that federal money, at least in some forms, was unlikely to go to those areas.

"The L.R.A. will not fund an irrational and unsafe rebuilding plan," Mr. Reilly said in Baton Rouge. "Someone has to be tough, to stand up, and to tell the truth. Every neighborhood in New Orleans will not be able to come back safe and viable. The L.R.A. is speaking the truth with the money it controls."

Until now, political leaders in New Orleans have been reluctant to tell residents that some neighborhoods may be too damaged or too vulnerable to future flooding to be rebuilt at the same pace as others that were less damaged.

The City Council recently rejected a proposal by the Urban Land Institute, a planning group that advises the city, to focus rebuilding on higher ground and urge residents not to return immediately to heavily damaged areas like the impoverished Lower Ninth Ward.

In a vote last month, the Council promised that all neighborhoods would be rebuilt.

"Resources should be disbursed to all areas in a consistent and uniform fashion," the Council said in a resolution.

To protest the idea that some areas should not be rebuilt, some neighborhood activists have been fighting the city plan to begin demolishing ruined houses in some low-lying neighborhoods. On the streets of the Lower Ninth Ward on Thursday, one group was able, at least temporarily, to stop the city from clearing streets littered with debris from ruined houses.

The group of residents and activists rushed to Reynes Street in the Lower Ninth Ward when they heard that a backhoe was moving debris. After angry calls to City Hall, the group persuaded officials to stop the work.

Many houses on Reynes Street, near the levee break on the Industrial Canal, are no more than immense piles of rubble. In some cases, the piles spill out into what remains of the street.

Nonetheless, the group said the city's action violated a court agreement that no demolitions proceed until hearings are held. City officials insist that they simply want to clear away 100 of the most damaged houses.

Activists, pointing to earlier official statements, say up to 2,500 damaged houses are threatened with demolition and have criticized the city for failing to contact their owners.

"They were scraping people's homes, trying to clear the roads," Ishmael Muhammad, a lawyer, said at the protest. "You have to do your work and contact the owners. They have value in there. We know the city has a need, as well. But don't just go willy-nilly demolishing people's homes."

Officials did not respond to telephone calls for comment. Activists and lawyers for the city are to meet with a federal judge on Friday to decide on the course of a suit over the demolitions.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin's rebuilding commission is scheduled to issue its planning blueprint for the city next week. In the meantime, the state recovery authority, which controls the spending of billions of dollars in federal aid, has quietly begun taking action to ensure that the money will not be spent randomly around the city.

In a little-noticed vote last month, the authority agreed not to spend money on rebuilding that does not conform to federal flood maps, which experts expect the Federal Emergency Management Agency to issue shortly. Under those rules, all houses built in the lowest-lying areas would have to be elevated, a requirement that would add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost for each house and probably make it impossible for low-income families to rebuild.

The most damaged neighborhoods, including the Lower Ninth Ward, Gentilly and Lakeview, would be the most directly affected.

"At some point, tough decisions have to be made," Mr. Reilly emphasized in an interview on Thursday. "We can ensure that federal dollars sent our way are spent to build stronger and keep people out of harm's way. I think the implications are real. Development will have to be in conformity with those new flood advisory maps."