STORM DAMAGE

IN NOLA, ONLY THE BIG HAVE IT EASY

SAM SMITH - One of the issues coming to the fore in New Orleans is
eminent domain. Once again the robber barons stand to win big time as a
result of its use in the NOLA clean-up. While fighting the use of
eminent domain is one tactic, here's another possibility: in cases where
it seems inevitable, demand not only fair payment for the property, but
a percentage of all increases in property taxes in the future and a
major piece of whatever excess the city gets when it sells the property
after ripping off the original owner. A trust fund could be set up for
eminent domain victims to distribute these funds.

EUGENE ROBINSON, WASHINGTON POST - Assemble the brass band and let the
funeral march begin, because the old New Orleans is dead. The passing of
our most distinctive city, so prominent in American imagination and
lore, became official Wednesday when a blue-ribbon commission presented
its plan to rebuild on the mud-caked ruins. One way or another --
through a proposed moratorium on rebuilding in the areas flooded when
the levees failed, or through protracted argument over whether to have a
moratorium -- the plan all but guarantees additional months of delay and
rot. Every day, meanwhile, more evacuees will decide to make new lives
for themselves elsewhere. . .

The plan city officials unveiled Wednesday envisions much of [Fats]
Domino's neighborhood being condemned and turned into parkland or sold
to developers. Several property owners reacted angrily and threatened to
resist the bulldozers, with physical force if need be, but the plan just
recognizes the inevitable. The Lower Ninth will never be the Lower Ninth
again.

Neither will Central City or a half-dozen other big neighborhoods that
the city wants to condemn and sell for development. Much of what has
always been considered the heart and soul of black New Orleans has in
effect been wiped off the map. Former residents are dispersed; the few
who got housed in local hotels are under pressure to get out so the
hotels can make room for the Mardi Gras tourists. . .

The reason the old New Orleans is dead is that the people who made it
special are gone and there is no path for them to come back. I doubt
there's anywhere else in this country you could find so many black
people who look white or so many white people who sound black. I know
there's nowhere else you could find all the Creoles and Cajuns, nowhere
else you could hear that odd New Orleans accent that sounds more like
Brooklyn than Biloxi. The Bring New Orleans Back Commission envisions a
city with lots of green space and a new light rail system; it sees
revitalized schools and world-class medical research centers, all
protected by invincible levees. It might be a nice place to live, but it
won't be the old New Orleans.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/12/AR2006011201552.html


KRIS AXTMAN, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - The land-use report gives some
residents just four months to prove that their neighborhoods are fit to
be rebuilt. It's not yet clear just what standard of proof they must
meet, but "neighborhood planning teams" will be created to help
residents consider the future of their communities and let city
officials know by June 20 what their neighborhoods need and, ultimately,
whether they can survive. Some observers say the decision could come
down to population: Will enough people return to sustain a neighborhood?
Making the process even more difficult, members of the New Orleans City
Council have said they will not back any plan that does not allow
immediate rebuilding everywhere in the city. . . Residents have been
stirred over the prospect of eminent domain. "A whole community has been
uprooted and huge parts of it destroyed," says Janet Howard, president
and CEO of the Bureau of Governmental Research in New Orleans.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0113/p01s01-ussc.html?s=hns

AP - Angry residents expressed frustration Wednesday at the debut of
rebuilding proposals for this devastated city, taking aim at a suggested
four-month moratorium on new building permits in areas heavily flooded
by Hurricane Katrina. "Our neighborhood is ready to come home," said
property owner Jeb Bruneau of Lakeview, which borders Lake
Pontchartrain. "Don't get in our way and prevent us from doing that.
Help us cut the red tape.". . .

The Bring New Orleans Back Commission, appointed by Mayor Ray Nagin,
released its initial recommendations to a packed crowd of local
residents. The plans could become part of a blueprint for rebuilding New
Orleans - a task unparalleled in American history. The idea behind the
moratorium is to ensure that enough people would move back to a
neighborhood to avoid large expanses with isolated houses.

But that didn't sit well with residents from the hard-hit Ninth Ward,
Lakeview and east New Orleans. Several lashed out at commission members,
such as prominent New Orleans developer Joseph Canizaro. "I don't know
you, but Mr. Canizaro, I hate you," Harvey Bender of the Lower Ninth
Ward said as he pointed his finger. "You've been in the background
scheming to take our land.". . .

Another resident, Carolyn Parker, said: "I don't think it's right that
you take our properties. Over my dead body." Others vowing to fight the
plan include City Council members, the New Orleans chapter of the NAACP
and former mayor and National Urban League president Marc Morial. The
NAACP said it would be unfair not to allow residents to rebuild and
questioned suggestions that some areas of the city should not be rebuilt
because they are not "sustainable.". . .

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/neworleans0113

PERRO DE JONG RADIO NETHERLANDS - Louisiana officials believe lessons
can be learnt from the Dutch Historical roles were reversed when top
officials from hurricane-stricken Louisiana visited Zeeland province in
the Netherlands this week. The delegation was led by Louisiana Governor
Kathleen Blanco and included senators Mary Landrieu and David Vitter.

In 1953, Zeeland was devastated by a flood disaster even worse than the
one in New Orleans. Two thousand people were killed, and the system of
dykes protecting the islands and peninsulas in Zeeland's river delta
collapsed in nearly 500 places. After the disaster, Dutch delegates
visited Louisiana to marvel at the state-of-the-art levees placed along
the Mississippi River in the 1920s and '30s. Realising that tragedy
could perhaps have been prevented, the delegates returned home vowing
they would never again be taken by surprise.

Zeeland's pioneering Delta Project was a direct result of these
considerations. While the likelihood of a Katrina-like disaster in New
Orleans had been estimated at once every 200 or 300 years, the Delta
Project was designed to push the envelope and withstand flood conditions
occurring once every 10,000 years. . .

What exactly such an answer might involve became clear during the high
point of the delegation's visit: an excursion to the actual storm-surge
barriers. Hurricane Katrina breached New Orleans' famous levees The
Oosterscheldebarrier is the biggest and was the most difficult to build:
a 5.6-mile hydraulic wall with sluice-gate doors that are normally left
open to protect the area's delicate tidal habitat. Another wall, the
Maeslantbarrier, protects Rotterdam, the Netherlands' second city with a
population roughly the same size as that of New Orleans. Consisting of
two hollow doors the size of the Eiffel Tower, the Maeslantbarrier was
the Delta Project's final installment. When it was completed in 1997,
the total cost of the project amounted to more than $5 bn. . . In the
Netherlands, funding for the Delta Project came mostly from taxes, under
a series of centuries-old rulings that had made dyke maintenance a
"common cause" for the whole community and not just those in flood-risk
areas. The United States does not have such a history. . .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4607452.stm