St. Bernard Parish, Day Four

The siding on the house we’ve been working on is almost complete. The house looks so much better than it did at the beginning of the week. Doors were delivered, and perhaps we’ll be able to hang those tomorrow. This was our third day at the same sight, with the same crew, so there is some bonding going on, the shier among us are starting to loosen up, and we’re getting huge amounts of work done. Last night, someone told me that if all of the siding is nailed into all of the studs, it will be able to withstand 140 mile per hour winds. (And I’m willing to treat her statement with credulity, as she is one of the long-term Habitat volunteers who has been here for a while.)

This leads me to today’s topic, which is the environmental aspect. Today I spoke to a volunteer who told me that when he was considering this trip, part of him wondered if there was really a point in building houses if another hurricane, or another flood, is going to come along. And there will be another hurricane. This is something that a lot of people don’t really want to talk about. Understandably.

One thing you will hear repeatedly from the locals is this: "this was a manmade disaster." The other day, someone who works for the parish government echoed that statement more specifically: "The river didn’t flood. The canals are what flooded." In St. Bernard Parish, the flooding came from the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal (MR-GO), a navigation channel that was built to shorten the route from New Orleans’ harbor to the Gulf of Mexico. The 25 foot storm surge that swamped the parish came when the levees on the sides of the MR-GO were overwhelmed.

There are two aspects to this "man-made disaster." The first relates to engineering and the environment. It has been argued that the wetlands of southern Louisiana, in their natural state, could absorb a storm surge, or a flood, without most of that excess water making it on to land. But of course those wetlands haven’t been in their natural state for a long time. People have been building channels, draining marshes, and diverting water around here for centuries. And when you build a canal, and line it with levees, the water doesn’t flow the way it does naturally. It flows through the channels that have been constructed, and it can overwhelm them if it’s more water than they are designed for. All the construction of levees and canals throughout the Mississippi Delta has greatly increased the erosion of coastal vegetation, as much as 34 square miles a year by some estimates. The more it declines, the closer the ocean gets to New Orleans. Hurricanes get weaker when they make landfall, and they lose power rapidly as they move inland. The closer New Orleans is to the ocean, the stronger the hurricanes will be when they arrive.

The second aspect is political. Louisiana and New Orleans have a long and colorful history of corruption. Think Huey Long and Leander Perez. Many of the levees and the canals were not constructed the way they were supposed to be. Why spend all the money necessary to build something the right way, when it’s cheaper to bribe a public official to look the other way while you cut corners? I’ll use an example from another country to illustrate how tragic the results can be from this sort of collusion. Jesus Gil y Gil was a shady Spanish businessman who later became mayor of Marbella and president of the Atletico Madrid Football Club. Gil initially made his money in construction. In 1967, an apartment building his company had constructed collapsed during an earthquake. 58 people died. Had he built the apartment building according to safety codes, this probably wouldn’t have happened. But he didn’t, because it was cheaper to pay off public officials. His greed was more important than people’s safety. He was sent to jail at the time, but he was only there for a few months before Generalissimo Francisco Franco gave him a pardon and he was released (allegedly after yet another payoff). Corrupt politicians and shady businessmen get rich, and when the shit hits the fan, people die because of their malfeasance.

We can’t prevent another monster hurricane from coming through, so we try to build structures that can withstand them. But I haven’t even mentioned global warming yet. The ocean might be getting closer to New Orleans due to a loss of coastal wetland vegetation, but rising sea levels will bring it even closer together. But that doesn’t mean we should abandon one of America’s great cities, and its equally fascinating environs, to the vagaries of fate. I can’t answer the question of whether all this rebuilding is ultimately worth it, if we’re just going to keep doing it again and again. But I’m an optimist. If my family had lived someplace for hundreds of years, if I had a deep, spiritual connection to the land and the water and the culture I grew up with it, I’d keep rebuilding my house every time it got knocked down. I wouldn’t leave until there really was no other choice. I wouldn’t leave until it was completely underwater for good.