The Corps of Engineers is insisting that the Industrial Canal Lock needs replacing because it’s an antique. The real antique however, is the Corps’ way of thinking and doing business. The lock project is a relic of 19th and 20th century thinking. It is a piece of the so-called “Inner Harbor” complex - a project conceived around 1900 to move port facilities off the riverfront and into inland canals where private industry could lease space. The Industrial Canal was the first component of this project. Other components of this expansive plan included the fruitless industrial development in New Orleans East, the failed Violet Canal and lock in St. Bernard Parish, and the infamous Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet.
The Inner Harbor plan has been a complete failure. In terms of social, economic, and environmental costs, the record is clear: The Inner Harbor has brought nothing but hardship for the areas below the Industrial Canal. The Industrial Canal and MR-GO have flooded the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard multiple times, decimating the community’s housing stock, killing its residents, destroying its natural ecosystems, and stymieing the economic development this area has long sought. The MR-GO is recognized across the nation as a grievous allocation of federal resources and an environmental and humanitarian disaster. The new lock will not erase this tragic legacy; it merely represents a continuation of it.
The new lock was authorized by the same piece of legislation that brought us the MR-GO, back in 1956. Due to its economic shortcomings and its threat to the wetlands, Congress has deauthorized the MR-GO. The flow of commerce is shifting back to the riverfront. In fact, the Port of New Orleans abandoned its master plan for the Inner Harbor, called Centroport, in the 1980s. The closure of the MR-GO is the nail in the coffin of the Inner Harbor experiment. Asking for $1.3 billion in taxpayer money in a development scheme that has proved devastating is absolutely disgraceful. It is time to turn the page and invest in innovative technologies that can make our riverfront facilities the best in the world. This trend is clear to most observers, but the Corps refuses to read the writing on the wall.
New Orleanians have long borne the brunt of the “unforeseen impacts” of the Inner Harbor development. For years, we’ve been cleaning up messes that the Corps has created. Now, the Corps demands that the community suffer these impacts again: traffic jams, bridge closings, clamorous noise, toxic sediments in our fragile wetlands, potential levee problems, and any number of hazards that moving this much earth is bound to create - and the Corps is helpless to predict. We need 21st century flood protection and coastal restoration, not a continuation of 20th century injustices. For these reasons, and many more, the Industrial Canal Lock Replacement project should be deauthorized.
Joshua Lewis
New Orleans
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Citizens Say Lock Plans are Unfair
(From the Times-Picayune) The Army Corps of Engineers' latest plan to build a new Industrial Canal lock drew sharp criticism Wednesday night from activists who say the controversial project unfairly puts shipping interests above the environmental health of neighborhoods along the waterway.
Pam Dashiell, chairwoman of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, said the new lock would usher in "gangs of barges and deep-draft ships to a community that is struggling."
"Are you trying to kill us again?" Dashiell said, referring to the breached floodwalls that allowed Katrina's floodwaters to inundate neighborhoods abutting the Industrial Canal.
Dashiell was one of more than 30 angry citizens who railed against the new lock Wednesday night at the Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School in the Lower 9th Ward, where the corps presented its new report of the environmental consequences of the project.
The assessment fulfills a 2006 order by a federal judge who ordered the corps to halt work on the project after community and environmental groups sued, saying the agency failed to fully assess the toxicity of materials that would be unearthed during construction. U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon said the corps would have to further study the environmental effects before moving forward on the project.
--- Environmental concerns ---
Although the report contends that dredged materials will present negligible health risks, opponents of the new lock say the corps' latest assessment hardly addresses concerns raised in the lawsuit.
"They specifically didn't answer the questions that we raised to the judge," said Jill Witkowski, an attorney for the groups that sued. "They've come back with six volumes that don't answer our questions."
Witkowski has asked the corps for more time to independently review the agency's analysis of dredged materials, although she said she has not received a response. After a 45-day public comment period that ends Nov. 24, the corps will send its report to Fallon, who will review the document to rule whether the corps can continue building the new lock.
During a brief presentation of the voluminous report, the corps promised to securely store any dredged materials that contain harmful chemicals. Heavy metals and other industrial toxins can be found in relatively small quantities in the Industrial Canal, according to Richard Boe, the corps' environmental manager of the lock project.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)