[GreenYes] A New Landfill in New Orleans Sets Off a Battle

[Alan Muller <amuller@no.address>]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050806P.shtml

A New Landfill in New Orleans Sets Off a Battle
     By Leslie Eaton
     The New York Times

     Monday 08 May 2006

     New Orleans - Block after block, 
neighborhood after neighborhood, tens of 
thousands of hurricane-ravaged houses here rot in 
the sun, still waiting to be gutted or bulldozed. 
Now officials have decided where several million 
tons of their remains will be dumped: in man-made 
pits at the swampy eastern edge of town, out by 
the coffee-roasting plant and the space-shuttle 
factory and the big wildlife refuge.

     But more than a thousand Vietnamese-American 
families live less than two miles from the edge 
of the new landfill. And they are far from 
pleased at having the moldering remains of a 
national disaster plunked down nearby, alongside 
the canal that flooded their neighborhood when 
Hurricane Katrina surged through last year.

     Environmental groups are also angry, 
accusing local and federal officials of ignoring 
or circumventing their own regulations, long 
after the immediate emergency has ended. The same 
thing happened after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, 
they warn, and that dump ended up becoming a Superfund site.

     The new landfill, known as Chef Menteur 
after the highway that borders it, sits across a 
canal from Bayou Sauvage, the largest urban 
wildlife refuge in the country, with 23,000 acres 
of marshland, canals and lagoons that are home to 
herons, egrets, alligators and, in the fall, tens 
of thousands of migratory ducks.

     Nonetheless, the landfill lacks some of the 
safeguards that existing dumps do, like special 
clay liners. The government says they are not 
needed because demolition debris is cleaner than other rubbish.

     Residents and environmentalists think 
otherwise, because after Hurricane Katrina the 
state expanded the definition of construction and 
demolition debris to include most of a house's 
contents, down to the moldy mattresses and soggy sofas.

     "It's essentially the guts of your house, 
all your personal possessions," said Joel 
Waltzer, a lawyer representing landfill 
opponents. "Electronics, personal-care products, 
cleaning solutions, pesticides, fertilizers, bleach."

     State officials say that the new landfill is 
safe and that they are simply moving quickly to 
protect public health and the environment, using 
techniques that did not exist 40 years ago. The 
new site was chosen to speed up the cleanup, they 
say, because the debris will not have to be 
hauled far. The state estimates that 7.2 million 
tons of hurricane debris remains to be cleaned 
up; the Chef Menteur landfill will take 2.6 million tons.

     "You cannot rebuild until you clean up," 
said Chuck Carr Brown, an assistant secretary of 
the Louisiana Department of Environmental 
Quality, which provided a permit for the 
landfill. "I'm still in the eye of the storm."

     The state has agreed to do some extra 
monitoring of groundwater, Dr. Brown said. But it 
has determined "there's nothing toxic, nothing 
hazardous," he continued. "There will be no 
impact" on the community, which is sometimes called Versailles.

     Like so many disputes that have erupted 
since the hurricane, this one involves some 
highly charged issues: politics, money, history 
and race. Not to mention a highly developed 
distrust of government that almost all Louisianians now seem to share.

     Unlike most residents of eastern New 
Orleans, the Vietnamese have returned, rebuilt 
and drawn up elaborate plans for their 
30-year-old community's future. Now they feel 
unwelcome, said the Rev. Vien thé Nguyen, the 
pastor of Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church 
and a leader in the fight against the landfill, which opened on April 26.

     "They're threatening our very existence," 
Father Vien said of the government agencies that 
approved the dump site, which residents fear will 
tower 80 feet or more above their neighborhood, 
dwarfing the new church they are planning to 
build, once the Federal Emergency Management 
Agency trailers are gone from the site.

     Father Vien said he was particularly worried 
about the quality of water in the canal and the 
lagoon that run through the neighborhood of tidy 
brick houses. Residents use that water on the 
tiny waterside gardens that supply the community 
with sugar cane and bitter melon and Vietnamese 
varieties of vegetables, he said.

     He and his parishioners are particularly 
angry at Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who in February used 
emergency powers to waive zoning regulations for the landfill.

     "Maybe we're not the right kind of people he 
wanted to return," Father Vien said. Neither the 
mayor nor his staff responded to requests for 
response to the priest's comments.

     The state and the Army Corps of Engineers, 
which is handling cleanup in the city, say that 
without the dump, the cleanup would take much 
longer. The existing dumps would not be able to 
process all the debris fast enough, officials 
say, and are too far from the blighted buildings.

     And the need for the new dump will only 
increase, they say, as the cleanup progresses. 
Maurice Falk, the corps official in charge of the 
cleanup, said at a federal court hearing last 
week that only 115 houses have been demolished so far.

     Given that slow pace, critics question why 
the landfill had to be opened so quickly, before 
environmental studies were prepared and the 
community was consulted. The community would be 
willing to negotiate a compromise and do its part 
in the cleanup of the city, said Kelly H. Tran, 
who lives in the Vietnamese enclave and with her 
husband runs a construction company that has been fixing damaged houses.

     But, she continued, "It's not fair for us to 
have no voice in this big decision, this critical decision."

     State officials said they had reviewed the 
site for a landfill in the past, when political 
opposition had blocked it, and now simply could 
not wait two or three months to get through the 
public comment period. But on April 28, after the 
opposition was in full cry, the state and the 
corps put out a notice soliciting public comment on the landfill.

     If residents or opponents "have something we 
missed, we'll address it," said Mike D. McDaniel, 
the secretary of the State Department of 
Environmental Quality. As for those who argue 
that there is no emergency involved, he 
disagrees. "Some people can't seem to understand 
this is not business as usual," he said.

     Environmental groups are not happy. Adam 
Babich, director of the Tulane Environmental Law 
Clinic, said government agencies in the region 
had never been vigilant about complying with 
environmental regulations but had been especially 
lax since the storm. This attitude is most 
apparent, he said, when it comes to landfills. In 
nearby Plaquemines Parish, a longtime dispute 
over a landfill has flared up because the dump is 
taking in Hurricane Katrina debris.

     And sparring continues over the Old Gentilly 
landfill, an old-fashioned, unlined dump that the 
state closed in 1986 but reopened after the 
hurricane. It is now accepting a limited amount 
of debris after a suit was filed by the Louisiana 
Environmental Action Network, one of the groups 
represented by Mr. Waltzer, and it was criticized 
in a report commissioned by FEMA.

     The fight over the new landfill is by no 
means over, Father Vien said. On April 27 he was 
showing visitors the site - and admiring the 
alligators gliding through the adjacent Maxent 
Canal - when he got the news from Mr. Waltzer 
that a federal judge had refused to issue a 
temporary injunction against the dump.

     At first he seemed stunned. "I cannot 
believe that," he repeated several times.

     Then he rallied.

     "The game is not over," he said. "It just started, actually."


--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GreenYes" group.
To post to this group, send email to GreenYes@no.address
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to GreenYes-unsubscribe@no.address
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/GreenYes
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---