Newspaper Page Text
O DAVID RA£ MORRIS
Rebuild
Louisicfna
Members of the choir listen to speakers during an interfaith service at St. Peter Claver Catholic Church in New Orleans. LA on
July 21. 2006. The featured speaker was U S. Senator Barack Obama (D-lll).
On Aug. 14, a federal judge denied Blanco's
request to halt the lease, but warned potential
bidders that the state is likely to prevail on
its argument, which could stop drilling on the
leased tracts. The federal agency has a 90-day
window to accept the bids, just about the time
of the scheduled trial.
For now, there is no institutional mechanism
to rebuild the eroding coastline. Mark Davis,
the outgoing director of the coastal restoration
coalition, says that “awareness is at an all-time
high, but the decision-making apparatus is not
there to do what needs to be done. It's like
watching a revival movement, with everyone
talking about how good heaven is, but yoj don't
see a great shift in behavior as if people 3re
planning to get there."
Davis, who has worked with everyone from
bank presidents to shrimpers, faults a forest
of red tape and inertia in Washington. Even if
revenues materialize, the state lacks jurisdiction
over levees and navigational structures—they
fall under federal authority. “The state's ability
to change is not just a question of money," he
says. “Blanco has come to the realization that
the state has to lead the federal government to
the answers."
Davis credits Blanco for suing the minerals
management agency; she sent a message that the
feds must participate in rebuilding the coast.
What kind of institution should guide coastal
restoration? And how do you pay for it? “A big
problem with major environmental projects is
that Congress authorizes funds that take forever
to materialize," says Davis. Authorized fund
ing has lagged in delivery in restoracion of the
Everglades and in a California project to prevent
flooding from the Sacramento River that threat
ens San Francisco Bay. Finding a dependable
revenue stream is a big hurdle. Congressional
committees have annual appropriations that go
through endless negotiations over special inter
ests, like a revolving door, every year.
The Tennessee Valley Authority delivered elec
trification to the middle South during the Great
Depression, as a federal agency. Why couldn't a
similar agency rebuild Louisiana's wetlands as
part of an Atlantic coastal protection agenda,
with immunity from Congressional pork-barrel
ing? Whatever the mechanism necessary for a
solution, it is way overdue.
The only way to prevent the disaster sce
narios that Gore, Tidwell and others put before us |
is with a mass campaign to reduce global warm
ing. Getting a national strategy is the toughest
order, given the slovenly mindset in Congress and
the White House. A policy that rewards industry
for cutting carbon dioxide emissions, develop
ing energy-efficient cars and homes and shifting
the economy from dependency on fossil fuels
may seem unreachable in this maddened time of
terrorism and oil wars. The alternative is to sink
into a deeper passivity of consumerism. Couch
potatoes at the apocalypse, we'll fill up at S5 a
gallon and head for the heartland each time the
next big one comes, trying not to collide with
sweaty nomads from Alaska, all of us carrying a
memory of the flood.
Jason Barry
Jason Berry is a New Orleans writer whose books in
clude Lead Us Not Into Temptation, Vows of Silence and
a novel, Last of the Red Hot Poppas, to be published
in September. This article was commissioned by the
Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.
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