We hand-delivered the request to Army Corps officials and read sections into the public record during their March 7 meeting at Dr. This is why the 11 Lower 9 th Ward community organizations partnered to submit paperwork requesting documents rightfully available to us under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Unless, of course, we apply enough pressure. Our requests for transcripts from their meetings?Īnd our Freedom of Information Act request from 11 Lower 9 th Ward community groups? Our requests for additional comment cards to pass out to folks unable to attend their meetings? Michael Clancy told The Times-Picayune, “we got the message.”įor nearly two months, I and others have emailed multiple Army Corps officials, requesting public documents they promised to provide us – prior to the end of their “public comment period.” “By making people vote with their feet,” New Orleans District commander and district engineer Col. Willie Calhoun asked those who opposed the new lock project to stand, every person in attendance rose as one. The Army Corps would have us believe they hear the community’s concerns - about noise, toxins, impeded traffic, relocation, fear of flooding and disrupted neighborhoods.Ī recent community meeting drew hundreds of Upper and Lower 9 th Ward residents to St. They will build levees - the BEST Levees! - around the construction site to protect the surrounding communities from flooding. All relocations will be “temporary.” Only long enough to make way for a “temporary” bridge to replace the one at St. But before they start dynamiting and dredging, they will need to relocate nearby residents. Claude Avenue - and dredge nearly a century of heavy metals and miscellaneous toxins from the 30-foot-deep canal. ![]() To do so, the Army Corps will need to dynamite the existing 250,000-ton lock - which is close to the Mississippi River at St. The 13-plus year, billion-dollar boondoggle would replace the existing lock with a shiny new shallow-draft lock north of Claiborne Avenue, nearly a mile into the city’s East Bank. If the Corps ignores our repeated requests for public documents – documents they promise us at community meetings – why should we believe their promises to consider our concerns? Read the Army Corps’ current plan as well as decades of previous iterations that have been shot down by the courts here. Bernard Parish and the Lower and Upper 9 th wards, the Army Corps’ New Orleans Division rolled out their latest disaster-to-be: a scheme to replace the lock in the 94-year-old Inner Harbor Navigational Canal, commonly known as the Industrial Canal. “We’ll build levees, and they will hold.”Īt recent community meetings in St. We’re here because we want to hear from you - the community.” ![]() When they’re outnumbered in hostile, community-meeting territory, they say things like: Army Corps of Engineers is good at making promises they have no intention of keeping. Claude Avenue bridge over the Industrial Canal would be replaced by a temporary span.
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