Point of ViewSt Bernard VoiceBy
Ron Chapman
It’s not like we didn’t warn them!
In 1956 the Federal government devised a plant to construct a 76 mile short cut from the back of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico. This would prevent maritime traffic from having to follow the circuitous route against the current of the Mississippi River to the Port of New Orleans. At that time it was called the “Tidewater Channel”. Today we call it the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO).
Edwin Roy, editor of the
St. Bernard Voice, ran a series of front-page articles denouncing the plan. He apply entitled his series
“Is St. Bernard Doomed”. How prophetic of him. He complained about the project and laid out just how devastating it would prove to be for fisheries, trapping, and land loss. He also raised concerns about its threat to the community from tidal surges.
What is most interesting in his articles from November 1957 is Mr. Roy’s concerns about the impact of “
locks for the Tidewater Channel [are] constructed at or near Meraux.” LOCKS???? What happened to those locks? Why weren’t they built? Mr. Roy admonished St. Bernard Residents to
“…wake up and fight for survival…”
It has been 48 years and since that time numerous other articles and series have been published in St. Bernard Parish’s official journal, the
St. Bernard Voice, raising concerns about this federal ditch. Many knew the threat. They attempted for the past 48 years to have their voices heard. We knew that the MRGO would one day kill our community. It was a dagger pointed at the heart of those living east of the Industrial Canal.
For years
Point of View, (a
St. Bernard Voice editorial column), has warned about the dangers. Lectures as a part of the Nunez Community College History Lecture Series have exposed the problems, the threat has been brought up at public meetings with the Army Corps of Engineers, and a series of columns by engineer Ed Doody have all sought to alert authorities of the dangers and warn citizens that their lives were in peril. The feds did nothing but procrastinate!
What we feared most has now happened! Our community is destroyed and many people have died because of MRGO!
When completed in 1964, the MRGO was 500 feet wide and was to have locks at Meraux. Today, the MRGO is nearly 3,000 feet wide, has no locks (they were never constructed!), and has destroyed 40,000 acres of cypress swamp that had traditionally provided an effective natural barrier to storm surges.
The photograph (attached) taken on the day of the storm from the Entergy Plant near the “Green Bridge” (I-510) proves that a storm surge coming up the MRGO accounted for the damage visited on our community and the lower 9th ward. The communities below the Industrial Canal are victims of short-sighted federal engineering, failure on the part of authorities to heed the warnings coming from many and varied sources, and persistent negligence on the part of the Army Corps of Engineers to address a known problem.
Do you need proof? Reports indicate that the Corps is already planning to re-dredge MRGO after the
Katrina travesty. If this is true, then the failure of the federal government to accept proof of the canal’s destructive force is obvious. Instead of planning to close it because circumstances have proven critics right, the Corps seeks to deepen and reopen it for traffic as if nothing happened. How sad is that?
The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) has been and always will be a threat to the Greater New Orleans area. It has cost the people of the lower 9th Ward, New Orleans East, and St. Bernard Parish their homes, livelihoods, and their lives. Responsibility for this rests entirely on the shoulders of a federal government and its agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, who persistently refused to heed the warnings of those who knew the threat and reported same. That makes them responsible and culpable for the damages to property and loss of life visited on these communities by hurricane Katrina.
The question now is…what will they do about it????
posted by Westley at 9/19/2005 11:05:08 PM
