First Annual Green Rebuilding Conference to be held in New Orleans November 8 & 9

The conference will held at the DoubleTree Hotel in downtown New Orleans.

View Conference details in this PDF file (115 KB).

This PDF file (123 KB) contains details for anyone interested in presenting at the conference.

This PDF file (2.97 MB) is the "New Orleans Green Building Assessment" report.

Sierra Club to Mark Katrina Anniversary with Report: “New Orleans Green Building Assessment”

New Orleans – Approaching the 4^th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, the Sierra Club will release a new report analyzing the green rebuilding efforts under way in New Orleans. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has provided the city of New Orleans with a unique opportunity to develop a national model for rebuilding green.

This “New Orleans Green Building Assessment” examines the current and former green building efforts in New Orleans, noting partnerships and potential strategies for improvement throughout. This assessment documents and merges the disparate green building efforts into one central location and successfully fulfilled its stated goals. Moving forward, this document provides a foundation for the city to develop a “best practices” model for rebuilding green, focusing on the city’s existing and emerging partnerships.

Contact: Darryl Malek-Wiley, Sierra Club
504-861-4836 (O)
504-427-1885 (C)

Ivor van Heerden, who pointed fingers in Hurricane Katrina levee failures, fired by LSU

Ivor van Heerden, the outspoken coastal scientist who led the state's independent Team Louisiana investigation into Hurricane Katrina levee failures, has been notified by Louisiana State University that he will be terminated as a research professor in May 2010.

Read more in a Times-Picayune article by Mark Schleifstein on Nola.com:
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/ivor_van_heerden_who_pointed_f.html

Bob Marshall the excellent outdoors editor for the Times-Picayune also weighs in:
http://blog.nola.com/guesteditorials/2009/04/worried_about_funding_lsu_oust.html

New Orleans: Going Green in the Big Easy

Going green in New Orleans is featured in the latest issue of:

The Latest Environmental Buzz

which is one of the Sierra Club's online newsletters. Read the rest of the story here:
http://sierra.convio.net/site/MessageViewer?em_id=44141.0

Historic Green is one of the groups behind the post-K "greening" of New Orleans.

An update on what's happening in the Lower 9th Ward:

From March 8-23, the Sierra Club will be participating in the 2008 Historic Green event to rebuild a sustainable New Orleans. Hundreds of students and young professionals in the construction industry—architects, engineers, planners, landscape architects, interior designers, and contractors—will converge on the Crescent City to work hand-in-hand with residents of the Holy Cross Historic District, part of the Lower Ninth Ward that was among the city's hardest-hit areas during Hurricane Katrina.

More >>

Brad Pitt is OK in our book

Say what you will about narcissistic, vain and selfish celebrities, but don't you dare say that about Mr. Brad Pitt. No you can't say that about him because he is putting his money where his mouth is. He says that he loves New Orleans and he is proving it, he and his partner Angelina Jolie, have not only bought a home here, he has also initiated a project to help others obtain new homes after theirs were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Pitt has created the Make It Right (MIR) project to build "green affordable housing on a large scale to help victims of Hurricane Katrina." What a great thing to do for the people of New Orleans. We love the whole concept but we especially love the "green" part.

For more information on the Make It Right project go to their Web site:
The Make It Right (MIR) project site

Some of the positive press the story has received:
Times-Picayune story here
CNN story here
USA Today story here

As one commenter on the TP's nola.com site said, "Brad Pitt for Mayor!" We could do worse. Oh right, we already did.

Thanks Brad.

The Lower Ninth Battles Back

The word "will" comes up constantly in the Lower Ninth Ward now; We Will Rebuild is spray-painted onto empty houses; "it will happen," one organizer told me. Will itself may achieve the ambitious objective of bringing this destroyed neighborhood back to life, and for many New Orleanians a ferocious determination seems the only alternative to being overwhelmed and becalmed.

Read the rest of this article from The Nation at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070910/solnit

The risk of the New Orleans area flooding -- again

The New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper ran a story about the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers newly released report on flood risk in Southeastern Louisiana.

It is not a pretty picture. The news could be better.

Read more on Nola.com:

http://blog.nola.com/graphics/2007/06/the_risk_of_hurricane_flooding.html
http://blog.nola.com/updates/2007/06/risk.html

Building Partnerships to Help Rebuild the Big Easy

On June 14, members of the Sierra Club and the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association gathered for a Friendship Dinner. Read more about it at the Sierra Club's Grassroots Scrapbook blog:

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/scrapbook/2007/06/photo-by-rebecc.html

New report on the Murphy Oil spill in St. Bernard Parish

Below is a link to a new report on the Murphy Oil spill that occurred in St. Bernard Parish after Hurricane Katrina.

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/respond/home

Southeast Louisiana Wildlife Refuges: Environmental Challenges Post Katrina

The National Wildlife Refuge System is an important wildlife habitat and recreational resource in Southeast Louisiana. You may have read a recent Times-Picayune article on the current state of Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge in New Orleans East. Bayou Sauvage is not alone in suffering significant impacts. The eight refuges in our area face a number of environmental challenges including damage done to important habitat by Katrina itself and severe budgetary cutbacks by the Bush administration.

A local "bridge to nowhere"?

The state of Louisiana is about to do a really dumb thing, and a small group of New Orleanians, with the help of academics from as far away as Colorado and Wisconsin, have an elegant alternative to suggest.

The state is getting ready to spend three hundred and fifty-eight million dollars on a gigantic automobile overpass along the northern edge of the Lower Ninth Ward, to connect downtown New Orleans with neighboring St. Bernard Parish. St. Bernard was home to sixty-seven thousand people before Katrina and to maybe a little more than a third of that now. Opponents call the overpass “the bridge to nowhere.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/neworleansjournal/2007/04/port_saint_malo.html

For more information, email Darryl Malek-Wiley at:Darryl.malek-wiley@sierraclub.org

Mardi Gras Celebrations Overshadowed By Toxic Trailers

"Even the Sierra Club has an article on their website - their's is titled "Mardi Gras Celebrations Overshadowed By Toxic Trailers." Apparently the Sierra Club tested some of the FEMA campers and the test results showed levels of formaldehyde above the EPA limit."

From "The Invisible Flood Blog." (This Blog is the story of one family's adventurous journey hrough the aftermath of the Invisible Flood of 06. The name - Invisible Flood of 06 - is meant to draw attention to the lack of national news coverage to what was in fact a devastating flooding event of historic proportions which impacted large sections of NYS and several other states. The blog is meant to bring the light of day to the nonsense, bureaucracy, and BS that flood victims encounter as they wade through the land of FEMA, NFIP Flood Insurance, State Grants, and other aspects of life after a flood. Journey with us through the ripples left by the Invisible
Flood of 06... )

http://invisibleflood.blogspot.com/2007/03/thoughts-about-fema-selling-trailers.html