New Orleans unveils controversial rebuilding plan
New Orleans officials on Wednesday unveiled a
controversial recovery plan giving residents four months to prove they will
rebuild in the devastated city before their neighbourhoods could be declared
off-limits to redevelopment.
New Orleans officials on Wednesday unveiled a controversial recovery plan giving residents four months to prove they will rebuild in the devastated city before their neighbourhoods could be declared off-limits to redevelopment.
The plan calls for a much smaller city, estimating that just half of the 500,000 people who lived there before Hurricane Katrina will resettle in the next two years.
For a neighbourhood to be ruled viable, half the residents must commit to come back, the commission proposed as a guideline. Until decisions are made, a moratorium will be placed on rebuilding in badly damaged sections such as New Orleans East, the waterfront Lakeview and the poverty-stricken Lower Ninth Ward.
The plan calls for improved flood and storm water protection, a high-speed light rail transit network, a single authority to replace the multiple boards that oversee the region’s levee system and closing the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a shipping shortcut to the Gulf of Mexico blamed for much of the flooding on the eastern side of the city.
No one is going to agree on a timetable. That part will take rock-hard leadership.
Guaranteeing that the details are governed more by history and human needs than political profit — will be the toughest priority.
Posted: Thu - January 12, 2006 at 07:33 AM