Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards joined New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and other officials to announce $234 million of federal money awarded for helping the city and state better handle future water disasters.
It comes 10 years after a post-Katrina visit to the Netherlands for advice.
Governor Edwards stood at a wind-blown podium set up in open greenspace in the Gentilly neighborhood to highlight the Housing and Urban Development grant. It was the former home of the Sisters of St. Joseph, which flooded after Katrina and was later destroyed by fire.
The sisters held on to the land, hoping someone would come up with a plan to help the community.
Sister Pat Bergen said they waited for years.
“We could have sold the land over and over again to developers, but something way down deep inside of us knew that this land wanted to give itself for something beyond our imagination," she said.
It turns out, the park setting will be a rain garden, with retention ponds and expanded canals to help stop subsidence in the reclaimed swampland and better handle stormwater.
Mayor Landrieu says the city’s $141 million grant starts a transformative change in how the city will deal with water – beyond just keeping it out.
“If we engage in the great possibilities that we could actually lead, rather than follow, then the common good is always served by what we do," Landrieu said.
Edwards says the city and state projects are coordinated.
“This is a companion to the Coastal Restoration Master Plan that we know is going to take years to implement, and so this gives us some money now," Edwards said.
Almost $50 million of the state grant will be spent on relocating the coastal American-Indian community of Isle de Jean Charles near Houma to safer ground. In 1955 the village was on an island of more than 22,000 acres. Only 320 acres remain.
Support for WWNO's Coastal Desk comes from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Coypu Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.
