After Hurricane Katrina flattened New Orleans exactly four years ago, on Aug. 29, 2005, the city emerged as an inadvertent symbol of global warming, the first American victim of climate change. Over 200,000 homes were destroyed during the Category 5 hurricane. But in the years since, the Crescent City has quietly embraced a new and unexpected role as a laboratory for green building. Sustainable development groups that range from the international nonprofit Global Green to earth-friendly celebrities like Brad Pitt descended on New Orleans, determined not just to build the city back, but to build it back green. “It’s going to come back,” says Matt Petersen, the president of Global Green USA. “But we want to build it better than it was before.”

No organization is doing more to green New Orleans than Global Green USA, the American arm of the international environmental organization that was founded by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. That begins with the Holy Cross project, an entire sustainable village being built in the city’s flood-damaged Lower Ninth Ward, with the help of Home Depot’s corporate foundation. Eventually the village will include five sustainable homes, along with an 18-unit green apartment building and a community center. Three homes have been completed so far, including one that is serving as a de facto visitor’s center. The point of the project is not just to provide greener homes for New Orleans’s returning residents, but also to provide training for the local building community in green standards. “That’s one of the ways to make this kind of building more common and more affordable,” says Petersen.

That’s the same motivation behind Global Green’s sustainable schools program, which will both retrofit existing schools to make them more energy efficient, and build entirely new classrooms from the ground up. The new schools will have solar panels, wetland habitats (which can act as a buffer for future storms) and rainwater cisterns. At Gentilly Terrace Elementary School, which is getting an energy overhaul, power bills should fall some $22,000 a year. In a city that is struggling to get back on its feet, those energy savings make a difference — as does the fact that some research has shown that students actually learn better in greener schools. (It’s not exactly clear why that’s the case — one possibility is that absenteeism and sick days both decrease when the indoor environment is healthier.)

Beyond model projects like the ones Global Green is implementing, there are broader policy-based actions that seek to green New Orleans from the top down. The city is receiving millions in federal stimulus funds, some of which will be going toward initiatives that will reestablish a citywide recycling program and improve mass transit. $1.1 million is being slated to help green five of the city’s libraries, and more will pay for the installation of solar-powered, ultra-efficient LED streetlights. The Department of Energy — with funds matched by Global Green — is underwriting new solar power projects in New Orleans as well, hoping to expand the tiny slice of the city’s electricity that comes from renewable sources. “The hope is that you can help create green jobs for the city in this way as well,” says Petersen. “There can be a silver lining to all of this, the creation of a more robust and vibrant community and economy.”

Continue reading at Time

I moved to New Orleans in late August 2007, two years after Katrina and while the city was still very much in recovery mode. Two years later and I can’t imagine living anywhere else (I can confidently say I’m not alone in this sentiment).

Continue reading at Gambit

By Mark PotterCorrespondentNBC Newsupdated 6:59 p.m. PT, Fri., Aug 28, 2009Mark PotterCorrespondent

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana – Bethany Bultman is passionate in her quest to preserve the musical culture which helps define this city’s richness. “Every time you go to iTunes and download Fats Domino or Irma Thomas or Allen Toussaint, they have given their heart and soul.  And we deserve to give something back to everyone who contributes to that music,” she said.
     
Eleven years ago, Bethany and her husband, Johann Bultman, decided the best way to keep the music alive was to keep the musicians healthy. “The reason we chose to target musicians in New Orleans is because they represent a pure American cultural form, jazz music,” said Johann. “Nothing else in America has its roots and origins here in such a pure, world-renowned, world-sought-after format and we didn’t want to see the music die on our watch.”

And so was born the non-profit New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic, which provides free or low-cost medical care to the many musical artists here who attract loyal fans from around the globe, but who, in most cases, earn such meager wages that they can’t even afford basic health care, let alone expensive medical insurance.

Preventing “death by lifestyle”
“When we came on the scene, most of them were simply just not going to the doctor, ever.  They were self-medicating, being treated at the pharmacy,”  said Johann.  
     
In collaboration with the LSU Healthcare Network, the clinic provides full-service medical care to some 1,800 musicians and other artists, thanks to a grant from the federal government, charitable donations and a team of volunteer doctors.  For those patients who can’t pay the treatment is free.  
“We try to prevent death by lifestyle at the clinic,” says Bethany.  “We do anything we can to make a wellness plan for every single musician who comes through our doors.” 

One of the volunteer clinic doctors is Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, who also happens to be a unabashed music fan—a fact she can’t hide when working musicians come by for check-ups.  “I gush at times. You know, they walk in and I say. ‘I was just listening to your CD this morning.’ And they love it, they love a little bit of gush. It’s not a bad thing.”

Continue at MSNBC

NEW ORLEANS — This once-ravaged city is finally mending from Hurricane Katrina after years of administrative delays and political disputes that choked the flow of millions of dollars in federal aid.

Money now flowing through the city is beginning to deliver the most visibly widespread improvements since Katrina struck four years ago today. Scores of public works projects are under way. The last police precinct using a FEMA trailer as temporary headquarters moved into real offices earlier this year. More than half the public schools in New Orleans have been turned into higher-performing charter schools. Returning residents have pushed the population to 76% of its prestorm total of about 455,000.

The bustle has ignited enough economic activity in metropolitan New Orleans to buffer against some of effects of the recession. Unemployment lagged well behind the national average before reaching 7.3% in June, compared with the U.S.’s 9.7%, unadjusted for seasonal shifts. The arrival of non-natives seeking jobs helped New Orleans rank as the U.S.’s fastest-growing big city for 2008, with an 8% increase.

“It’s the sheer amount of construction going on,” said Nick Perkins, 38 years old, who relocated from New York two years ago and founded The Receivables Exchange, a Web-based trading market for small and midsize companies to raise capital by selling their commercial receivables. Mr. Perkins said he was drawn by the significantly lower cost of living and lifestyle.

“I tell people it’s like living in Shanghai because there’s big construction going on literally every single day,” he said. “The city’s getting a full upgrade. I’ve not seen anything quite like it anywhere.”

The sudden cauldron of activity in New Orleans isn’t a byproduct of the grand redevelopment plans laid out by Mayor Ray Nagin, but a grassroots effort.

Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal

THIS year, the Gulf Coast’s recovery from Hurricane Katrina has become President Obama’s responsibility. How bad a situation has he inherited?

The good news is that, on the fourth anniversary of the storm, New Orleans is weathering the recession relatively well. Since June 2008, the metro area has shed only about one percent of its jobs, significantly less than the 4.1 percent of jobs that have been lost nationally. Over the past 12 months, unemployment in New Orleans has mostly hovered around 5 percent. It recently jumped to 7.3 percent, primarily because of an increase in the number of new job seekers (like recent college graduates), but that is still well below the national average of 9.5 percent. At a time when falling home values are keeping many Americans from moving, the city has attracted 10,000 new households, the biggest one-year expansion since 2007.

Continuing repairs to roads, bridges and public buildings in New Orleans are helping shield the area from a more serious slump. The region is also fortunate not to rely heavily on industries like manufacturing that are shedding jobs. And it has benefited from job growth in its sizable government sector, which handles many recovery-related contracts and activities.

Yet New Orleans is not impervious to the economic crisis. Its housing market has stalled, with 39 percent fewer people buying homes this year than did the year before, and 48 percent fewer new homes being built. Also, a drop in consumer spending has hurt city sales-tax revenues.

Meanwhile, New Orleans still has more than 62,000 blighted and vacant houses and apartment buildings. Rents have leveled off, but they remain 40 percent higher than they were before the storm. People worry about what kind of good, long-term jobs there will be to replace recovery-related jobs when those disappear.

Continue reading at the NYTimes

BATON ROUGE, La. — With some outside help, officials at LSU and Tulane University have reached a compromise over governing a new $1.2 billion public teaching hospital for New Orleans, a deal that paves the way for land acquisition to resume.

The revamped governing plan won unanimous approval Thursday from the LSU Board of Supervisors and the Tulane Board of Trustees, finalizing the agreement.

“I think everybody’s ready to move past this drawn-out discussion of this,” said Fred Cerise, LSU vice chancellor for health affairs and medical education, after the LSU board vote.

At issue had been how much clout LSU would have on the governing board of the hospital it will help finance – and the Jindal administration suspended land purchases and expropriations for the hospital until the dispute could be resolved.

The new plan gives LSU four appointees on an 11-member board to govern the private, nonprofit corporation affiliated with LSU that will run the hospital.

Tulane University and Xavier University, which have medical students that will train at the hospital, each will get one slot on the board. Another position will rotate among three other New Orleans universities: Delgado, Dillard and Southern. The remaining four appointments won’t be affiliated with the schools.

Tulane President Scott Cowen said the agreement ensures the new hospital will be governed with “the appropriate controls and safeguards, including independent oversight.”

“It is now time to fund, build and operate a world-class university medical center that will be a source of pride and accomplishment while also increasing the number of health care providers for our community and state,” Cowen said in a statement.

The compromise was negotiated by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office.

“It took a lot of work to get to this point, but I think it’s a very important step forward,” Jindal said in an interview.

Continue at Forbes

NEW ORLEANS — Just two days shy of the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, entertainer Jamie Foxx brought some music and laughter to New Orleans with his “Blame It” tour.

Foxx joked with the enthusiastic crowd of thousands at the New Orleans Arena on Thursday night. At one point he pulled women from the mostly female audience on stage to dance with him.

“I’m so happy to be here in New Orleans,” Foxx told the crowd.

He performed songs from his latest album, “Intuition,” and tributes to Ray Charles and Michael Jackson, singing some of their biggest hits.

At the end, Foxx said a portion of his concert proceeds would be donated to Make It Right, the organization launched by actor-activist Brad Pitt to rebuild homes in the city’s devastated Lower 9th Ward.

“This is just a drop in the bucket with what you guys really need out here, but it’s a start,” Foxx said. “You are not forgotten … Keep your hopes up. You guys are resilient.”

Continue reading at the AP

Among the groups that have helped rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, one that is rarely mentioned is day laborers.

After the storm, tens of thousands of prospective workers came to the city in search of jobs. Casual laborers — hired by the day by homeowners or small contractors — are now an important work force in a city that still has years of rebuilding ahead. The trouble is, many say they don’t get paid.

At the parking lot of the Lowe’s home improvement store on Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans, between 20 and 30 men gather at sunrise. Trucks and vans pull in and stop just long enough to pick up willing hands and strong backs.

John Pace stands with a group of friends. They’re all hoping for the same thing: a day’s work that will pay about $100. Competition for the jobs is intense, and when you do get one, Pace’s friend Sammy Davis says, there is no guarantee that you’ll be paid. That has happened to him — and to just about every day laborer he knows.

“So, you just lost out on a whole eight hours or two days or whole week worth of work, where you ain’t got no money to show for it,” Davis says. “Then your kid’s looking at you, your wife looking at you, and then you ain’t got nothing to show for it. ‘Oh, baby, I’m going to come back, get my money later on,’ you say, ‘this evening, about 3 or 4 o’clock, to pick up my money.’ But then he don’t show up at all.”

Proposed Legislation

That scenario has become a large problem in New Orleans. City Council President Arnie Fielkow recently had a hearing on day laborers and the pervasive problem of wage theft.

In New Orleans, as elsewhere, the issue is unavoidably tied with immigration status. After Hurricane Katrina, the Hispanic population in New Orleans increased dramatically. Most of those looking for work on street corners are from Honduras, Mexico or other Latin American countries. Many are in the United States illegally.

But Fielkow says a worker’s immigration status has nothing to do with wage theft.

“We do not — and I do not — condone in any way the hiring of undocumented workers,” he says. “But, at the same time, if workers are hired, they should be paid for the work that they performed.”

Continue reading at NPR

On Aug. 28, 1609, English navigator Henry Hudsondiscovered Delaware Bay.

In 1833 England’s Parliament banned slavery in the British empire.

In 1955 Emmett Till, an African-American teen from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle’s home in Money, Miss., by white men after he supposedly had whistled at a white woman. (His body was found three days later.)

In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial inWashington.

In 2005 New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered everyone in the city to evacuate after Hurricane Katrina grew into a monster storm. 

From the Chicago Tribune