Hurricane Katrina (August 29, 2005) is the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history ($81.2 billion), causing severe destruction in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Worst hit was New Orleans, where floodwaters covered 80% of the city, killing 1,836 people and destroying 200,000 homes. Although significant progress has been made in much of the region and many former residents have returned to New Orleans, the population remains at three-quarters of its pre-Katrina levels. In the Lower Ninth Ward, the area most damaged and still at-risk today, only 10% of the population has come home. Overall, New Orleans has lost 9,000 units of affordable housing, bringing a surge in rental rates. Since a large proportion of families displaced by Katrina have incomes of less than $20,000 per year, the situation has made their return difficult at best. Additionally, New Orleans’ homeless population has more than doubled to 12,000, as jobs remain scarce.
The floodwaters in the St. Roch area of New Orleans rose to about four feet, high enough to ruin the foundations and first floors of many dwellings. The townhouses proposed in this project will employ the highest standards of sustainable building, including a passive thermal engine that creates net-zero energy consumption, and… they will float! – minimizing damage from future storms.
This project also plans to further revitalize the St. Roch community through other environmentally sound construction and restoration, and with a new neighborhood park.
Decades of dredging in the Gulf waters off the Louisiana coast, coupled with the construction of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO), have caused severe degradation of the coastal wetlands in and around New Orleans. Not only are these wetlands home to 25% of the total domestic marine catch, including shrimp, crabs, and crawfish, they have traditionally provided natural protection against surging hurricane floodwaters. Every 2.7 miles of wetlands can reduce a storm surge by one foot.
MRGO, often referred to as “the hurricane highway,” is a direct outlet from the Gulf of Mexico to the inner harbor of New Orleans. According to Louisiana State University reports, MRGO may have made the storm surge 20% higher and two or three times faster as it crashed into the city. Due to erosion since its construction in the 1960s, the outlet is now three times wider than originally built and has developed shoals, which make it impassable to bigger ships - a major part of its original purpose. The Army Corps of Engineers has recommended that MRGO be closed, but the plan has yet to be approved.
ASR is researching various means of restoring the wetlands around New Orleans to serve as a natural barrier to future storms and to re-establish the region’s native wildlife habitat.
ASR plans to support various means of restoring the wetlands around New Orleans to serve as a natural barrier to future storms and to re-establish the region’s native wildlife habitat.
With its exposure to the BP oil spill, it has become even more imperative to save this refuge.
