We Rebuilt This City

We asked environmental, political, and academic leaders from around the country about their hopes for the rebuilding of New Orleans. Here's what some of them had to say. Be sure to check out the rest of this week's contributions, and add your thoughts in Gristmill.

Nathalie Walker and Monique Harden

New Orleans needs to be rebuilt so as to narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots, better integrate the city racially, and embrace our poor African-American residents who have given the city so much of its identity, including its food, its music, and its celebrated street life. But it will only happen if the planning, redevelopment, and rebuilding decision-making include, engage, and are fully informed by all residents, including our poor African-American residents.

Coalitions of groups focused on accomplishing precisely this goal have already been established, and could readily facilitate such critical engagement. Accordingly, the blue-ribbon rebuilding commissions established by both the mayor of New Orleans and the city council must be reformed immediately to include representatives from these coalitions. Further, a victims' compensation fund similar to the fund established after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks must be established to assist the neediest in recovering from this devastating catastrophe.

New Orleans attorneys Nathalie Walker and Monique Harden are the founders of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, a nonprofit, public-interest law firm dedicated to defending and advancing the human right to a healthy environment.

Bob Wayland

We must recognize the importance of Louisiana's wetlands -- coastal marshes, swamps, bayous -- and make ecological restoration an integral part of recovery plans. This is necessary not just because these precious resources contribute so much to the gulf economy and way of life, but because they can play a role in protecting lives and property from future storms.

The "hard" engineering of the lower Mississippi helped create a false sense of security relative to floodwaters, and at the same time contributed to damaging the "green infrastructure" that historically protected inland areas from wind and storm surge. The federal-state Coast 2050 plan, supported by the America's Wetland initiative, was based on this realization. Coast 2050 will have to be retooled in light of ecological damages from Katrina, but that undertaking should have a high priority. Regrettably, the bill introduced by Louisiana's senators as the "Katrina recovery package" gave short shrift to ecological recovery.

Bob Wayland is the former director of the U.S. EPA's Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds.

Matt Petersen

Meeting the needs of the poor and low-income communities of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is of fundamental importance. Low-income communities in coastal cities are most at risk from natural disasters that are exacerbated by climate change. Nearly 150 million Americans live on the coasts, where rapid development has overwhelmed wetlands and other natural protections against tidal storm surges, leaving cities and towns more vulnerable to storms and natural disasters than ever. New Orleans should be a wake-up call to the nation that the cost of inaction on climate change is far too high a price to pay for ignoring the growing threat to ourselves and future generations.

Rebuilding a greener, smarter New Orleans and Gulf Coast can be an example to the world and the nation that we are capable of making great strides in reducing our dependency on oil, decreasing energy use, combating global warming, and meeting the needs of our society's most vulnerable individuals, neighborhoods, and communities.

Global Green has launched a "Healthy Homes, Smart Neighborhoods" initiative and is collaborating with local and national housing, environmental, urban, religious, and other organizations to create a campaign to ensure we build healthy, energy-efficient housing for families in need in the Gulf Coast area. To guide and support our efforts, we've also established an honorary task force that currently includes Julian Bond, Gen. Wesley Clark, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Lee Hamilton.

Matt Petersen is the president and CEO of Global Green USA, which works with governments, industry, and individuals toward a sustainable future.

Klaus Jacob

Rebuilding a sustainable New Orleans can mean just one thing: Attach it to the rising sea, not to the sinking ground. This implies a floating city that rises and falls with the tides. If a rebuilt New Orleans were to be founded on the sinking ground, it would be doomed to fail -- perhaps not within one or two generations, but just several generations into the future.

Measurements of local relative sea-level rise within New Orleans are hard to pin down. But an accurate measurement exists from a tide gauge on Grand Isle, La., due south of the city: 3.23 feet per century, based on data between 1947 and 1999. About two-thirds of this rate is due to compaction of the Mississippi Delta sediments, and one-third due to global sea-level rise, in part contributed by global warming and human greenhouse-gas emissions. Climate models indicate that rates of global sea-level rise may double, or perhaps even triple, by the end of this century. If these forecasts materialize, the local sea-level rise in the delta by the year 2100 would increase to about 4.3 to 5.4 feet per century, and to higher rates in later centuries. To hide a "grounded" city behind sea walls would mean that they need to get taller and wider with the times -- an almost impossible engineering feat to sustain for more than, say, a century or two.

Hence, a viable long-term solution to have a sustainable New Orleans is to fix it to sea level. This means: build it on barges, engineered and anchored to withstand future hurricanes. A city that rises and sinks with storm surges. A city that floats and flourishes, rather than floods, flounders, and falters.

Klaus Jacob is a geophysicist by training who has worked on disaster-resilient urban design and disaster risk management. He is a scientist and adjunct professor at the Earth Institute of Columbia University.