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.

Wilma Subra

Before the city is rebuilt, there is a need to remove the toxic chemical-contaminated sediments that were deposited by the storm surge. The sediments contain toxic heavy metals and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons in excess of the Environmental Protection Agency Residential Standards, and community members are coming in contact with the contaminated sediments. These contaminated sediments are now being dispersed into the air and are creating an additional unacceptable health risk to community members returning to the area, as well as response personnel. Allowing community members to return to the city, to live with the contaminated sediments in their yards and houses and breathe the contaminated dust, is not an acceptable environmental condition for rebuilding the city.

Wilma Subra is president and founder of Subra Company, an environmental consulting firm. She is also a chemist and member of the Leadership Committee of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.

Jim DiPeso

The Soviet Union's 1957 Sputnik launch shocked a self-satisfied America. Khrushchev had caught us with our pants down, and we knew it. Yet out of that low moment came a new sense of resolve and national purpose.

Hurricane Katrina was an act of nature, not a chortling adversary out to show us up. But the effect has been the same. We feel ill-served by our leaders. We feel vulnerable. The flooding of New Orleans was a taste of the blowback that awaits from a twitchy climate that we are carelessly overloading with carbon waste.

The rebuilding of New Orleans can be this generation's Sputnik moment. It can be the symbolic start of a new national purpose: an energy transformation.

The interrelated imperatives of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, building security, and giving hope to the impoverished argue for phasing out wasteful consumption of depletable hydrocarbons and phasing in a clean, efficient energy economy that can support prosperity without stirring up international conflicts or taking reckless chances with the climate.

Congressional leaders argue for drilling more oil wells outside hurricane country. That's the wrong lesson from Katrina. The glory days of easy oil are over. Even oilmen know it. Chevron's CEO said this year that "we are experiencing the convergence of geological difficulty with geopolitical instability."

The right lesson from Katrina is to rediscover conservative virtues that D.C.'s machine politicians have forgotten -- thrift, prudence, and diversifying assets -- and to build a safer, more reliable energy economy founded on those time-honored traditions.

Jim DiPeso is the policy director for REP America, the national grassroots organization of Republicans for Environmental Protection.

Felicia Davis

It is a lift to have this opportunity to respond to such a provocative and timely question. There are many things that I would like to see occur as part of the New Orleans rebuilding. I shall leave it to my colleagues to address all of the green building, sustainable energy, walkable neighborhoods, urban gardens, green space, and greener visions.

I pray for the resurrection of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice as a state-of-the-art incubator, economic engine, and anchor for Dillard and Xavier Universities and the larger black community in greater New Orleans and the global diaspora. I envision an eco-building that has space for all sorts of enterprise, research, and activities; a center poised at the nexus between "town and gown" that links the academic community to local redevelopment.

In order for this to happen, there will need to be new alliances among mainstream environmental advocates, progressive funders, and the environmental-justice networks. This center should attract leading experts from around the globe with a focus on environmental equity. The goal is to create a well-endowed environmental-justice think tank, information resource center, and urban demonstration center. There is no more perfect place on the planet to locate a center that will move aggressively to analyze such issues as climate change, public transportation, pollution, and economic development from the perspective of the environment and the impact upon black America and people of color around the globe.

Felicia Davis is executive director of the Benjamin E. Mays National Education Resource Center, an educational advocacy organization committed to universal access to technology, global education, and sustainable development.

John Norquist

New Orleans is almost empty of people. It needs its people back soon or it will wither. Can they come back? Will they come back? To what will they return? These questions need answers -- and FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers are not set up to give quick answers. New Orleans and its citizens need to know where to build in order to know what to build. So if the Army Corps, the EPA, and the State of Louisiana are going to eventually go the Dutch route and make the lowlands of NOLA dry and secure enough to support rebuilding, it would be good to know that soon while billions of federal Katrina money is around.

My guess is that Americans want to surrender to the charms of New Orleans and want it rebuilt. The city of streetcars and desire would lose touch with reality if it were reduced to a Garden District-French Quarter tourist zone that echoes Branson, Mo. The next challenge is to rebuild New Orleans' low-price neighborhoods. With so many houses to build, building costs will need to be kept down. New designs for modular shotgun and other traditional local housing types could help narrow the gap. Fast permitting and urban coding could also accelerate the rebuild. New Orleans is one of America's places of the heart. Just as hearts need blood, cities need people.

John Norquist is the president and CEO of Congress for the New Urbanism.

Alex Wilson

I'd like to see a comprehensive planning process that involves leading-edge thinkers in sustainable design from around the country, along with at least an equal number of participants from New Orleans and the surrounding area. For any progressive measures to be adopted in the rebuilding of New Orleans, it is essential that there be full buy-in by residents. If we simply let outsiders determine the future of New Orleans, we will almost certainly see a dramatic gentrification of the area. Look to the model of North Charleston, S.C. and the Noisette Project for a vision of how this can happen.

Beyond the planning effort itself, I'd like to see locally owned businesses set up to deconstruct damaged buildings and salvage materials that can be reused. A vision of sustainability has to include the residents, who have long been underemployed with far too many living in poverty. Let's help residents set up cooperatively owned businesses that can make money in the deconstruction and demolition that has to occur. Through this process, we will build up a bank of environmentally friendly building materials that can reduce the ecological footprint of the replacement buildings.

Alex Wilson is president of BuildingGreen, Inc. in Brattleboro, Vt., and executive editor of the Environmental Building News, which recently published a 10-point plan for the sustainable redevelopment of New Orleans.