Big Easy boos rebuilding plan
NEW ORLEANS – Angry homeowners screamed and city council members seethed Wednesday as this city’s recovery commission recommended imposing a four-month building moratorium on most of New Orleans and creating a powerful new authority that could use eminent domain to seize homes in neighborhoods that will not be rebuilt.
Hundreds of residents packed into a hotel ballroom interrupted the presentation of the long-awaited proposal with shouts and taunts, booed its main architect, and unrolled a litany of complaints. One by one, homeowners stepped to a microphone to lampoon the plan – which contemplates a much smaller city and relies on persuading the federal government to spend billions on new housing and a light-rail system – as “audacious,” “an academic exercise,” “garbage,” “a no-good, rotten scheme.”
“You missed the boat,” homeowner Fred Yoder, who lived in heavily flooded Lakeview, told committee members. “Give me a break: We don’t need a light-rail system. We’re in the mud.”
The plan released Wednesday is the first stage of what is sure to be a multilayered, multilevel effort to resuscitate New Orleans. Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who can accept or alter the proposal, will have to present the plan to a state commission that will control allocation of billions of federal dollars; to President Bush’s hurricane recovery coordinator, Donald Powell; and to the White House.
The furious reaction to the plan is the latest agonizing episode in this city’s troubled campaign to reinvigorate itself after the devastating floods caused by Hurricane Katrina last August. Nagin, already politically weakened by widespread criticism of his response to the flooding, now faces the difficult challenge of guiding decisions about whether some parts of the city will cease to exist.
Within minutes of the plan’s unveiling, Nagin was already showing signs that he might back away from the commission’s most controversial proposal. He told WWL-AM that he had some “hesitancy” about the building moratorium. He promised to seek more public input before making a final decision.