Louisiana in poverty and hopelessness
Every so often, the bayou rises to wash away the sewage that has seeped into the yards.
If it surges too high, it will force more residents from their homes. Though shackled by poverty, one-third have already fled the hurricanes and rising waters, said Service Coordinator Sue Grissom. After retiring in Montana, Grissom and her husband Carl moved to Louisiana, where they direct a constant relief effort through a local organization called Bayou Grace.
For now, the waste remains. The earth, shallow and saturated, cannot support an adequate sewer system. Neglected, half-sunken shrimpers accentuate the drooping houses on both sides of the narrow waterway that runs parallel to the road.
These homes, though not hit hard by Katrina, were barraged in 2002 by Hurricane Lili and, more recently, Rita. Weary owners have since let the houses deteriorate to the point that determining inhabited shelters from abandoned ones is difficult.
Perhaps 300 live in the remote neighborhood that locals call the Island. At one time part of a larger residential area, the remaining land is surrounded by advancing wetlands and accessible only by a single road that leads to Father’s House Church in Ponte-Aux-Chenes.
Grissom showed me the Island the day before I returned from a winter break service trip with five others, including two other USU students. In New Orleans, we attended an ecumenical conference and toured the flattened Lower Ninth Ward, where lonesome driveways, steps and sidewalks are often all that remains to indicate where houses once stood. In Ponte-Aux-Chenes, an hour to the west, we spent three days peeling paint, repairing roofs and removing drywall.
On the bayou, it’s not uncommon for a gator that has emerged from the muck to camp out on a driveway.
In America’s hurricane hub, the beast is always lurking nearby. Folks are respectful of nature’s omnipotence.
“The one thing we’ve learned,” said a 71-year-old Methodist pastor, “is that we are not in control of our lives.”
Other conference speakers related stories that expressed similarly mixed feelings of faith and helplessness.
The government denies aid to families who, having inherited the land, do not possess the property deed required for financial assistance. Other families, whose homes do not meet a minimum damage requirement, do not receive funding.
While interracial gospel choirs and soulful jazz bands have helped resurrect the sounds of hope in the Big Easy, many rural residents have lost the will to rebuild.
“I was lucky,” said Ponte-Aux-Chenes resident Mike Pellegrin. “You could not have slipped this paper,” he said, indicating a two-sheet wetlands handout, “between where the water stopped and my stairs began.”
The loss of wetlands, which act as a natural hurricane buffer by absorbing impact, contributed to the catastrophic hurricane season in 2005, Pellegrin said in a presentation at a recreation center in Ponte-Aux-Chenes.
In 1928, the government began a massive leveeing project along the Mississippi River after it was inundated by historic rainfall the previous year. This started an 80-year redirection of fresh water and silt deposits, an interruption in the natural rejuvenating process that Louisiana’s coastal wetlands have depended on for centuries.
Today, the wetlands are disappearing at a rate equal to one football-field-sized area every 37 seconds, said Pellegrin, a self-described retired fisherman turned environmental researcher.
A strong advocate for a national awareness concerning the threats facing Louisianans, Pellegrin said Americans are apt to ignore their coastal neighbors. To locals, the conspicuous absence of Katrina and Louisiana discussion from President Bush’s State of the Union Address last Tuesday exemplifies this.
In his state-of-the-wetlands address, Pellegrin said land loss may be the most pressing issue Louisianans face. Because the coastal region accounts for 40 percent of the national oil industry, Pellegrin said, more Americans should be concerned. And, unfortunately for Louisianans, he said, only 1 percent of oil revenue is retained by the state that, after Mississippi, is the poorest in the country.
It’s been 18 months since Katrina, the standard length of a relief trailer contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In that time, the monumental rebuilding effort has been supported almost entirely by faith-based organizations. If the government continues to table hurricane relief, the bawdy boutiques on Bourbon Street will continue selling T-shirts that read “FEMA – Federal Emergency My Ass.”