Castles Made of Sand

Jule had introduced me to Speck, an oceanographer. She suggested that I drive down to Old Shell Beach. Just under 30 miles from the Royal Street Courtyard B&B where I was staying, it was the perfect destination for me to get a sense of life outside New Orlean’s 133 miles of levees.

I made a wrong turn and as I righting my course, I suddenly saw this Navy ship. I am not sure but I think it was the USNS Shughart, a logistics naval vessel. As an Easterner, the Mississippi kept surprising me. You can’t see it because of the levees so often I didn’t realize how close it was.

Driving along 46, you drive out of the levee system. Suddenly the landscape changes.

The street around this plant is named Cheveron Plant Road though I think it is now owned by Targa.

Is this what it means to live with the water? All the houses were built to start on the third floor.

There were a number of boats that had been abandoned

and what would have been homes.

And an abandoned gas station.

The reality of the water is harsh. But if nature is a threat in St. Bernard Parish, it is also generous.

I felt like I was looking at the harsh reality of sea level rise about which we in New York have only started to think seriously.

On my fourth day in New Orleans, Steve Cantor, his wife Barbara and both of their mother’s, took me on a whirlwind tour. I can’t thank them all enough for taking me to exactly the kinds of places I like to take pictures. We met by the lake which I hadn’t yet seen. Lake Pontchartrain reminded me of Lake Michigan in that you cannot see the other side. It is however salt water and not really a lake but an estuary.

The lighthouse has been rebuilt since Katrina.

All the way on the eastern part of the lakeshore at the base of Paris Road is a place to get up on or over the levee. One family has rebuilt their house/fishing cabin since Katrina.

This is literally on the wrong side of the tracks and outside the levee system.

The day we explored this area, people were crossing the levee to fish in the lake. The levee here looked new and well maintained. I can believe the New York Times article Vast Defenses Now Shielding New Orleans when it states 14 billion has been spent on 133 miles of levees around New Orleans since Katrina.

According to this amazing graphic created by the Times-Picayune, East New Orleans was one of the first areas flooded during Katrina. The water came from Lake Borgne. This area is where a Vietnamese community has developed over the last thirty years. Both of these photos are of a poorly maintained canal that crosses Alcee Fortier Blvd. where we stopped in our search for lunch.

Then we drove over to Chalmette where the annual re-enactment of the Battle of New Orleans was taking place. I took a quick walk along the levee.

Chalmette was hit hard by storm surge flooding over from MRGO (Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.) Given the level of industry that exists there, there has been a good deal of concern about those flood waters having spread toxins.

The bulk carrier, UBC Saiki, was being unloaded.

Steve and his family very kindly then drove me downtown so i could take the ferry to Algiers Point. New Orleans seems to have a bit of cruise traffic.

The view from the other side of the river looking towards New Orleans is fantastic.

Looking toward the French Quarter and the St. Louis Cathedral, fog was rising off the water.

And lastly looking back towards Algiers Point where the Mississippi makes a very sharp turn.

I have to thank both Jule Lang and Phillip Lege for telling me that I could get up on the levee by Holy Cross School and see towards New Orleans. I parked at the end of Reynes Street and walked up the bank of the levee. The fog on the river was thick but low. I could see the top of a tug boat.

I walked along the levee towards the Industrial Canal. The view of the city is spectacular.

What I assumed was a recycling barge pulled out.

The Industrial Canal connects Lake Pontchartrain with the Mississippi River. Walking along the levee, I started to get in a visceral way the idea of the levee system that protects New Orleans.

It was along the Industrial Canal that the levees were first breached during Katrina.

Walking southeast from Reynes Street along the levee, one soon comes to the Andry Street Wharf.

From the wharf, you can see one of the Doullut Steamboat houses.

The view looking back towards the CBD of New Orleans.

In the early afternoon, I went to the Lower Ninth Ward on the other side of St. Claude Avenue. No amount of reading about the damage prepared me for the eerie emptiness of this place.

Of course, there is rebuilding going on. and one could do a whole photo essay on that.

But what struck me as a first time visitor was just how much was still empty seven years after the storm.

I was amazed that the city doesn’t seem to maintain the side walks or the roads here at all. I understand that since the city is built on sand when you press down on the read surface nothing presses back and this makes it very fragile so that roads are hard to maintain in NO everywhere. We have Edgemere in NYC so I guess I should not be shocked.

At the end of Caffin street and Florida Avenue, there is a sign for the Bienvenue Bayou. According to several men that I met, the look out here was built in the last year. I went up and looked over at what is marked on the google map as “Main Outfall Canal.” It is a triangular body of water. the people I met all told me that this has been a cypress swamp but that the salinity that came in when MRGO, the Mississippi River gulf Outlet was built in the 60s killed all the trees.

On Thursday morning, I went on a tour of St. Louis Cemetery #1 given by Save Our Cemeteries. The cemetery is now much smaller than its original layout at approximately 1 square block. Families can purchase wall vaults when their tombs are full. Once you buy the vault, it is considered to be your property and you may do with it what you will. Somewhat different from Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn where you have to follow certain rules down to what kinds of plants you can use.

You can see that New Orleans is built on sand, not bedrock. It is sinking. Plaques that would have once been above ground are now almost completely below ground.

Because flooding would threaten the dead buried underground, the cemeteries in New Orleans, use above ground tombs.

While Marie Laveau is buried here in St. Louis #1, this is not her tomb. It must however be someone important to those who practice voodoo. I learned on the tour that to have a wish granted you need to mark the grave with three Xs and leave an offering.

Much of the cemetery is in disrepair. Save Our Cemeteries has its work cut out for it.

The rain cleared in the early evening and I went back to the Moonwalk in Woldenberg Park. The evening was beautiful.

The ferry goes from Canal Street to Algiers and back on the quarter hour.

The blue and yellow lights were created by a small tub pushing a barge.

I am here in New Orleans on a small grant from my university to photograph for a series on urban water that relates closely to the work I have been doing in New York on sea level rise.

I arrived in a dense fog. Pulling into the street where I am staying, I could hear a very loud fog horn. At home in Brooklyn, I can hear the horn of the Staten Island Ferry in the distance but this was loud and close. Like so many cities, the industrial legacy means that there isn’t direct access to the waterfront everywhere. So while I am staying two blocks from the water in the Marigny, I had to walk over to the Moonwalk in the French Quarter to get close to the river. This was my first view of the Mississippi River:

The moonwalk was built in 1976. Before that the river front was used for industry and a levee protected the city fom the water. Train tracks also separated the city from the water. Now the Riverfront Streetcar line runs here.

The fog was coming and going.