By Christopher Tidmore, ctidmore@louisianaweekly.com

Christopher Tidmore will discuss this issue on Friday from 4-6 PM online at www.kkay1590.com.  To particate in the discussion, call in your comments at 504-483-1761.

The Port of New Orleans is in a virtual war with neighborhood groups and preservationists in the Fabourg Marigny over the conversion of two old wharves into a frozen chicken packing plant.   

The Port’s President Gary P. LaGrange brokered a deal to move New Orleans Cold Storage, a poultry exporter now housed on the Industrial Canal, from its current location to the Esplanade and Gov. Nicholls Street wharves.  Hurricane Katrina blocked the main shipping channel to the canal, the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, forcing the firm to truck its frozen chicken to ships docked on the river.

Without the new headquarters, LaGrange has argued that the company may leave New Orleans--and over a hundred good paying jobs would go with it. The departure, he reasoned, would be another nail in the coffin of a local economy that has lost a slew of maritime businesses since the 2005 hurricane.

             The problem is, according to critics of the plan, that hundreds of eighteen-wheeler trucks would weekly travel through the most historic area of the city, and the long-term plan to convert the riverfront from Downtown to Poland Ave. into a parkland boardwalk would die—potentially fatally wounding the center of tourism and identity for most New Orleanians. 

            One of those critics, Lisa Suarez, former President of the Fabourg Marigny Improvement Association, the principal neighborhood group for the area, calls the plan to put New Orleans Cold Storage in the Esplanade Wharf “Playing Chicken with Reality”.

            As Suarez explained to Louisianaweekly.com and Bayoubuzz.com, “The history of the Mississippi River Delta and New Orleans is full of examples of short-sighted decisions, supposedly pro-commerce and transportation, then ten, fifty, or a hundred years hence, causing destruction costing many times more than the profits or convenience of the moment. The indiscriminate criss-crossing of the wetlands by the oil companies, the elimination of most the New Orleans streetcars, and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet are prime examples of this phenomenon.”

            She contended that the City, the Port of New Orleans, and the State of Louisiana are making a similar kind of decision now, concerning the Governor Nicholls and Esplanade Wharves, by planning to install a chicken freezing plant requiring delivery by one hundred refrigerated tractor-trailer trucks per day down Elysian Fields Avenue.

“They are not required to assess the subsidence issues of truck vibrations hanging over historic neighborhoods like the Sword of Damocles,” Suarez maintained. 

The City Traffic Engineer has claimed that Elysian Fields Avenue is underutilized as a truck route, and that it has been especially fortified with extra layers of concrete.  Suarez disagreed.  “Those extra layers are still not enough, apparently, for the force and vibrations of braking buses, (most of them almost empty) which have mashed the pavement forward in waves, necessitating special bus pads that have been installed at bus stops like band-aids for the street. People who live inside a radius of three blocks from Elysian Fields regularly feel the vibrations of all trucks, fully-loaded ones in particular. The issue of gas mains below street level, which have a history of blowing houses up, should also be addressed.”

Suarez noted clear evidence of metropolitan subsidence issues documented by Tulane University Geographer Richard Campanella.  He analyzed historical and recent data from High Resolution Light Detection and Ranging Technology (LIDAR), GIS-Supported development of a subsidence model, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

According to the research, the city is sinking, at the rate of five to ten millimeters per year, slightly less on the higher natural levees.  (The data was outlined in an August 2007 National Geographic article)

The result is visibly noticeable in the buckling streets, leaning buildings, and cracks in those buildings exacerbated by the vibrations of vehicular traffic, specifically, trucks weighing more than 15,000 pounds. Geographically, New Orleans is built on, as Campanella describes it, “Finely textured soils loaded with organic matter and prone to sinkage [which] make the grading and paving of streets and sidewalks that much more expensive.”

Accordingly, the Port of New Orleans massively buttressed the separate truckway custom-built to serve the containerized Napoleon and Nashville mega-wharf, which also necessitated a re-engineering of Religious and Tchoupitoulas Streets. Suarez argued to Louisianaweekly.com and Bayoubuzz.com that no such plans were in the works for her neighborhood. 

            “A visit to the Port’s website shows several pages dedicated to the Governor Nicholls and Esplanade Wharves Cold Storage Project proposal, which includes the presentations, documentation from two public meetings, two letters of support, and a ‘Myths and Realities’ paper. One of the letters of support is from Michael D. Moffitt, President of the Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents, and Associates, Inc. (VCPORA), virtually parroting the Port’s language, especially in consideration of the truck issue.”

Curiously, though, Suarez pointed out that Meg Lousteau, executive director of  VCPORA, was quoted in the daily paper on February 13th, 2009 saying, “There are legitimate concerns about the effect of heavy garbage trucks and five or six of them going down the streets every day. I don’t think the effects of this on traffic and these old structures was even considered.”

            As of February 6, 2009, officials from the Port and the State plan to sign a contract to shift federal Community Development Block Grant funds to the port, specifically for this project. The Louisiana Recovery Authority said the money would not be transferred before the state completes an environmental assessment and other reviews.

Suarez maintained that before any consideration of putting New Orleans Cold Storage into the wharfs, “One of those reviews should include geophone recordings of the seismic activity of rumbling trucks, and a study of what the impact really means.”

            “Despite the adamancy of the Port’s position, it is possible that compromises could be made. What about the trains? The Public Belt Railway serves the Riverfront. Why can’t the chilled chickens from the nine parishes surrounding Shreveport and being shipped to China and Russia be put in chilled train cars, completely avoiding the truck issue and the attendant problems of subsidence, diesel fumes, exploding gas mains, and certain-to-rise individual truck transportation costs?”

            “An attempt by the Port to do the right thing by the substantially more than three block radius of Historical Districts may take the heat off the next part of the fight, addressing the completely glossed-over ammonia refrigeration safety issues, and what happens when the insurance industry assesses risk in the case of another Brightfield?”

            Originally, Sean Cummings, executive director of the New Orleans Building Corp., had wanted to tear down those wharves stretching roughly 2,000 feet near the foot of Esplanade Avenue.  Cummings had argued that they are roadblocks to his goal of creating a riverside promenade where one can travel freely between the Jackson Avenue ferry and the Industrial Canal.  However, under pressure from economic development officials, Cummings modified his request for the state to fund a “skyway” walkway that would carry pedestrians over the new Cold Storage facility, a notion which Suarez questions the practicality--much less the multi-million dollar cost.

            “Won’t the smell of chickens below send a positive message of tourism as visitors [to our city] walk across?” she said ironically. 

Christopher Tidmore will discuss this issue on Friday from 4-6 PM online at www.kkay1590.com.  Call in your comments at that time 504-483-1761.