The Big Day
Tomorrow is a big day. We are having a four hour meeting with the Citizens Recovery Committee and the County Government and the Planning Board to discuss how to repopulate the county.
You see, there was once 68,000 people and 25,000 homes. Now there are 5,000 people, 100 homes and 2000 trailers. Many of the 63,000 people that have not come home will never come home. I suspect the population in the next five years will be in the 20,000s.
There are hard choices that need to be made. You can repopulate the entire parish and have occupied houses surrounded by multiple empty lots. Of course, there will be a big problem when it comes to providing services because it is very expensive to have so much extra infrastructure. Also, it is not a livable urban environment to have empty lots everywhere.
The next possibility is to give up on some areas, let them return to marsh, and concentrate the population on the highest, safest ground.
We will lead all the participants through an exercise to help them figure out what they they want to do and and where they want to rebuild.
I predict a disaster second only to Katrina.
There are several reasons I am concerned.
1) The elected officials have never asked us to help them decide this question
2) Our activities for helping them decide are not structured enough. I think the activities are too free form and will allow too much getting sidetracked.
We will see how it goes.
You see, there was once 68,000 people and 25,000 homes. Now there are 5,000 people, 100 homes and 2000 trailers. Many of the 63,000 people that have not come home will never come home. I suspect the population in the next five years will be in the 20,000s.
There are hard choices that need to be made. You can repopulate the entire parish and have occupied houses surrounded by multiple empty lots. Of course, there will be a big problem when it comes to providing services because it is very expensive to have so much extra infrastructure. Also, it is not a livable urban environment to have empty lots everywhere.
The next possibility is to give up on some areas, let them return to marsh, and concentrate the population on the highest, safest ground.
We will lead all the participants through an exercise to help them figure out what they they want to do and and where they want to rebuild.
I predict a disaster second only to Katrina.
There are several reasons I am concerned.
1) The elected officials have never asked us to help them decide this question
2) Our activities for helping them decide are not structured enough. I think the activities are too free form and will allow too much getting sidetracked.
We will see how it goes.
posted by JNA | 5:48 PM
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