Three and a half years after New Orleans was devastated by post-Katrina levee failures, the Big Easy is still working to bounce back … and it’s coming back greener than ever.
(Did you know, by the way, that President Barack Obama’s pick for head of the Environmental Protection Agency — Linda Jackson — grew up in the lower Ninth Ward?)
So what’s new and green in the Crescent City? Check out some of these developments:
- The city’s got a new fleet of 39 hybrid buses (thanks to $15 million in grant funding from the feds), some of them sporting the message, “Cleaner, Smarter,” reports the AP;
- New Orleans is also one of the U.S. Energy Department’s “Solar American Cities,” a designation that won it $450,000 in funding for solar programs;
- An old warehouse in the city’s Garden District is being redeveloped as one of the country’s first-ever green, LEED-certified movies studios, according to SustainableBusiness.com;
- NOLA.com reports that Project Home Again is working to build 22 new, energy-efficient homes in Gentilly for low-income residents who lived there before Katrina;
- The Conservation Corps of Greater New Orleans has started up a green-collar jobs training program for some 800 young people, according to the Apollo Alliance;
- Molly Reid at the Times-Picayune reports on a growing wave of “creative reuse” in the city, with an active community of architectural salvage operations that are turning old building materials into newer, more sustainable homes and other structures.
It’s wonderful to hear about so many good things happening in a city that’s suffered from such calamity. Know of any other new green developments in New Orleans? Let me know, and I’ll feature them in another post soon!
you might also want to check out the initiative that brad pitt put in place for displaced people in the city. all green and passive houses.
The New Orleans Food Co-op is working diligently to open Louisiana’s only consumer food cooperative at the corner of St. Roch and St. Claude, not far from the 9th Ward (www.nolafoodcoop.org).
This project, as well as others like Hollygrove Urban Market and Farm (hollygrovemarket.org) are working to create a robust vibrant local food economy. Check them out!