When Angela Chalk heard for the first time, there were ways that common people could compensate for floods in New Orleans, it was skeptical.
His neighbors in the seventh neighborhood knew everything about heavy rains that brought knee waters to the knee, spilled the porches and cars and the houses high, and were frustrated because it was something they felt helpless to stop.
Then he listened to Jeff Supak, head of a non -profit organization who now called Water Gulf South, talk about how simple solutions such as rainy gardens and ditches with vegetation, also known as Bioswales, could absorb additional rain.
She challenged Mr. Supak to prove it.
50 states, 50 solutions It is a series about local solutions to environmental problems. More to come this year.
“I did not know if it was an excuse of Lamebrain, Cockamamie after Katrina, because many people told us that they could do so many things after Katrina to help improve communities,” said Mrs. Chalk, the executive director of a non -profit group that focuses on public health and sustainability, referring to the Hurraños of 2005 that devastated the city.
A bioswale was installed along with the entrance path of Mrs. Chalk, native species were planted and the clay in its backyard was replaced by an absorbent soil.
During the next heavy hole, Mrs. Chalk looked outside. The rainwater that previously had nowhere to go filtered on the ground. He took photos and shared them with friends.
“What I saw at home was a project that I had never witnessed before,” recalled one of the friends, Cheryl Austin, who works with a community organization, the Greater Treme consortium. “I was so impressed.”
The word was extended, and more of the residents of Mrs. Chalk agreed to have rain barrels installed to catch the runoff of the roofs, and the French drains, which are underground pierced pipes covered with gravel that filter and redirect heavy rains.
Today, green infrastructure projects in Mrs. Chalk’s block can capture 8,800 rain gallons per storm, and Wise has installed 150 projects in public and private spaces in low neighborhoods. In total, they can retain 190,000 gallons of water per storm, mitigating local floods.
“There are multiple benefits,” said Mr. Supak, whose group has also planted almost 800 trees. “This is the risk of flooding. It is about water quality. These are green spaces in its neighborhood. This is the effect of the urban heat island, because we have a lot of concrete and we are such a sexy city. And it is about beautifying.”
Green infrastructure is not a cure for flood problems of New Orleans, but in a city where much of the earth is below sea level, it certainly helps. The deceleration of heavy rains provides the complex and outdated city bomb system and drains the opportunity to catch up, and decreases stagnant water, which in turn decreases the risk of mold and mosquitoes. Rain caught in the planters, the French drains and the gardens also means that the rainwater previously contaminated by concrete and asphalt is filtered when the nearby Pontchartrain lake is pumped again.
“Every drop of water that is stored somewhere that is not in our drainage system for a benefit,” said Meagan Williams, manager of the New Orleans city urban program. “If we cannot remove all floods, but we can reduce how much it is flooding, then we are moving the needle in the right direction.”
South South Water Gulf also turns the idea of ​​the corrections from top to bottom in his head. The organization, which is largely financed by donors and private foundations, operates as a collective, which works with half a dozen community groups in mainly black neighborhoods. Residents who know what drains are clogged and what entry tickets stop determine where the projects are going, they often design and also design them.
“We let residents know that there are things that can do to help mitigate these flood problems with those who face again and again,” said Trina Warren, who works with one of the neighborhood organizations that is part of the Water Wise collective.
A wise water project was installed at the request of Brenda Lomax-Brown, whose neighborhood, Hollygrove-Dixon, is interspersed between an interstate road and a state highway is often annulled.
To get to the local community center after heavy rains, people had to cross stagnant water, often in rubber boots. Wise of water installed permeable paving stones in the parking lot to accelerate drainage and planted a rain garden to catch the runoff from the ceiling.
A week later, Mrs. Lomax-Brown was in the community center when the skies were opened, unleashing rain leaves.
She ventured outside. “There were no more puddles. You didn’t need boots to enter,” said Mrs. Lomax-Brown. “And I was singing ‘Hallelujah’ on the porch.”
The wise water project, he added, “was the best from the apple cake.”
This year, Water Wise had hoped to implement more than 100 projects on a larger scale, but that would require government financing, which Supak said it seemed unlikely, given the current political landscape. Even so, there were dozens of smaller green infrastructure projects in the works, he said.
Mrs. Austin, from Treme, said that each of the projects offered new ways to show people in New Orleans how to connect with what was happening with the weather while learning how they could help keep the waters of the storm at bay.
“This was not an issue we talked about in the black community,” Mrs. Austin, 70, said.
“During the last 50 years, after graduating from high school, I rarely heard something in tremendous about climate change or the environment,” he continued. “We enter this issue without knowing it, without knowing that it would be one of the most important issues in the world.”
