Fair Sham

During last week's CNN climate forum, Elizabeth Warren hit a home run. Warren was asked about the Trump administration's decision to reverse Obama era efficiency standards for light bulbs. Her answer brought out a point that Democrats, even the "good Democrats" often fail to make about where the true onus for effective climate action lies.

“Oh, come on, give me a break,” Warren, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said during CNN’s Town Hall forum on climate change. “Look, there are a lot of ways that we try to change our energy consumption and our pollution, and God bless all of those ways. Some of it is with lightbulbs, some of it is on straws, some of it, dang, is on cheeseburgers.”

“That’s what they want us to talk about,” Warren said, before noting that, in her estimation, the fossil fuel industry wanted to cast the climate fight as “your problem.” She continued: “They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your lightbulbs, around your straws and around your cheeseburgers, when 70% of the pollution, of the carbon that we’re throwing into the air, comes from three industries.”

The industries Warren mentioned are the oil industry, the electric power industry and the building industry, according to The New York Times.

In other words we aren't going to solve a problem caused by institutional corruption and  mismanagement by shaming the individual victims of that mismanagement into submission.  We're not going to reduce carbon emissions by drinking out of paper straws. Anyone who tells you differently is not really on your side. 

Similarly, in New Orleans, we aren't going to relieve decades worth of decay and negligence visited on our drainage system by shaming people into picking up their trash. But for some reason, LaToya Cantrell can't help but to do just that at every opportunity. Even, here, where the topic is really more about expanding the Department of Public Works, she can't help but get in a dig.

Officials outlined more on how they plan to spend money from the "fair share" deal. The money will help the Department of Public Works hire 42 extra employees and fund more tasks being brought in house. They'll bring in five more maintenance inspectors and 28 new pieces of equipment, including vac trucks, pothole patchers, dump trucks, excavators, pickup trucks and trailers.

"We are owning our responsibilities and seamlessly working together," Cantrell said. "It's a shared responsibility. We're not being reactive because we're doing the work every single day and have been doing it every single day since I've been in office."

Cantrell ask citizens to do their part by cleaning up the city and dumping trash appropriately. Someone recently dumped three boats on Martin Luther King Avenue.

"You can't make it up," Cantrell said. "It's present. It's there."

What does a boat left in the street have to do with causing people to need... boats in the street every time it rains?  I really have no idea.  But it's obviously evidence that we've done something wrong.

It's notable, also, that Cantrell's hostility toward the citizenry appears here in a story about her so-called "fair share" deal with the hospitality industry.  She's very proud of her grand bargain. She's so proud, in fact, that #FairShare has already transcended its original meaning to become a catch-all mantra applicable to whatever the mayor happens to be talking about at the time.  A new gambit at extracting patronage dollars out of the French Market is about “...getting our fair share, based on what’s coming back to the city, and these are assets we control.” A scheme to skim fees off of other governmental agencies for tax collection services is apparently about getting a "fair share."  The city raised the fees it charges to Bayou Boogaloo saying they also need to pay a "fair share."  LaToya's PAC is using it as the title of a fundraising campaign.  The city's and the mayor's official Twitter feeds frequently tag random messages about anything and nothing with #FairShare.  It's basically LaToya's #MAGA now.  More to the point, Cantrell's muddled, scattershot use of the phrase now indicates she never grasped its value in the first place.

The original context was the structural inequality of the tourism industry in New Orleans. An obscene portion of the wealth generated by tourism accrues to a cohort of owners and oligarchs while the majority of workers who make that wealth possible struggle for low wages, poor benefits and minimal job security. Moreover, the tax revenue collected off the backs of these workers feeds directly back into systems and institutions meant to further line the pockets of the very same oligarchs. A "fair share" of that revenue should be used to support the city's working class. It should build affordable housing. It should fund better schools, better transit, better city services. It should help the city build and maintain the basic infrastructure that makes life possible here without further burdening its poorest and most vulnerable people. 

So does Cantrell's "fair share" deal actually do any of that?  Not really. The city does receive the temporary windfall of a one-time payment plus a share of one or two new revenue streams (depending on future developments.) But the new money is grossly insufficient to the need.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s hard-fought “fair share” infrastructure deal could provide more than $20 million a year for the struggling Sewerage and Water Board over the next decade. But that doesn’t come close to meeting the $3 billion in funding required by the Sewerage and Water Board’s 10-Year Capital Improvement Plan.

That was revealed by Cantrell administration officials on Monday at the first meeting of the City Council’s Ad Valorem and Special Dedicated Revenue Committee. The committee aims to take a bird’s eye view of the city’s finances and release a public report in early 2020. 

“Oh wow, so every year, you’re hundreds of millions of dollars short leading up to 2028?” Councilwoman Helena Moreno asked at the meeting.

Sure, $3 billion over 10 years is a tall order. In a better world, every city in America would have ample support from a federally funded and guided Green New Deal initiative to repair crumbling infrastructure and stem the tide against the threat of climate change.  But until we get there we have to depend on our local leadership to do the best they can. The #FairShare isn't the best we can do in New Orleans.

In fact, it was never intended to be. The closest description of what it actually was intended to do came from Stephanie Grace all the way back in June. Her key observation at that time was that all of the recurring revenues generated by the deal do not come from the tourism industry giving up any of its accustomed share. Instead they come from new taxes on the "man behind the tree." 

The latest evidence that it always helps to have some metaphorical man behind some imagined tree is the deal to send more money to New Orleans to help rebuild its aging infrastructure, which has apparently cleared all remaining hurdles in the state Legislature. Despite a period of tense, on-again, off-again negotiations among New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, Gov. John Bel Edwards, legislative leaders and representatives of the tourism industry, all sides emerged with much of what they wanted.

"All sides" got what they wanted.  True! But that requires some explanation of which "sides" wanted what. Let's look at how the spoils are divided.

Number one on the list was the Convention Center wanted to build their publicly funded but privately profitable hotel. Check. Walt Leger got that for them.

House Bill 617, passed by the Senate on a 33-0 vote on Sunday, authorizes the Convention Center to build and own the $550 million, 1,200-room hotel proposed for the upriver end of the giant exhibition hall. The bill also clears the way for the Convention Center to develop other vacant land it owns next to the site.

Number two was the tourism cabal wanted less public scrutiny over the marketing and convention brokering agencies they control.  Check.  The technically public New Orleans Tourism Marking Corp will be folded into the technically private (but publicly funded) New Orleans and Company.  The city's "infrastructure fund" gets a cut NOTMC's corpse.  But the lion's #FairShare of that still goes to the NO and Co.

About $5.5 million of the Marketing Corp.’s budget, which comes from a nightly fee charged on hotel rooms, would be redirected to the city’s infrastructure fund as part of the overall deal. Other money the group receives, including $2 million a year from Harrah’s Casino and its hotel and $7.8 million from a self-assessment by hotels in the city, would go to New Orleans and Co.

The key difference, though, is that these operations will be more fully privatized under the new regime.  The city had a direct oversight role with NOTMC.  The new entity says it will "invite" them to sit in on the back bench at some of their meetings.

Oversight of the combined organizations is another detail being worked out. In an internal company email sent Wednesday and shared with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, Perry said New Orleans and Co. intends to invite the two City Council district members and a rotating at-large member to serve on an “ex-office” basis with New Orleans & Co. Perry later clarified that his group is still working out the details for a formal City Council presence on the board, but his plan is to invite council members to serve on a leisure marketing committee run by Romig.

Number three was the city wanted to pull in more recurring revenue from local hotel/motel taxes. This, more than anything, was the core of the "fair share" argument. And they did sort of get what they wanted.  But the trick is in how they got it. What the city is getting is a completely new tax based on a revival of a so-called "lost penny" that hadn't been collected since 1966.  In other words, the tourism agencies aren't "sharing" their previous take at all.  The "man behind the tree" is.

Number four was various parties for various reasons wanted a new tax on Short Term Rentals.  The hotel industry wanted it in order to equalize the tax paid on STRs with that applied to hotel rooms.  The STR industry, while not happy about being taxed, is happier on balance with becoming a critical revenue generating industry the city will be reluctant to crack down on in the future. The city, again, just wants to get paid.  And they will. Maybe. The new tax still has to be approved by voters on the November ballot this year.  Also the city is having difficulty projecting just how much revenue it's going to actually see from it.  One thing we do know is whatever amount the tax does eventually produce, we still have to "fair share" 25 percent of it back to NO and Co. So, congratulations on that as well. 

Number five on the wish list was the Convention Center wanted to ret-con its legally questionable collection of a tax originally intended to pay for its Phase IV construction. Over the years, that money has become a kind of slush fund the city's elite have used to pass money around among themselves for their own pet projects and those of their cronies.  So, yeah, in exchange for a paltry $50 million one time payment, they get to keep doing that now.   Already, they've got big plans. 

New Orleans tourism officials' plans for a massive entertainment district on empty land upriver from the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center are back on the table.

The Convention Center's board, which finally won approval in June to build a 1,200-room hotel on part of the land after lengthy political wrangling, has asked interested firms to submit ideas by Oct. 4 for how to develop the 20 acres adjacent to the hotel site.

In its request for new master plan proposals, the Convention Center said it "expects the development to be reflective of the unique culture and history of New Orleans and include elements not commonly found in other parts of the nation."

They're putting out for bids on a shiny new entertainment district to go with their hotel. It will be built on some of the highest ground in the city convenient to downtown. Ideal for building affordable housing, maybe.  But that would only happen if the city were serious about giving its workers a "fair share" of the benefit their labor actually produces. LaToya Cantrell's fair sham deal was never really supposed to do that.


The mayor herself even admitted the fair sham isn't going to be enough last week when city officials laid out their plans for some of the money they know they will have on hand.  The deal left far too much money and power in the hands of the tourism cabal. So, naturally, she is asking you to make up the difference.

But she said it will take far more than the "fair share" deal’s millions to fix all the roads, canals and pipes that have crumbled during years of deferred maintenance and that are being further battered by the effects of climate change. She said that’s precisely why voters should pull the lever for a trio of infrastructure funding initiatives on Nov. 16. 

Part of what voters will consider is tied in with the fair share deal: a tax on short-term rentals whose proceeds will help to fund city infrastructure.  The other initiatives include a 3-mill tax to pay for repairs and maintenance of infrastructure, a $500 million package of infrastructure bonds and another $10 million in bonds for maintenance work.

When they do get down to fixing the canals and pipes, however they pay for it, let's hope they get it right this time.  The last big drainage project only just recently wrapped up. And already people are raising questions about that one.

The SELA improvements all stem from widespread flooding on May 8, 1995. The resulting $3.1 billion in insurance claims set a record at the time for an unnamed storm event, and the federal flood insurance program had to foot the bill for repairs.

So, Congress responded by authorizing $1.5 billion in drainage improvements over the next 20 years, with the idea that improving the infrastructure would prevent rising flood-repair costs in the future. The Uptown culverts were among the last pieces of that puzzle.

But after this summer’s floods, there are questions about whether those improvements have had unintended consequences for New Orleans’ antiquated drainage system.

When the Corps completed the SELA culverts, they were turned over to the Sewerage & Water Board. The board’s executive director, Ghassan Korban, doesn’t believe the increased capacity in the SELA culverts would have any negative impact on surrounding drainage, but he said he’s hired an outside engineering firm to analyze the flow and determine if it’s causing any bottlenecks.

A couple of independent engineers quoted in that story think maybe the SELA work is making the flooding worse. Sewerage and Water Board is skeptical but they say they'll check it out.  Last year we read in The Lens that the new culverts are "large enough to accommodate three city buses side-by-side."At the time that seemed like a colorful description but, really, who knows what might be down there. 

Whatever they find, though, it's important to understand, the mayor is not going to ask the city's ruling classes to pay to dig it out.  According to her version of events, they are paying their fair share.  So, obviously, we must be the problem now.

Joey Wagner, the Corps’ senior project manager for the SELA projects, bristled when WWL-TV asked what he would tell Bossier and others who think the construction has contributed to recent flooding.

“Like the mayor says, move your cars to the neutral ground," he said. "We all know there are certain areas of the city that are going to flood. And it’s going to continue to flood until the system is totally overhauled.”

And Mayor LaToya Cantrell backed up Wagner at a news conference last week: “Until the city, until we start dealing with our local issues relative to infrastructure, then we will not see the system working as intended.”

She focused her ire on the large amounts of debris New Orleanians regularly dump into the drainage system, and then blamed the intensifying rainfall.

To quote Senator Warren again, come on, give me a break.

It's a good thing S&WB is flush with cash now

Looks like they've got some judgements to pay out.

The New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board will have to pay nearly a half-million dollars in damages to five homeowners whose property was damaged during construction of a massive Uptown drainage project, judges on the state 4th Circuit Court of Appeal ruled this week.

The ruling upholds the key portions of a lower court’s decision and appears to pave the way for decisions in similar suits from 300 other plaintiffs who allege significant damage to their properties during construction of the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, the stormwater-drainage upgrades that involved years of major construction on several major Uptown roadways.

That plus more settlements to come in all likelihood. Anyway, I guess the people can take these signs down now. Some of them are still up even though we no longer have a "Mister" Mayor for them to whine at.



Speaking of whining, there has still been no landscaping work done on the Napoleon Avenue neutral ground.




The sod was lain two years ago but the trees and walking path the original plans called for have yet to materialize.  Meanwhile, it looks like Jefferson and Louisiana are all done even though the construction work finished there last. What gives?

Piezometer

It sounds like the most delicious of all measuring tools, I know. Sadly this is not really the case.

Potentially key evidence connecting Uptown drainage canal construction to nearby home and business damage was improperly withheld by the Sewerage &Water Board, according to a lawsuit filing from property owners seeking to recover their losses. An attorney for the Sewerage & Water Board argued in court Monday morning (Jan. 28) that the utility thought all of the evidence it had available was already handed over.

The issue centers on a device called a piezometer, which is used to collect data on any groundwater level changes in the canal construction areas. Attorneys for Uptown homeowners and businesses in several separate lawsuits have contended construction impacts caused property damage, but that they have been constrained in their legal arguments because they lack certain geotechnical data -- such as groundwater changes and vibrations from heavy equipment -- they requested from the Sewerage & Water Board several times since 2016.

The rest of this is about the legal technicalities of keeping the facts of one lawsuit separate from the procedures of other related lawsuits even when the cases are related and... look, the point is there are three or four suits pending against Sewerage and Water Board right now over damage done to buildings situated near the SELA work.  It's why there are still signs like this Uptown near Napoleon Avenue.



Good luck to everybody involved.  Including S&WB, I guess, since they're still struggling to figure out how to pay for the badly needed drainage and water management work still to be done let alone pay out legal judgements that may go against them. This week, a task force report recommended they resolve this by imposing a new stormwater drainage fee.

Currently, the S&WB's drainage system is paid for by property taxes, but the report calls for imposing a stormwater drainage fee that would account for how much water runs off a property.

That would be attractive to S&WB officials because it would create an incentive for property owners to reduce the amount of water from their properties that makes its way into the drainage system.

Various groups, both inside and outside city government and the S&WB, have argued for years that a drainage fee could be a solution that would bring in more money and could be imposed on government and nonprofit properties that are currently exempt from property taxes and therefore pay nothing for drainage.

Philosophically speaking this seems like a bad direction to take.  Basically it amounts to imposing a flat usage style fee on residents rather than addressing the fundamental regressivity borne by having so many special exemptions built into the tax system.  Practically speaking, it makes sense that SWB members, city councilmembers, and the mayor would prefer the false "fairness" of the new fee rather than anything that challenges the privileges enjoyed by the churches and "charitable" non-profits who dot the local political landscape.

Besides, apparently measuring how much water runs off of a particular property is easy.  I think you can use a piezometer. Or something like it, anyway.  Now figuring out how to get S&WB to bill people accurately for it. That's something else entirely.

Pretty good gig if you can get it

I imagine you could build a pretty healthy law practice out of just suing Sewerage and Water Board.

Months after a judge ruled in favor of a small group of homeowners who said construction of a mammoth drainage project in Uptown New Orleans had caused major damage to their houses, hundreds of more cases continue to remain in limbo.

The Sewerage & Water Board continues to fight against the claims of nearly 300 such homeowners, who say the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project cracked the foundations of their houses or caused other costly damage.

I feel like that particular suit was filed before they SELA digging even started. That's how predictable all of this has been.  As Jason Williams explains at the end of this story, these it's obvious why these suits are inevitable.

City Councilman Jason Williams, speaking at last month’s committee meeting, said the S&WB should go to the negotiating table rather than continue to fight the cases, arguing that the “only people who make out well” at the trials are the lawyers. Williams is a criminal defense lawyer.

“The Sewerage & Water Board is going to have to pay something, and putting it off is not in the board’s best interest and it’s not in the homeowners’ best interest,” Williams said. “To the extent that we can make this right by ending it and not dragging it on, I think that makes a lot of sense.”

Speaking of which, there are now lawsuits stemming from last year's floods. That might not be a "winnable" case either but the odds are it goes to a settlement as well. Either way, these guys get paid.  

The attorneys who filed the suit are with Bruno & Bruno and the Whitaker Firm, the same two firms representing hundreds of Uptown plaintiffs suing the S&WB over damage their homes sustained during work on the massive Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project.  

The SELA endgame

Soooon. Very soon. But not yet.

A month-long partial closure of the busy Uptown intersection of Magazine Street and Louisiana Avenue is set to begin Thursday (July 5), according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The closure figures in the continuing construction of a drainage canal on Louisiana Avenue amid the Corps' years-long Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control project, or SELA.

Starting Thursday, traffic on Magazine heading downtown toward Louisiana will have to detour before reaching the intersection. Traffic on Magazine heading Uptown toward Louisiana will be able to pass through the intersection without detour. Two-way traffic on Louisiana will not be affected, the Corps says.

They are saying this is going to be finished by the end of the year at which point it might be possible to move about Uptown relative freely again.

Meanwhile, the latest update I can find about plans to finish the landscaping on Napoleon Avenue is from 2016. 

The exact plan of the landscaping cannot be drawn until the construction is absolutely complete, and Boh Brothers has submitted their own “as-built” specifications of the exact location of each new underground utility line, Wagner noted.


“I’d hate to put an oak tree on top of a new city line,” Wagner said.

Aiming for the spring planting season in 2017 is also somewhat complicated by Mardi Gras, he noted, as the crowds on Napoleon Avenue likely be harmful to newly-planted landscaping.

So, anyway, that never happened. Halfway through 2018 now and no one has planted even the first crepe myrtle out there.  Maybe that's out of the plan now? 

Not so silent piling

Earlier this month, Mitch Landrieu told the Sewerage and Water Board the city's entire drainage system is in need of an overhaul the cost of which could run into the billions of dollars.  Oh, also, he said coming up with that money is going to be very difficult.

Landrieu also warned that while both the city and the S&WB have been able to dip into FEMA money and other federal funds since Hurricane Katrina, the city alone will likely have to find the money it needs going forward.

"This board is going to have to shoulder the responsibility of the next major thing to help this city survive," Landrieu said.

"There is no way to do this, there is zero way to do this, without a new revenue stream that comes from the people of New Orleans," he said.

This week, outgoing District A Councilwoman Susan Guidry and her replacement Joe Giarrusso spoke at a public meeting about the challenges S&WB faces. One of those challenges is they don't seem to know how much revenue they're supposed to be collecting from people now.

One woman in the audience told Guidry that she seems to get no bills for several months in a row, then a single massive bill in a “lump sum.” Another resident said he receives his bill every month, but that “two months out of three” are an estimate, indicating that no one actually read his meter.

The high bills are the latest in a litany of failures by the agency that City Council members are continuing to learn about since its catastrophic collapse during the flooding rain last August, Guidry said. The billing software is riddled with bugs, and its implementation was “terrible,” she said. Meanwhile, turnover among agency employees is so high that she recently heard an estimate that they have 400 vacancies.

“Where this will end, goodness only knows,” Guidry said with a wry laugh. “It’s astounding. I think I’ve heard everything, and then I hear something else.”

Further, there seem to be problems now with the actual readings, Guidry said. The problem may be growing so large and so complex that a solution may not even be possible, she said.

“It does seem to me that there should be a lawsuit that comes out of this for all the people who paid too much. Some entrepreneurial attorney is going to figure it out,” Guidry said. “The Sewerage & Water Board has been in such bad shape lately that I’m afraid it’s just going to go bankrupt. I can’t sugar coat this. Everything that could be wrong is wrong.”

Well here is something else.  Just when you thought they needed to come up with a lot of money they don't have, it turns out they will have to come up with more money they don't have.

One homeowner said the drainage construction on Napoleon Avenue made his house "shake, shift and jump," according to a judge's ruling in Orleans Parish civil court. Another neighbor, whose house sits a few blocks from the construction on Jefferson Avenue, said jackhammers had "caused his kitchen cabinets to fall off of the wall."

They are among five homeowners now entitled to collect more than $500,000 collectively from the Sewerage & Water Board, based on a ruling handed down Wednesday (April 25) by Orleans Parish Civil District Court Judge Nakisha Ervin-Knott.

The ruling is from a lawsuit filed in 2015 against the Sewerage & Water Board by about 300 residents and business who claim the utility should compensate them for property damage resulting from the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, a massive regional drainage improvement undertaking that began in 1996.

The lawsuit succeeded at demonstrating to the judge that the damage sustained by homes along Napoleon Aveneue was due to excessive vibrations from the construction that the Corps and S&WB contractors did not take very seriously.

The homeowners' attorneys also argued that vibrations from work sites often breached the maximum intensity allowed under the Army Corps's contracts. However, "under-reporting" data made it complicated to pinpoint exactly how many times the vibration exceeded allowable limits, Ervin-Knott found, backed by testimony from homeowners that contractor personnel tasked with monitoring vibrations were at times not present on-site. On one occasion, a homeowner said she caught a vibration monitor sleeping on the job.

Back at the beginning of the Napoleon work, we were introduced to the "Silent Piler." It is a hydraulic machine that was supposed to minimize vibrations while driving metal sheet pilings into place.  I know these definitely got used. I managed to get some photos of them in action. They're pretty cool, actually.



Apparently cool is different from actually quiet. Or maybe the pile driving wasn't the only source of the trouble. In any event, here is one more thing S&WB has to find "new revenue streams" to pay for. So yay.

We love our stupid city

I don't know about y'all but I am feeling all 300 of those years myself.  Ready or not, though, it's time to play the Tricentennial game in earnest. That means more tourism-oriented marketing like that banner the Columns Hotel is flying in the photo above. It also means lots and lots and lots.. and also lots more commemorative events.  If the "Katrina 10" exercise we went through a few years ago is any sort of template, expect these to be a mix of crass commercialism and cynical political opportunism with, sure, one or two worthwhile things thrown in here and there.

There is at least a partial list of activities at the city's Tricentennial website which reads, in part,

To celebrate 300 years of rich history, diversity, cultural traditions and resilience, the City of New Orleans will celebrate 2018 like no other.  To accomplish this, Mayor Mitchell Landrieu formed the 2018 NOLA Commission to allow input for events and programs that will honor the anniversary of the founding of New Orleans.  A variety of special events, concerts, fireworks and completion of major infrastructure projects will take place in 2018.  We invite you to join us in celebrating this special anniversary as only New Orleans can do.

Many of the events listed seem to be either only tangentially related to the Tricentennial theme or are regular annual events that have been shoehorned in. Not that there's anything wrong with that.   A cursory look through brings up some neat stuff, though not a lot of details.  Apparently there will be "Mardi Gras themed fireworks" on Twelfth Night.  There are more "Tricentennial fireworks" on April 22 and again on May 6 at the close of Jazzfest. The site also lists the New Year's Eve fireworks but not the Fourth of July for some reason.  Anyway... there will be fireworks.   This HNOC exhibit looks interesting. In March there will be a "Tricentennial Symposium" which raises an eyebrow. The description reads only, "Lectures and cultural programming will take place throughout the city and explore the 300-year history. Open to the public." I found a little more detail here but only a little. 

But these aren't the only ongoing events celebrating the "cultural traditions and resilience" of New Orleans. Here's one that was omitted somehow. The SELA drainage work, which was authorized in 1996 and so has been ongoing for about 7 percent of the city's history, is hustling to get a busy intersection complete in time for parade season. 

Construction crews began hammering away at the intersection of Magazine Street and Louisiana Avenue on Tuesday (Jan. 2), kicking off road reconstruction work that's set to close the busy Uptown intersection for a month.

Part of a years-long US Army Corps of Engineers effort to install a drainage canal on Louisiana Avenue, the closure now in effect is detouring vehicular traffic away from the entire block of Magazine leading up to the intersection. The closure is scheduled to last for about 30 days, according to a news release issued by the Army Corps last Tuesday.

Some of the area business owners quoted in that story have some funny ideas about redesigning the streets when this is finished. Constantine Georges wants more angular parking on the Louisiana neutral ground. Hopefully that gets tossed in the same bin where the city lost its plan for landscaping Napoleon Avenue when work finished there.  Nothing has happened there since these strips of turf were laid back around last Mardi Gras.



It turns out they did notice one thing, though.

City Hall late Tuesday evening released the following statement: "During inspection of the Napoleon Avenue SELA project, DPW (the Department of Public Works) discovered that the conduit for the traffic signal interconnect between St. Charles and Magazine that was in place prior to construction had not been replaced. The Corps and its contractor are in the process of replacing the conduit which should be compete by the end of January."

So this morning, they're digging it back up.  The story doesn't say whether or not there will be street closures there again. But I wouldn't try to get across Uptown without some advance scouting and maybe a passport for while.



Also celebrating "300 years of rich history, diversity, cultural traditions and resilience," is the Sewerage and Water Board which came up with this fun activity for everyone to play at during this week's freeze. 

The S&WB also asked residents to take some advice about how to keep water running without putting too much demand on the system.

"If residents must run their water, the Sewerage & Water Board urges them to run only the faucet farthest from their property's main stop valve," Rainey said in the statement. "The stream should be no more than 1/16 of an inch wide, about 'pencil lead thin.'"

Residents are also being asked to turn water off when temperatures rise above 32 degrees. As of 8 p.m. Tuesday, temperatures were hovering at 37 degrees, but the area is under a hard freeze warning overnight, with temperatures predicted between 21 and 27 degrees.

Look for special S&WB measuring pencils branded with the Tricentennial logo available for distribution later this year. 

Also of note in that story, we must have missed it when former T-P reporter Richard Rainey went to work for the water agency recently headed by Paul Rainwater. Rainey is named as the S&WB spokesperson in the article.  There has been some controversy over the progress of Mayor-elect Cantrell's transition team lately.  We do hope whoever is advising her remembers to throw in a few names that are also cringeworthy puns on their departmental functions when they get down to making these appointments.  This is a year to honor cultural traditions, after all.
 

Who is going to throw them something?

Signs like the one above were posted along Napoleon Avenue during Carnival this year. A few months later, they printed a similar format which claimed SELA had also "ruined my Jazzfest." That was confusing. Maybe the sight of a crack in the wall distracted these homeowners and made them sad as they watched the parades pass from their front porches.  Not sure that would "ruin" things for me but ok.  How it affected their Jazzfest is anybody's guess.

In any case, it's looking more and more like the mayor is going to have to throw them something after all.

The Sewerage & Water Board has lost its latest attempt to blame federal contractors for damage to homes along the Uptown New Orleans routes of several new underground drainage canals.

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday (Aug. 28) that the Sewerage & Water Board couldn't hold liable federal contractors hired under the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Program, or SELA.

That leaves the embattled city agency staring down a possible $86 million payout to roughly 275 plaintiffs.

Appellate judges Thomas Reavley, Edward Prado and James Graves agreed with a lower court ruling that the Sewerage & Water Board had failed to prove the contractors hadn't followed federally agreed-upon plans when installing the canals.

We don't want to go too far in the direction of defending the Sewerage and Water Board, but it should be said they're in kind of a tight spot in this situation. SELA is a federal project overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps, though, is immune from litigation as are any contractors employed to do the work so long as the Corps signs off on the specs.  So, if you are an aggrieved property owner looking to get paid, you're going to have to get it out of S&WB.

But, uh... to put it lightly, they've got their own problems these days. And according to the mayor, at least, those problems are going to require a whole new source of revenue.

Deputy Mayor Ryan Berni said a new millage for drainage is a possibility, but there's also been a movement to create a more complex fee structure that would credit property owners for the amount of water-permeable property they have. Owners of properties that absorb rainfall would pay less than someone who generates more runoff. For example, a lot with a large lawn or another retaining features would face a lower fee than a parcel with an impermeable surface.

The Bureau of Governmental Research endorsed stormwater fees in a February report. It pointed out that while New Orleans is "one of the nation's most stormwater-challenged cities," it doesn't have a way to collect money directly from property owners who use its drainage system.

It's not clear what they're actually going to propose yet. One talking point they've run up the flagpole is the possibility that a new drainage fee could circumvent exemptions which keep nonprofits and religious organizations from paying property taxes. That's been a longstanding issue in municipal politics. Fittingly enough, though, it's one of those issues everybody complains about but nobody ever mitigates. You, know, like our regularly apocalyptic weather.

Anyway, it seems to me if broadening the tax base were really what they were after here, they'd attack that directly.  Most likely this is just another push to raise revenue via regressive fees instead of through property taxes. That's pretty much been the bread and butter policy choice throughout the Landrieu years especially. According to the somewhat unreliable BGR, they're going to need $54.5 million in new revenue over the next decade and it has to come from somewhere.

According to the also somewhat unreliable Inspector General, though, S&WB's problems go far beyond figuring out how to raise more money.

The current drainage crisis that has gripped the S&WB gave Quatrevaux another platform to bolster his case. In his letter, he listed a series of investigations his office has done in the past five years that he said exposes the shortcomings of the agency's management. They mainly focused on accounting weaknesses that may have made the agency vulnerable to fraud and abuse.

"The recent drainage failures demonstrate that an organization cannot perform poorly in finance and administration yet perform well in operations," Quatrevaux wrote.

I'm not sure what to make of some of Quatrevaux's arguments. I'm especially wary of the way he tends to point his finger at S&WB line employees and I have absolutely no truck with what I see in some of this as an attack on their pensions and benefits.  Having said that, he raises some troubling issues with regard to management practices; i.e. sloppy accounting, reliance on overtime in place of adequate staffing,etc. This passage makes the most critical point.

It is logical to consider how the many problems of the S&WB might be solved by organizational restructuring. From a theoretical view, there is a continuum from city control on one end to privatization at the other. But what is the S&WB now? It is not a city department but an independent entity that is legally impervious to city controls. The S&WB sits halfway down the continuum from city control to privatization, neither fish nor fowl.

The fundamental problem with the Sewerage & Water Board is that it is an institution impervious to change—it has ossified. Its celebrated independence permitted decades of technological progress to bypass the S&WB. Fees or millages increased when the inefficiencies could not be paid with current funds. The problem is structural, and the passing characters—mayors, directors, members of the S&WB—almost irrelevant.

A turnaround in such an organizational culture would be very difficult to achieve: the S&WB must be replaced with a modern organizational structure, one that makes elected officials responsible for the organization’s performance.

A similar argument was made by Jacques Morial a few weeks ago in this Lens op-ed. Morial agrees with Quatrevaux's recommendation to fold S&WB back into City Hall.  But while Quatrevaux's letter is focused on getting us to a more efficient management structure, Morial adds an appeal to more direct democracy. Morial pulls no punches in his piece.  He is especially critical of a recent structural reform backed by Landrieu and BGR.

The gist of SB 47 was to expel the City Council from the S&WB’s board of directors. For years, three members of the Council had been seated on that board. In their place, the bill established a system whereby directors would be appointed by the mayor from a list of nominees put forward by the presidents of local universities.

While all the men and women who have served in recent years as presidents of local universities are honorable, civic-minded leaders, their responsibility is to their institutions and their boards of trustees. These academic leaders are not accountable to the voters in any way, notwithstanding their noble service to the community and the vital role their institutions play in our city.

Leading the charge to purge the S&WB’s accountability to the voters was the august Bureau of Governmental Research, founded by social elites in 1930 as an anti-populist organization with a secret membership roster, not unlike the exclusive carnival krewes whose members comprised the group. But the BGR is neither representative, nor credible. Many of its board members do not live in New Orleans. Not a single African American serves on the BGR’s staff. Its board members have been awarded no-bid contracts with city agencies, and have been appointed by Landrieu to city boards or commissions. At least one of its officers has been embroiled in his own ugly conflict-of-interest scandal.

We aren't exactly sure what the new fee proposal will look like yet. But anything mayor pushes with heavy BGR backing is worthy of heavy scrutiny.  If Quatreveaux is to be believed, it's worth questioning just how steep such a measure really needs to be. Whatever the amount, I suspect we'll be looking at an attempt to impose a regressive fee based on a notional measure of drainage "usage" rather than a more progressive property millage.  After all, it would be shame if those Napoleon Avenue property owners went through all the trouble of making the mayor and S&WB "throw them something" only to find they were footing a fair portion of the bill themselves.  

A party the city throws for itself

Happy Lombardi Gras, everybody! On this day way back in 2010, Garrett Hartley broke the Muses shoe.  A few weeks later, at the height of the Saturnalia, the conquering general was given his triumph.

These were good times. We may not see their like again.

On the other hand, it is Carnival time again so the world has not been drained entirely of mirth... yet. I know it must be Carnival now because I find that I have purchased the Arthur Hardy Mardi Gras Guide yet again.  You know the one. It's a big glossy magazine.




Only $5.00 this year. Print really must be dying after all. That's a shame... not only in general.. but because people really should read the Arthur Hardy guide.  Every year its Q&A section features the first and most critical point one should learn about Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  Because you probably don't have five bucks on you right now, I have gone ahead and digitized this content for you.





The city actually does spend quite a bit of money promoting and supporting Mardi Gras stuff, but you get the point here. Carnival is an organic celebration. Its forms, institutions and cultural vernacular all change with the times. It is influenced and pressured by political, cultural, and commercial interests. But, as long as people still actually live here (a tenuous prospect, I know) the event belongs to us. This is the basis from which any and all public policy regarding Carnival should begin.  Sometimes we lose sight of that... or at least, our tourism obsessed political class does.

For example, they've already conspired to jam up the traditionally "local friendly" first weekend of parades with the corporate crap festival that comes with hosting the NBA All-Star Game.



They tell us everything should be fine but I don't think any of the "tourism leaders" the press talks to about this is very concerned with the typical local's Carnival experience. It will be something to keep an eye on next week.

Something else to watch will be the progress of road work along the Uptown parade route.  Earlier this month, crews began shutting down lanes and busting up concrete along St. Charles Avenue.

According to the mayor's office, the St. Charles Avenue project is divided into six phases, beginning in January and scheduled for completion by spring 2018. Phase one is slated to wrap up just before Mardi Gras and "will not affect any Mardi Gras parade routes or viewing areas," an overview document on the project states.

The official word there is that rules governing the use of state funds for the project dictated that the work begin now and not after parade season a few weeks from now. OK, fine. They also say they'll have this first phase done once the parades start to roll. We'll see about that.

The SELA work on Napoleon Avenue appears to be wrapping up just under the gun.  In fact, a ribbon cutting was scheduled for that this week (postponed due to the tornadoes.)

While landscaping, road striping and other aspects of the project have yet to be finished, traffic is back to flowing normally, cross streets that were blocked have been reopened and the neutral ground will be open for Mardi Gras parades.

As of today, there is still only one lane of traffic open in each direction, the traffic signal at Magazine Street is not yet installed, and there's a big trailer and heavy equipment sitting in the middle of the neutral ground at Laurel Street.  Still, it does look like they'll have it ready to go on time.  And the finished portion looks great.



Look at all that green space! Come and get it, Krewe Of Chad. Speaking of which, yeah, they've been at it all month.

Krewe of Endymion fans were busy over the weekend marking their territory for this year's roll (which still is almost three weeks away). The claiming of the turf began last week — a new early record — but went into high gear this weekend, when spray paint was used to delineate vast swaths of neutral ground grass on Orleans Avenue.

The Uptown Chad-ing can't really begin until Boh Brothers clears all the way out. We'll keep you posted on that. The crowding of the neutral ground by territorial squatters and ladders has been a longstanding hobby horse of ours. Our favored solution is not even on the radar of policymakers, unfortunately.  We'll let Arthur Hardy have the last word on that.

If we could restore one "lost" Carnival tradition... https://t.co/3n80z5AVTc pic.twitter.com/U1Fwdiy2C4

— skooks (@skooks) February 3, 2017

Meanwhile, signs of the season are everywhere. Here are a few quick items.

I can't even keep up with the sprawling elaboration of king cake themes each year anymore.  Here's one from the Audubon Institute with crickets on it.

The market for king cake vodka seems to have narrowed. The only brand I've spotted so far this year has been the bargain-level Taaka. Only $8.19 at Rouses.



The reviewing stands are going up at Gallier Hall.  I thought about roping off the mayor's podium Krewe of Chad style when I was down there last week but the work crews were giving me the stinkeye.



The krewe flags are starting to come out Uptown.  Here a few I've spotted recently.

Hermes



Thoth



Iris



Iris also has these banners up on St. Charles Avenue celebrating their (supposed) 100 year anniversary.



This is a technically dubious claim. According to.. again.. this year's Arthur Hardy guide, Iris' founding date isn't clear. Its first ball was held in 1922 but it didn't stage a parade for many years after that because its founding members, "felt that a ball only club was a 'prestige' club to belong to."  This is what these Uptown Ladies are like, y'all.

In order to have their cake and eat it too, they created a second club called Venus during the 1940s which did stage a parade off and on until 1959 when they finally decided they were okay with just being Iris. So technically speaking, 2017 would be the 58th (maybe fewer.. I don't know when or if they've rained out) Iris parade even though the flags all celebrate 100 years.

But that won't happen for a few more weeks.  This Saturday, is Krewe Du Vieux.  I read all about it in the Fake News.



Reading between the lines to pick up on what our favorite sub-krewes have planned, it looks like Mama Roux is doing a French Revolution theme. Probably because they are Jacobin readers.  And SPANK sounds like they are going after Jazzfest. Gambit has a preview here.  If ever a year was ripe for raunchy political satire it is now.  This should be a layup for KDV. But then... the election was supposed to be a layup for Hillary and look what happened.

In the meantime, we've got a few more days to get our supplies together.  I usually kick off parade season by picking up a new pair of waterproof hiking boots and a poncho or two.  I think I might be ready for a new bike as well.  It's probably time to start restocking liquor too but we'll get to that.  For now let's just get out and get this thing started.  I can't think of a time I was more anxious to do so.

I just needed to post something

I'm writing some long-ish posts right now about (1) The Trump style in public corruption (2) Mitch's plan to go full Giuliani on Bourbon Street (3) Carnival season (4) Miscellaneous. But that's all taking a very long time and I just started to feel that CONTENT NOW blogger's itch. So look! They're almost done with the SELAwork on Napoleon.



They were out laying sod samples along the edges of the neutral ground last week. It's not clear whether they're going to do the whole thing yet. I thought I'd read they were going to leave it entirely until after parade season. So it was a little suprising to see this rolling out at all.



This week the crown of the median is still bare. In the meantime they have moved on to actually paving the street.



From the looks of things, the work on Napoleon could all be wrapped up in about a week or so if the weather cooperates. But the Great Walls dividing Uptowner from Uptowner will stay with us on Jefferson and Louisiana Avenues for at least another year, probably longer. So let's not schedule that Scorpions concert just yet.

Free the Krewe Of Chad!

The Corps has good news!

Napoleon Avenue parade-goers can get their “Neutral Ground Side” T-shirts out of the mothballs for Mardi Gras 2017, because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced that all construction on the avenue will be complete before the first parades roll in 2017.


“The project is scheduled to be complete early next year and the neutral ground will be available for parade goers to stand on for Mardi Gras 2017!” according to a celebratory post on the Facebook page for the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control project.

Yay, we did it. On time for Mardi Gras. You're welcome, everybody. 

Except we won't be all the way all the way finished. 

More specifically, all major construction on Napoleon Avenue will be finished by the time the first Uptown parade, the Krewe of Oshun, rolls at 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17, according to information released by U.S. Army Corps spokesman Ricky Boyett’s office. The sod will be placed on entire length of the neutral ground, no areas of it will be fenced off, and no holes will remain open in the ground because construction on the underground box culvert is already finished.

If any work on Napoleon Avenue is still unfinished by that point, it will only be minor items like individual curb or sidewalk repairs, Boyett’s office said. Landscaping of the entire Napoleon Avenue neutral ground is then scheduled for the fall planting season in 2017, officials have said.

That's fine, though. It's actually an improvement on the last update, in a way.  In October, they said the sodding wouldn't be finished until after Mardi Gras. Now they're saying it will be. On the other hand, we only learned that much because we noticed they had moved the project completion date from November 2016 to July 2017. The response at that point, promised construction would finish up in December.

@skooks Spoke with the Corps. There's no (major) change in the completion date. Construction will be done in December. 1/2

— Jeff Adelson (@jadelson) October 12, 2016

Well, it's December now and the new update via this "celebratory post on Facebook" is that they are actually planning to finish "in time for Mardi Gras."  That's good news. But it's still pretty much an announcement that they've missed their target again.  Hope they get this new deadline right.  

Another SELA Mardi Gras

The last update from S&WB that I'd paid any attention to came several months back during the spring. At that time, we were told that the SELA drainage work on Napoleon Avenue would be completed "by the end of the year."

The long-awaited end of the Napoleon Avenue drainage-canal project is now expected to be the end of the year — all of it — and landscaping on the neutral ground should be done next year, officials with the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told neighbors Thursday night.


The section of Napoleon from South Claiborne to Carondelet Street is all but finished already, said engineer Ron Spooner of the S&WB and John Fogarty of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during a town-hall meeting at the St. Stephen Catholic Church school cafeteria. The box canal has been completely installed, and Boh Brothers contractors are now finishing up replacing curbs and sidewalks that were removed during construction.

In recent months, their progress has been evident.  Most of the culvert is finished and buried.  The intersection at Camp Street has reopened. Others are tantalizingly close to completion.  At the same time, though, they clearly have a lot of work left to do.



So today I happened to glance at the project site to find that the completion date has quietly been moved to July 2017.  Get ready for another parade season in the construction zone.

UPDATE: Thanks to the Advocate's Jeff Adelson for checking up on this. 

@skooks 2 - The July 2017 date is because they won't be laying sod on the neutral grounds until after Mardi Gras.

— Jeff Adelson (@jadelson) October 12, 2016

@skooks 3 - Waiting to do the sod means they won't have to close the neutral ground for the parades.

— Jeff Adelson (@jadelson) October 12, 2016

We may live to see the end of this

Out on lower Napoleon Avenue this afternoon, work crews were applying dirt fill to what looks like a nearly complete portion of the SELA project.



One can almost picture the restored neutral ground now.

The light at the end of the culvert is actually a lawsuit

Napoleon Avenue Demilitarized Zone April 2016


WWI Flying Ace somewhere along the Western Front


A SELA timeline published in the Times Picayune January 2012.

It was supposed to have been mostly wrapped up by now. But the still ongoing SELA work has not even yet begun to generate the legal claims.

Even as four of the six big Uptown New Orleans drainage projects are winding down this year, litigation continues over the long-running construction work. More than 221 property owners are suing the Sewerage and Water Board, alleging that roadwork on major thoroughfares cut off customer access to their businesses or caused "earthquake-like vibrations" that damaged their houses.

The S&WB said it already has paid more than $17.2 million to settle claims over these and other projects in the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. "We are working closely with claimants who have approached us directly through our claims process to resolve their concerns in an efficient and cost effective manner," said Nolan Lambert, an attorney for the agency.

I spend a fair amount of time in the vicinity of Napoleon Avenue. That 2014 completion date is pretty funny. It's now expected to finish this November but, well, we'll see. Anyway, one thing I can verify is the little earthquakes are real.

On Napoleon Avenue, where the first of two big drainage projects totaling almost $100 million began almost five years ago, residents have been vocal about their complaints. Peggy Littlejohn, for example, said the construction caused cracks to appear in her house and ruined her grass as crews dug up the road in front to reach the underground pipes.

Napoleon Avenue resident Angele Dassel's suit, filed by attorney Mike Whitaker, says the work blocked access to properties and decries "earthquake-like vibrations" from construction equipment and trucks. Whitaker said his firm and the Bruno & Bruno firm are representing owners of 200 properties.

Whatever, though, as long as none of the complaints does anything to slow the work up, I'm all for these people getting paid.  It's been fun watching them dig up the road for half a decade. But the sooner they put the trees back, the better.



Update: Meanwhile, a brief afternoon thunderstorm seems to have flooded a lot of the city and Uptown especially today. So, you know, progress.

The hills are alive with the sound of drainage

Stacy Head and some neighborhood rough riders are charging up the heights of the Napoleon Avenue neutral ground.

The dispute concerns the shape of the median. The corps is fashioning a crown – meaning the center is higher than the two sides. That’s what was there two years ago when the agency tore up the street for the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Opponents want the neutral ground to be flat or even concave. That’s because a crown can rapidly dump water into adjacent streets, adding stress on drainage systems. The other options can slow it down by storing it for a short periods and letting some of it seep into the ground.

The latter design is favored by the Urban Water Plan, part of the green infrastructure initiative the Sewerage & Water Board adopted in 2014.

And for Head, that’s the design she said the corps promised her.

“I’m fit to be tied because for the last seven or eight years I had been promised by the corps the neutral ground would be at most flat, but hopefully more of a swale or a concave to allow retention of some rain,” she said. “Frankly, until yesterday [April 12] when I saw the hills awaiting sod along Napoleon, I believed that the corps was going to do the right thing. “What’s happening now is outrageous.”

Is it all that outrageous, though?  Seems like what they're asking the corps to do is tack a water retention feature on to a water removal system. The corps response actually explains this pretty well. You're already spending the money to build a great big underground box culvert, if you don't direct the water into it, what will have been the point?

-- Quick aside: The article says the culvert is wide enough to fit "three city buses side by side." I'd like to know where this is the case. On lower Napoleon Avenue, it clearly is not.



Anyway, we're already dedicating an entire "Resilience District" in Gentilly to experimentation with Living With Water concepts.  Let's not confuse the systemic approach being implemented there with the piecemeal complaint fodder Stacy Head and her friends are working with uptown.

Napoleon's Exile

Ending very soon! Seriously.

The long-awaited end of the Napoleon Avenue drainage-canal project is now expected to be the end of the year — all of it — and landscaping on the neutral ground should be done next year, officials with the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told neighbors Thursday night.


The section of Napoleon from South Claiborne to Carondelet Street is all but finished already, said engineer Ron Spooner of the S&WB and John Fogarty of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during a town-hall meeting at the St. Stephen Catholic Church school cafeteria. The box canal has been completely installed, and Boh Brothers contractors are now finishing up replacing curbs and sidewalks that were removed during construction.

This month, they will sod the neutral ground with new grass, and city workers are replacing the lights in the neutral ground that had been removed with historic, high-efficiency lighting, said Joey Wagner, a senior project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. By the end of April, all work should be complete on that section, the officials said.

Construction is continuing on the section between Carondelet and Constance streets, but that portion of the project is smaller and moving faster, and is currently projected to be finished by December — marking the end of major construction on Napoleon Avenue.

They're still going to be working on upper Jefferson and on Louisiana for a long time to come. But Napoleon Avenue is the long dividing line through the heart of Uptown. When those fences come down, we will have a grand reunification concert featuring Jesus Jones and Scorpions. 

Light at the end of the culvert

The reunification of Uptown is slowly becoming a reality.

Now relief is in sight. After 4½ years of lane restrictions, detours and dust, four of the six big projects underway on South Claiborne, Jefferson, Louisiana and Napoleon avenues are scheduled to come to an end this year – including one this month and two in April and May.

That can't come soon enough for many residents and motorists. They've been seeking alternate routes, or braving the construction zones, since September 2011.

Click through for the estimated dates on each project.  I'm curious about the delay along upper Jefferson Avenue.  Seems like they've been working there the longest. 

And then what happens?

Napoleon Avenue neutral ground December 1, 2015

This class action lawsuit against SELA reported on last night by WWLTV has actually been in the works for a while now.

NEW ORLEANS – A group of Uptown property owners has filed a class action lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers over the massive Uptown drainage project that has been underway for a couple of years.

The group says that while they understand the need for flood protection, they are upset at damage to their homes and quality of life.

They say they're so frustrated they decided to file a class action lawsuit in an attempt to bring the Army Corps of Engineers work to a halt. The suit argues, among other things, that "foundations are broken, floors are sinking, roofs are collapsing and leaking, sewer mains are broken and doors and windows no longer operate."

I have questions, though. So say you manage to "bring the work to a halt."  What happens next? Do they just have to fill in the holes they've dug and go home?  Probably not, right?  We're 20 years into this project. Might as well let them finish and be done with it. You do want flood protection, right?

Bill Capo of Eyewitness News has been reporting on the residents' complaints for months, documenting damages back in June. Plaintiffs say it's only gotten worse, comparing the ordeal to the mother of all catastrophes.

"I think this has been worse than Katrina, when we had six feet of flood, because this just keeps going on and on and on," said Sewell.

Oookayy.. are you sure that's what you want the lawsuit to say?  Because Katrina was kinda bad.  What, for example, is the death toll from SELA thus far?  But, OK. What else you got?

The suit alleges this is a historic district that by law must be protected. 

Yeah... kind of like the Confederate monuments, I guess. Maybe the pile driving isn't hitting hard enough.  

All we do is win-win-win

They're saying the new plan is full of win. 

City officials released a compromise plan for Napoleon Avenue on Thursday that would maintain the size of the neutral ground and add a bike lane — without reducing the number of lanes dedicated to traffic or parking.

The idea is to reduce the width of both traffic and parking lanes by 2 feet each, rather than eliminating lanes altogether or reducing the size of the neutral ground.

The final configuration will be two 10-foot-wide vehicle travel lanes, one 5-foot-wide dedicated bicycle lane and one 7-foot-wide parking lane in each direction. The neutral ground will be restored to its original, pre-construction width of 47 feet

“This is a win-win-win for area neighborhoods, motorists and cyclists,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a news release. “By working together, we feel confident that this roadway configuration is a reasonable accommodation for all interests.”

Is that really a "win-win-win"? Sounds more like nobody got what they wanted. Unless you count the portion of the neighborhood that wanted to make sure they didn't shrink the neutral ground, I guess. Although that wasn't the neighbors' only complaint and I'm not even sure that was their first priority.

They were also worried about the bike lanes. Specifically they were worried that a bike lane on a street like Napoleon Avenue was bound to produce a safety hazard at major intersections as they have in other places around town.  Another issue with the proposed bike lane was its placement between a lane of traffic and the on street parking which is also something that happens all over town despite being a clear safety hazard. 

Both of these issues are also frequently raised by cycling advocates to little avail so it's hard to say that this is really a "win" for them either. All they're getting now is another unsafe bike lane jammed in next to two 10 ft wide lanes of traffic which, by the way, is also not quite in keeping with the "best practices" standard for a trucking and transit artery like Napoleon Avenue.

For multi-lane roadways where transit or freight vehicles are present and require a wider travel lane, the wider lane should be the outside lane (curbside or next to parking). Inside lanes should continue to be designed at the minimum possible width. Major truck or transit routes through urban areas may require the use of wider lane widths. 

Lane widths of 10 feet are appropriate in urban areas and have a positive impact on a street's safety without impacting traffic operations. For designated truck or transit routes, one travel lane of 11 feet may be used in each direction. In select cases, narrower travel lanes (9–9.5 feet) can be effective as through lanes in conjunction with a turn lane.

The only "win" here is a slight one for the city the next time it wants to write a report about the total mileage of bike lane they've installed over the course of Mitch Landrieu's term in office. It doesn't really matter whether the bike lanes in question are actually placed where they'll be used properly or even if they do anything to protect the safety of the cyclists who have to navigate them. All that matters is that the mayor's office can make "the data show" how progressive a city we've become under their watch.

As bicycle ridership increases, the City is committed to expanding our network of bikeways. According to the League of American Bicyclists, New Orleans currently ranks fifth in the nation amongst large cities in the percentage of residents who bike to work. With the completion of the Lafitte Greenway’s bicycle and pedestrian path, New Orleans will have more than 100 miles of bikeways.

So congratulations on your 100 miles, guys.  Hope no one gets doored into a bus for the sake of it.

Aside:  Because, like you probably do, I thought the artistic rendering of Napoleon Avenue lined with beach hotels from 1920s Atlantic City looked kind of weird, I found out that the image is generated by a generic design program called Streetmix.What's great about that is, if you don't like what the city has come up with, maybe you can play around with this app and make your own Napoleon Avenue. Sadly, I can't find the button that puts the crepe myrtles back.