MEDIA ADVISORY
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What: Hurricane Katrina 4th anniversary (August 29) week news conference, airplane and van media tour during the peak of the hurricane season to show the lack of progress in restoring wetlands east of New Orleans along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) to protect the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish, where Katrina did the most damage. The event sponsors, the MRGO Must Go Coalition, will call on the Army Corps of Engineers to honor President Obama's priority in his budget and campaign"to restore nature's barriers - the wetlands, marshes and barrier islands that can take the first blows and protect the people of the Gulf Coast."
Why: Katrina devastated not only Louisiana and its residents -- but the U.S. economy -- destroying infrastructure and damaging critical refineries so severely that some were out of service for a year, leading to a spike in the price of gasoline. Coastal wetlands are a first line of defense for coastal Louisiana communities because they reduce storm surge and protect levees. MRGO has damaged almost 600,000 acres of wetlands and coastal ecosystem, including totally destroying more than 27,000 acres of wetlands. Congress has been unable to fund restoration of MRGO wetlands – and four other major coastal restoration projects it authorized in the 2007 Water Resources Development Act -- because the Corps has not completed the design and engineering of the projects. The Corps says the MRGO Ecosystem Restoration Plan -- which must be completed before rebuilding MRGO wetlands -- won't be completed until March 2011, nearly three years after the congressionally-mandated deadline of May 2008.
Who: Charles Allen, Asst. Dir., Ctr. for Bioenvironmental Research, Tulane & Xavier Universities
Co-Dir., Lower 9th Ward Ctr. for Sustainable Engagement and Development
Pam Dashiell, Co-Dir., Lower 9th Ward Ctr. for Sustainable Engagement and Development
John Koeferl, Member, Holy Cross Neighborhood Assoc. (subdivision of Lower 9th Ward)
Craig Taffaro, Pres., St. Bernard Parish (invited)
John Taylor, Resident, Lower 9th Ward (invited)
When: Wed., August 26, 2009, 9am-9:30am: News conference, 9:30am-12pm: airplane and van tour. Reservations for airplane tour requested ASAP because plane fits only three passengers at a time.
Where: Bayou Bienvenue Platform (Caffin Ave. at Florida Ave.), Lower 9th Ward
Contacts:
Sean Crowley,
Environmental Defense Fund,
202-550-6524,
scrowley@edf.org
Amanda Moore,
National Wildlife Federation,
225-229-1944,
moorea@nwf.org
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