Causecast

By Jonathan Tilove

This time, residents of the Lower 9th Ward are worrying about being left high and dry.

An unprecedented torrent of federal spending will almost certainly be unleashed once the Obama administration economic stimulus package clears Congress in one form or another. But advocates for the Lower 9th Ward, which came to symbolize the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, are left to wonder how much will come its way.

“We keep hearing the rain is coming, the rain is coming; we just want to know where we put our cup to catch a few drops,” said Darryl Malek-Wiley of New Orleans, the Sierra Club’s regional representative for environmental justice.

Malek-Wiley was part of a small delegation of advocates for the Lower 9th who came to Washington this week to participate in a national “Good Jobs, Green Jobs” conference. The contingent arrived with things they hope the stimulus package does not finance — like the Army Corps of Engineers’ huge Industrial Canal lock project — and things they would like to see get a little money — like the Global Green community development center along the Mississippi River in the Holy Cross neighborhood.

The nonprofit Global Green New Orleans is creating a small, green community of five houses, an apartment building with 18 units of affordable housing, and, if it can find another $5 million, a development center that would include a bank, grocery store, green job training and climate action center. It is all intended to be a model for a community trying to rebuild as close to “climate neutral” as possible.

The Lower 9th contingent in Washington included Malek-Wiley and other representatives of the Sierra Club, as well as Pam Dashiell, co-director of the Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement & Development, Ward “Mack” McClendon, director of the Lower Ninth Ward Village, and the Rev. Willie Calhoun, founder of the New Life Intracoastal Community Development Corp. in the Lower 9th.

About 2,500 people attended the Green Jobs conference, put together by the Blue-Green Alliance, a national network of environmentalists, community activists and union and business leaders, determined, as United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard put it, “to dispel the false dichotomy that you can’t have good jobs and a good environment.”

The conference comes at a moment pregnant with hope for a movement that feels it finally has a friend and ally in the White House, and in critical administration posts.

As it happened, the best news the visitors from the Lower 9th Ward got about the prospects of funding the Global Green community development center came from John Moore, an environmental policy analyst for the city of New Orleans, who spoke at one of the sessions.

Moore has been reviewing green projects deserving of stimulus money at the request of Mayor Ray Nagin. On Tuesday, Moore and his boss, John McGowin, the city’s energy director, will be presenting their findings to the mayor, and Moore said that Global Green, for which he formerly worked, is among the projects they will recommend.