In the areas of education and awareness, the Wetlands Project has worked with groups beyond Louisiana, giving informative PowerPoint presentations to increase national awareness of the current conditions and the critical role Louisiana’s coastal wetlands play. Locally, Common Ground has received a grant to begin wetlands education in New Orleans schools, providing classrooms with equipment to conduct effective science lessons. Wetlands Project volunteers have also assisted with educational canoe trips to bring students from Jefferson and Orleans Parishes to Louisiana wetlands, helping them gain a greater appreciation of their environment and the issues it faces. (source)
So, as is so characteristic of Common Ground volunteers and staff, they committed themselves to a wide swath of endeavors and dove (literally at times) into action. One dynamic component of their wetlands program has been bulrush planting in Louisiana’s wetlands surrounding New Orleans, which helps restore habitat and protect against hurricanes. Bulrush grass, which grows as high as ten feet, has many environmental applications and can be used for, to quote from a USDA government site:
….wildlife food and cover, erosion control, wetland creation and restoration, and for improving plant diversity in wetland and riparian communities. Its dense root mass makes this species an excellent choice for soil stabilization. Its above ground biomass will provide protection from erosive wave action and stream currents that erode shorelines or streambanks. The rhizomes also form a matrix for many beneficial bacteria, making this plant an excellent choice for wastewater treatment. (source)
To give you a graphic look at Common Ground in action during one of their bulrush forays during 2007, check out this YouTube video. This is not a job for the squeamish by any means, because one has to literally jump into the bayou, swamp or marsh and plant each bulrush in the mud, alligators be damned:
Martin Luther King Elementary and the Cypress Triangle
True to their word, Common Ground has also been reaching out to schools to educate students about the wetlands, and this includes one school just a mile or so up the road from their headquarters, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology, which was the first school to reopen in the Lower Ninth Ward after Katrina, an auspicious event that occurred to much hoopla and fanfare on June 10, 2007. To quote from the Times Picayune:
It wasn't a church service, but the singing, clapping and cheering during the rededication of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology on Sunday certainly made people feel as if they were in an environment of love and partnership.
As the Original Pin-Stripe Brass Band and the Zulu Walking Warriors opened the ceremony with a second-line, Joseph Recasner, the dean of students, urged attendees to "let the world know that New Orleans is coming back, and the Lower 9th Ward is already back." (source)
To those cynics, racists and developers who had been licking their chops at the prospects of the Lower Ninth Ward being razed to the ground and replaced with industries, businesses, or even casinos perhaps, the reopening of a school that had been inundated by floodwaters up to its ceiling and left to rot in a sea of filth was a most unwelcome sight. A city redevelopment commission had even come close to invoking eminent domain for the whole ward and driving the last residents out at one point, but these same residents and activists fought back ferociously to prevent this. (Reference)
The triumph of MLK was all the more impressive because there had been little initiative on the part of the city of New Orleans to even clean up the school. So after weeks of anger and frustration with city officials, and over the threats of the New Orleans police to arrest them, members of the community, as well as students and activists from around the country, converged on the school wearing Tyvek suits and respirators, broke into the premises and began cleaning it up, the first act of defiance against the naysayers.
Finally, almost two years later after much more effort and struggle, as well as being reconstituted as a charter school under the auspices of the Recovery School District, Martin Luther King, which also houses, coincidently, a New Orleans public library branch in its marvelous building complex, returned with a vengeance to the Lower Ninth Ward as a source of inspiration and pride for the entire community. Ironically, President Bush, many of whose local supporters were against resurrecting the Lower Ninth Ward, came by on April 29, 2007 to honor the school, along with Governor Blanco.
The school has been doing well ever since it reopened, and when I visited it on October 10th, I couldn’t help but be impressed with both the physical architecture of the school and the energy and enthusiasm I saw inside while talking at length with Steve Martin, the liaison officer, about the school, the Ward and a project emanating out of Suffolk, Virginia to get some 50 or so boxes of donated books delivered to the school.
When I talked to Steve again a month or so later over the phone, he was even more enthusiastic, because the school had just been declared the fourth ranked open enrollment public school in the State of Louisiana serving poor and minority youth, a rather amazing achievement! (View an article on this here.)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
