[StBernard] Buyout list for wrecked parish planned

[Westley Annis]

Buyout list for wrecked parish planned
Properties targeted in Arabi, Chalmette 
Thursday, November 24, 2005
By Karen Turni Bazile
St. Bernard/Plaquemines bureau 

The St. Bernard Parish Council is devising a list of storm-ravaged
neighborhoods where officials said properties should be bought out with
federal and state dollars. 

Officials don't know how much federal and state money is available for such
buyouts, but Councilman Craig Taffaro said it's important for the council to
act quickly on the matter. 

 
No decisions have been made, but the council members have been discussing
several locations that should be designated as uninhabitable and placed on
the list, including the areas along the 40-Arpent Canal, which took the
worst battering as the storm surge from Hurricane Katrina rushed over local
levees and overwhelmed the homes. The Arabi Park neighborhood also took a
severe beating, as water from the Industrial Canal levee breaches rushed in
through the 9th Ward. 

Several homes floated off their foundations or were blown apart, said
Councilman Mark Madary, whose district of Arabi and much of Chalmette was
damaged as much as any area inside the hurricane protection levee system. 

Taffaro told council members at a committee meeting this week that he was
devising a buyout proposal based on their input. He plans to present the
proposal at a 10 a.m. council meeting on Wednesday. 

The areas being targeted for the list include Arabi Park, and sections of
the Carolyn Park subdivision in Arabi, the Buccaneer Villa North and North
Patricia subdivisions in Chalmette and the area referred to as the Florida
Avenue corridor of homes that line the levee from Paris Road to the Violet
Canal. 

Government buyouts are supposed to target areas that have been victim to
repetitive flooding or were severely damaged or have an increased
vulnerability in the future, Taffaro said. 

While the entire parish flooded for Katrina, Hurricane Rita at the end of
September flooded the 9th Ward in New Orleans again and sent floodwaters as
far as Pakenham Drive in Chalmette, flooding much of Arabi and Chalmette a
second time with several feet in structures in those neighborhoods. 

Taffaro said there are two programs that could finance such buyouts. One is
state hazard mitigation money provided by the Federal Emergency Management
Agency and the other source would be the proposed bill in Congress by Rep.
Richard Baker, R-Baton Rouge. 

Key Louisiana political leaders are supporting Baker's legislation to create
a public corporation to buy some of the thousands of hurricane-damaged homes
in metropolitan New Orleans and sell similar property plots to developers or
back to the owners as part of the rebuilding of the region. Baker's bill
could provide much-needed financing to buy homes in hurricane-flooded areas
where residents don't want to rebuild or can't afford to on their own. 

The hazard mitigation money from FEMA would pay homeowners 75 percent of the
home's pre-Katrina market value with the local government picking up the
other 25 percent remaining unless the owner donates that portion. 

Under both programs, participation is voluntary, but the state program
doesn't allow the land to be redeveloped. 

Taffaro said it's important to move fast. "It's about financial relief for
residents, and it really gives the opportunity for the concept of rebuilding
a community," Taffaro said. "It gives the opportunity to correct the
planning ills of the past" by not redeveloping areas that are too low or had
other problems. 

Madary said he is concerned about implementing plans that would prohibit
people from building on their own property, although he understands the
completeness of the devastation of much of his district. "I drive through it
every day, and I cry every day," he said. 

Taffaro said he knows he won't please everyone. 

"I think every decision we make towards rebuilding is going to have support
and opposition. We have to look at it in a comprehensive way as to what is
right." 

. . . . . . . 


Staff writer Karen Turni Bazile can be reached at kturni at timespicayune.com
or (504) 352-2539.