IMAGE: US Magazine
Global Green’s Holy Cross Project got some nice press this week in the latest US Magazine, highlighting Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie for their philanthropic work around the world – with a mention of their post-Katrina rebuilding efforts in New Orleans. Brad is pictured with GGUSA President Matt Petersen during initial construction of the single-family homes in Holy Cross: “The New Orleans Project has exceeded my expectations.”
A nice piece in yesterday’s Times-Picayune on the emerging role of solar energy in building back New Orleans greener than before. “Brad Pitt’s Make It Right houses are challenging the way New Orleans homeowners think about solar energy” pays special attention to the Lower Ninth Ward – while highlighting Global Green’s Holy Cross Project:
What’s more, a third of the 150 specialty meters installed in New Orleans have been set up in homes in the Lower 9th Ward, according to Entergy New Orleans, sending a signal to local housing officials and renewable energy advocates that solar and other energy-efficient technologies are beginning to take hold in the rebuilding city.
“It’s really just an outstanding accomplishment for any city in the country,” said Beth Galante, executive director of the New Orleans office of Global Green USA. “But particularly New Orleans, five years after Hurricane Katrina, and of course the Lower 9th Ward.”
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“In 2006, Global Green began developing a multi-use community in Holy Cross that included energy-saving measures such as solar panels on all the buildings, high-efficiency air conditioners and heating units, weather sealing to prevent loss of cool air in summer and heat in winter and energy-saving appliances.
So far, five single-family houses have been built, and in the coming months, Galante expects to start offering the homes for sale in the $130,000-to-150,000 price range.
Though it’s still unoccupied, one of the houses, built in 2008, has been running at net-zero throughout the year, Galante said, with hotter summer and cooler winter months offset by the additional energy generated in the spring and fall.
Marking five years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, New Orleans and the Lower Ninth Ward, there have been a number of thoughtful essays and news articles documenting the city’s recovery and rebuilding. Poignant, compelling and sometimes angry, we’ve collected a few here.
Rebecca Solnit, a frequent contributor to The Nation, is the author of 12 books, including A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. Since August 29, 2005, she has written several times about the challenges facing The Lower Ninth Ward. In “Reconstructing the Story of the Storm: Hurricane Katrina at Five” (September 13, 2010 edition of The Nation), she observes:
“The very subject of recovery is a complicated one for New Orleans. After 9/11 New York pretty much wanted to get back to where it had been – a thriving, functioning city (albeit one with plenty of poverty and injustice). No one thought New Orleans should get back to what it had been, and the disaster became an opportunity for the city to reinvent itself in various ways. That process continues, and where it goes is anyone’s guess. It still depends on the dedication of volunteers and citizens, some of whom are returning, putting their lives back together in what may be, by some intangible measures of joy and belonging, America’s richest city, even if it’s the poorest by others”. Read the entire article here.
For The New York Times, reporter Campbell Robertson has continued to monitor the recovery of many New Orleans neighborhoods as part of the paper’s New Orleans Bureau. In his terrific piece “On Anniversary of Katrina, Signs of Healing” (August 27, 2010), he writes:
“Those who returned found a void of local leadership and set out to rebuild the city from the ground up. The rebound has not been citywide but piecemeal, neighborhood by neighborhood, from Lakeview to Broadmoor to Holy Cross, fueled by newly formed associations and old social clubs, energized residents and out-of-state volunteers, idealists and handymen. Many have become staunch advocates for their corners of the city, collecting local data, organizing committees and even, in the case of the Vietnamese community, drawing up their own local master plan.” Read the entire article here.
And in case you missed them, here’s additional coverage of the 5th anniversary of Katrina and the progress made with green rebuilding in the Lower Ninth Ward and the Holy Cross Neighborhood:
“Holy Cross Neighborhood Gets ‘Green’ Face-Lift”: WDSU.com (August 25, 2010)
“Post-Katrina, Global Green Gives New Orleans An Eco-Facelift”: The Huffington Post (August 26, 2010)
“Climate change center to be in Lower 9th Ward”: Associated Press (August 26, 2010)
Home Energy Magazine’s man in New Orleans, Roger Hahn, a freelance journalist, feels like he is living in a Petri dish of building-science-based, affordable, efficient, healthy, and ecologically integrated home building and renovation in the new, New Orleans. “Historians will one day come to view the post-Katrina rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast as the first major example of green design and technologies playing a major role in the reconstruction of vulnerable, disaster-prone communities,” says Hahn.
Money from the federal disaster relief funds has been slow in coming to the people in New Orleans who need it. “The money often winds up being not enough money to elevate above newly mandated flood levels and rebuild something similar to what was damaged in the flood at the same time,” says Hahn. It is nonprofits such as Global Green, Habitat for Humanity, Enterprise Community Partners, the Jericho Road Episcopal Housing Initiative, and actor Brad Pitt’s futuristic new homes program Make It Right that are on the ground building and renovating whole neighborhoods such as the Lower Ninth Ward and the Holy Cross neighborhood, both devastated by Katrina and her aftermath.
Did you know that New Orleans was the center of a Silicon Valley-like tech boom in the early 1800s and again in the early 1900s? Early on, the city nurtured inventors and inventions such as the steam engine, the cotton gin, and methods of refining sugar cane.
via Field Notes From New Orleans | QUEST Community Science Blog – KQED.
By Wayne Curtis
A sturdy bike is a good way to get around the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans. The roads are still pretty rough, the distances between places tend to be too long to walk and too short to drive, and on a bike you can easily stop and chat with the residents who have returned. I moved to New Orleans about a year after Hurricane Katrina, and I’ve ridden my bike out here every month or two to see how the rebuilding has been faring. Also, I’ve heard that Brad Pitt likes to bike around when he’s in town. Folks tell me he’s a pretty regular guy. “Brad was here yesterday,” a woman sitting on the front steps of her new and very modern house told me one day last fall. “He was talking to everyone, just checking things out.”
The Atlantic: An interactive guide to New Orleans’ coolest new homes
He has a lot to check out, as it happens. Next to the levee along the Mississippi River sits the experimental “project house” of Global Green, a nonprofit Pitt has been working with that’s trying to replace homes lost in the flood with energy-efficient ones. From there, it takes about 10 minutes to bike to the northern edge of the Ninth Ward, where the Industrial Canal flood wall collapsed in August 2005. Along the way you pass shotgun houses in various stages of repair and disrepair; Fats Domino’s home, from which he was rescued; and a large sculpture of empty chairs commemorating the hundreds who died in the storm. As you get closer to the failed flood wall, the land becomes more open and rural-looking, and the blackbirds grow louder. Only concrete steps standing in front of concrete slabs suggest the community that existed before the rushing waters erased it.
Hurricane Katrina provided New Orleans with the opportunity to be part of an environmental revolution and rebuild its houses, schools, and neighborhoods in a green, sustainable way.
By Husna Haq, Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
When hurricane Katrina blew into New Orleans four years ago, Matt Petersen watched in shock as the floodwaters retreated, revealing one of the most devastating natural disasters in US history: billions of dollars in damages, 80 percent of the city flooded with filthy water, and a government response that provoked a firestorm of criticism.
“I watched everything play out in horror,” says Mr. Petersen. “And, like everyone else, I went through the process of thinking, ‘What can I do?’ ”
Petersen donated money and considered volunteering, but that wasn’t enough. “I kept feeling this well up inside me, I felt compelled to act,” he says.
As the city’s cleanup began, Petersen, the president and CEO of Global Green, an environmental nonprofit that promotes green building, saw a silver – or green – lining in Katrina’s catastrophic wake.
via New Orleans in the forefront of a green building revolution – CSMonitor.com.
Global Green USA's Holy Cross Project is the first sustainable village to be rebuilt in the Lower Ninth Ward, with lead funding partner The Home Depot Foundation.
Global Green USA President Matt Petersen gives Planet Green a personal tour of the Holy Cross Project.
