Every Saturday, the camp provides a tour of St. Bernard. The tour is an excellent introduction not only to the devastation and chronology of Hurricane Katrina, but also to the history and legacy of this parish. Of course we were allowed to see scenes of destruction such as the ones on this page. Shown here are a shrimp boat that found its way into a neighborhood, the water/oil line on a house neighboring the Murphy oil spill and another resident's opinion of the spill, and finally a house that 'just appeared' in the neighborhood.
The Murphy oil spill was approximately 1,000,000 gallons of mixed crude oil. We learned that Murphy is paying residents anywhere from $7-$12/sq. ft. if they have oil damage, as long as they agree not to sue or anything. For a large house, that's almost $20,000!!! There's a bit more about the oil spill at the EPA's web site.
What we also learned was that the flooding here could have been avoided, and was introduced, of course as all good things are, by man. Enter the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO). MRGO is a man-made channel that provides ready access to the Gulf of Mexico. In doing so, it provides a bypass for the gulf waters that avoids the natural wetlands of southern Louisiana. The surge of water that flooded this entire parish in large part came from the MRGO. One interesting thing to note is that what it took nature about 4,500 years to build, the wetlands in St. Bernard, it took MRGO less than 100 to destroy.
A large part of this community campaigns against MRGO. You can read and see more at www.paceonline.org. PACE is the acronym for Parishes Against Coastal Erosion. For more about the storm and St. Bernard Parish, see this entry at wikipedia.
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