WWLTV.com

City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard Lewis held a special town hall meeting Monday morning to allow some New Orleans East residents an opportunity to voice their grievances against a proposition to create a hurricane debris landfill site on Chef Menteur Highway.

The plan, signed in an executive order by Mayor Nagin, grants a conditional use permit for the construction of the landfill nearly a mile away from the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church on Dwyer Blvd.

Parishioners and other neighborhood residents worry that the landfill would have a negative impact on their quality of life.

Speaking through an interpreter, residents lodged their complaints with Chuck Brown, a spokesman with the Department of Environmental Quality, who said that the sheer volume of storm debris determined the creation of another landfill site.

“It’s not about capacity, it’s about processing ability. We still have, roughly, 12 million cubic yards of debris and that’s all demolition debris,” Brown said. “Again, I’ve done numbers; I’ve looked at the numbers. With one facility you’re looking at three years of disposal time. With two facilities that cuts down to about one year. So we have a responsibility.”