04/06/2006

By CAIN BURDEAU  / Associated Press

Dozens of Vietnamese-Americans — including nuns, children and retirees — on Thursday protested Mayor Ray Nagin's move to allow a new dump for Hurricane Katrina debris to go up near their community in swampy New Orleans East.

The protesters staged a rally outside City Hall, shouting "No landfill!", and then won a resolution from the City Council that asks Nagin to rescind an emergency order clearing the way for the dump to be built.

Their outcry was the latest hurdle in this city's rebuilding. The controversies have ranged from anger over the locations selected for new trailer parks for displaced residents to legal challenges against the city's attempts to demolish homes without the consent of owners.

Thursday's outburst came from an influential group not known for protests: Roman Catholic refugees and their descendants who settled in eastern New Orleans after the communist takeover of Vietnam. The U.S. Census in 2000 showed 11,000 people of Asian descent in New Orleans, and most of them are Vietnamese.

The Rev. Luke Nguyen of the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, a community spokesman, said a landfill would drive property values down and discourage residents from returning to east New Orleans at a time when the community needs people and has begun building a "Viet-Town" to attract tourists.

He also said putting a landfill near the community was inconsiderate of their needs.

"This is a social justice issue that needs to be addressed," Nguyen said in a plea to the City Council. "This is a racial issue."

Also, environmental groups have blasted the proposed landfill, charging that officials have tried to ram the landfill through the permitting process. If built, the landfill would also abut the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge.

The Sierra Club and other groups have criticized city, state and federal officials for using a nearby landfill, an old city dump called the Old Gentilly Landfill, as the primary site for the disposal of Katrina debris in New Orleans. They argue that the landfill was not suitable for so much waste and that it will become an environmental hazard in the future.

Veronica White, the city's sanitation director, said the proposed landfill would not contaminate the area because it would only take in so-called "construction and demolition" material such as wood, bricks, concrete and other things used in buildings. She added that it would not pose a risk to nearby waterways.

White said the city's debris removal has slowed by half because of a lack of landfill space in the city and that it would cost $50,000 more a day to truck that debris to landfills outside the city.

"If we are going to clean up this city we will have to have a place to store it," White told the City Council.

She said there are still about 12.5 million cubic yards of debris to pick up.

Nagin approved the proposed landfill under an emergency order in February which circumvented normal zoning and public input procedures. As work began to prepare the site in recent days, the nearby Vietnamese community got wind of the proposal and has come out harshly against the mayor.

On Thursday, the City Council passed a resolution asking Nagin to rescind his emergency order.

State and federal agencies are reviewing permit applications that Waste Management, the landfill's prospective operator, needs before debris can be put at the dump. Waste Management has agreed to give the city 22 percent of the landfill's revenues.