How a $5 Billion Federal Project Could Sink the Lower Ninth Ward For Good

How a $5 Billion Federal Project Could Sink the Lower Ninth Ward For Good

Willie Calhoun knows how to live with water. His home, cradled between the Mississippi River and a patchwork of canals, is split by the surging, ever-present current. But it wasn’t always that way in the Ninth Ward. Before the largest canal known as the Industrial Canal was built, the stretch of land between the river and Lake Pontchartrain was a place meant for water, fish, and wading birds rather than for people. The ground was soft and unstab…

The threat that could destroy 20 years of progress in the Lower Ninth

Past storms nearly erased New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. A new federal project may finish the job.