How New Orleans Planned for the Next Big Hurricane

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Now, continuing our conversation about tackling the climate crisis, we turn to a city familiar with devastating natural disasters, New Orleans. Ramsey Green is the city’s chief resilience officer tasked with creating sustainable solutions to climate threats facing the city. Here he is talking with Walter Isaacson about lessons learned after Hurricane Katrina and redefining the way cities respond to extreme weather.

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WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Bianna. And Ramsey Green, welcome to the show.

RAMSEY GREEN, CHIEF OF INFRASTRUCTURE, NEW ORLEANS: Thank you, Walter.

ISAACSON: You’re the chief resilience officer for the city. Tell us what that job title means, how many of this type of jobs are there around the world and how you would collaborate with others?

GREEN: Yes, I want to say, there’s somewhere between 50 and 100 throughout the world we talk fairly regularly. It’s been a little harder since COVID. You know, we would get together in different cities where we have CROs and we talk about the challenges facing cities at this moment in time. And I think, you know, running cities at this moment is a really consequential time. We are seeing pressures on cities. My colleague in Miami is seeing sea water come out of their catch basins. My colleague in Charleston, South Carolina describes the real challenge of keeping historic buildings in the southern part of Charleston safe given the impacts of tidal change and, you know, the impacts of a coast coming closer to these beautiful historic buildings. They’re a huge part of the Charleston economy. A lot of what my job is, is operational and tactical. Making sure our infrastructure operations work as best they can. And when they don’t, figuring out ways to solve those problems.

ISAACSON: There’s been a lot of talk in this era of climate change and COVID of the need for cities to innovate to be more resilient. And there’s probably no city that faced more challenges of resilience and overcome than New Orleans. Tell me what’s been done since Katrina, 16 years ago.

GREEN: We acknowledged the anniversary this year with the impact of Hurricane Ida, which was a tremendously strong storm and we really saw the impact of the measures that this city and this region have put into effect in the 16 years since Katrina. Namely, this country and this state spent about $15 billion for a levee system that protected our city during a massive storm this year. Katrina had $135 billion worth of damage in our city and area and $15 billion to protect $125 billion worth of damage in that instance was a major payoff. That’s just one example of a myriad of other incredibly data and science focused measures that we’re doing right here in New Orleans

ISAACSON: So, Hurricane Ida hit this summer and the levees held. There was no flooding. The sewer system worked. There was no flooding from the rain. How did that happen? What made the city so resilient so that the city itself could withstand the force of Ida?

GREEN: You know, we’ve done a lot to bring our existing infrastructure to a place where it’s more durable, it’s more resilient, as you say. We’ve also done things that were not being done 10 years ago. For example, through storm water mitigation measures, for example, holding water in green space. We have one project that we finished this past spring where we’re holding over 9 million gallons of storm water in a golf course, in public rights of way using previous concrete and bio soils. We’re doing really innovative storm water measures to hold water in parks, in green space below sidewalks and streets so it doesn’t go into people’s homes, businesses, or their cars. And, you know, disasters like this, like flooding and storms that are not things you see every day. So, it’s really a testament to our city and to our residents who put a lot of work and resources into efforts that pay off during the one day when a hurricane occurs. It’s not something you see that pays off every day, but when it does, it makes a huge difference to your community.

ISAACSON: The one thing that didn’t work well after Ida is the electricity transmission system, from outside the city. The lines went down. What do we have to do, what were the lessons from that about how we have to harden things like electricity grids in this country?

GREEN: Yes. What happened in this city was pretty unprecedented when it comes to electrical resilience. We have eight transmission lines that come into our city and all eight of them broke down. What that means is we really need to look at hardening our transmission that comes into this city. We need to look at local generation, but we also need to look at the equivalent of, I would say, of what we’re doing in storm water, holding water in parks, on people’s individual property and safer areas, but we’re looking at microgrids. Smaller power generation capability, batteries, some of these more innovative ways so we’re not tied to a central power generation facility. Additionally, we’ve got to look at generators and where we can put those. Where the most add benefit to most vulnerable residents in our city. I’m not talking, you know, the expensive generators that somebody may have on their large home. I mean, generator capability of pharmacies, at gas stations, at cooling centers. We’ve initiated a project like that right after Hurricane Ida where we opened up eight community centers. So, our residents who had no place to go during 100 heat index days could go cool down in a community center then tied to a generator. So, it’s not necessarily about only renewables. You know, solar panels take a lot of geographic space. But it’s about putting power where it is most needed in the wake of a disaster where there’s no power, there’s limited resources for people, and putting that power where it should be for the people who most need it.

ISAACSON: Describe some of the innovative methods that you can use whether it be Houston or New Orleans or other places that get big rainstorms to hold storm water, to do it in part. So, to do it in people’s backwards instead of making the sewer system pump out all of that water.

GREEN: Yes. There’s — I’ll give you a couple of examples. From the public infrastructure side, one thing we are aggressively looking at are our parks. For example, we have, I want to say, it’s 1,300 acres or so, one of the largest urban parks in the country is called City Park. And in City Park, New Orleans, it has a series of lagoons. And those lagoons, you know, heretofore, have been just filled with water, either pumped into it, rainwater or otherwise. And this moment, we’ve got about an $18 million project where we’re connecting those lagoons through a series of weirs and then, terracing the lagoons. So, when a big rainfall happens through a system of subservice lines and pumping, water from the neighborhoods around City Park then goes into the park, it fills up those lagoons and those terraced areas and then waits there and sits there through the storm and then gradually recedes back into the drainage system over time. It’s a lot of going back to the original ecology of this city. This city was a place of marshes, of sediment very loose of high-water table and doing that kind of work both in the public infrastructure and then on your private property, what we’ve done in this city post, you know, World War II during the ’50s and the suburbanization of this country, is we paved over so much of what precisely allows our city to exist. We paved over our sediment. And what happens when you pave over that water table is the concrete starts to collapse. So, what we’re really doing is we’re putting water back into our water table to make our soil more stable, it keeps water off of our public rights ways and out of people’s homes and we’re doing this in a pretty innovative way. And we’ve had, you know, to a degree, 16 years of post-Katrina experience learning how to build the city back. And now, it’s really paying off to a degree as we’re seeing the impact of climate change.

ISAACSON: Let’s personalize this a little bit. Take what’s in the Biden infrastructure bill or some of the innovative things. How is that going to affect or how could it affect just a normal person, you know, in their daily lives?

GREEN: So, President Biden came to New Orleans in May. And I had the good fortune of — with Mayor Cantrell and our chief of the sewage and water board meeting with President Biden on the sewage and water boards Carrollton Water Plant with the great men and women of the sewage and water board who keep this city dry no matter the challenge. And when President Biden walked around, he saw turbines that were installed and built when Woodrow Wilson was president. What does that mean when you have a steam powered turbine that keeps our city dry? A, we’re, you know, keeping those very aging but critical pieces of infrastructure alive and going, and Hurricane Ida showed that. We were able to largely drain this city rather quickly, our water system, despite some of our neighboring parishes, required boil water advisories for days into the week period, our water was safe and we were exporting our water to neighboring parishes throughout our region. What Biden’s bill would do is upgrade that infrastructure, so our gray infrastructure, our pumps that pumps water out of this city, because you have to remember, we have to pump every drop that lands in our city has to be pumped up and out into Lake Pontchartrain. Upgrading that infrastructure, upgrading those turbines. And then, making it so we can really trust in a storm that exists in those canals, those drain lines, those pipes, those pumps, and the power system that powers that. Additionally, because the Biden administration is so interested in fighting climate change and preparing our planet and — excuse me, our country for a very indeterminate future given the impacts of climate change, we’re really excited about the mitigation and climate change really created scientific elements that we can do. For example, turning more of our green space into places that can hold water. Doing something where we can put a 20 percent discount on elements that, you know, people who are high income earners, they can go and put some hold water on their own properties and then do a much bigger payback to residents who are lower income earners and hold water on their properties. There’s a variety of creative things you can do with this infrastructure package.

ISAACSON: A lot of the great infrastructure projects done after World War II in the second part of the 20th century impacted badly black neighborhoods more than white neighborhoods. In an innovative infrastructure future, how can we make sure there’s racial and economic equity in what we build?

GREEN: You know, I think about that one a lot, and I think about in particular, in the City of New Orleans, we have what we call the Claiborne Overpass, which was a freeway connection that essentially was barreled through a previously really successful thriving African-American business district. What can we do to ensure that something like that never happens again? And our mayor is adamant about this. We listen to our residents. We talk to our residents. We hear what their fears are. And we articulate directly to them what we can do as government and what we think we might be able to do as a community working together with government. It’s mostly about listening and bringing resources in, in a way where we can be effective together. When government does something to someone, that person doesn’t ever feel like they won. Even if there is some positive benefit of what government just did. We have to communicate really clearly with our residents. And when they tell us we don’t like something, we have to come up with a better plan or figure out a more effective way to work with that community member. That is what we do. It is — I don’t mean to simply say it’s about communication. But it is. I mean, we have some of our most vociferous advocates for storm water management in our city come right from Treme and these neighbors are making and painting rain water cisterns and advocating greatly for how to hold water on private property. And I think about Pontchartrain Park, which is a neighborhood adjacent to the Joe Bartholomew Golf Course, which is a golf course that African-Americans could golf at where they couldn’t golf anywhere else in our region. And that golf course now holds somewhere around a million gallons of storm water during flood periods, and those neighbors are doing that kind of work on their own properties adjacent to that golf course because they believe in what the government is providing them and the government is doing it in a really coordinated way with the neighborhood.

ISAACSON: As you talked to chief resilience officers around the country, what good ideas are you hearing from other places, other cities?

GREEN: Some of the best ones that I have seen come from Europe. I’ve seen in the United Kingdom, really innovative storm water work. In the Netherlands, particularly, in Amsterdam, in Rotterdam, in parts of the Northern Coastal parts of the Netherlands, you know, where they turn a parking garage into a storm water bio soil. In England, they made dramatic improvements to their building and fire codes after horrendous fire occurred at a massive apartment complex that saw a high number of fatalities. Whatever I see in terms of resilience, the best solutions come from those folks who have lived through or lived through the results of a dramatic climate-driven or other type of a tragedy. And, you know, I’d like to think that New Orleans is one of the leaders in terms of preparing for hurricanes. I have seen that. We have lived that. And now, we’re seeing the impact of these kinds of storms broadening into other places. I mean, Hurricane Ida caused a lot of damage and destruction in Louisiana, but it also did in the State of New York, which tells you that these storms are massive, unpredictable, and can go anywhere.

ISAACSON: Ramsey Green, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it.

GREEN: Thank you, Walter.