MaryLee Orr is executive director of Baton Rouge-based Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN). The nonprofit organization has received three Mott grants totaling $400,000 since 2000 for its water quality work, which includes policy analysis, data collection and public education. During a recent visit to the Foundation’s Flint office, Orr discussed LEAN’s work related to hurricanes Katrina and Rita with Mott Communications Officer Maggie I. Jaruzel.
Mott: Describe what New Orleans and the surrounding areas are like now, all these months since the hurricanes hit.
MaryLee Orr: (MO) It still looks like you are entering another reality in many ways. Right after the hurricane, it was like entering a war zone. I am from New Orleans so I know it and I love it. To see it so wounded was incredible. The piles of debris are better now, but there still are rows and rows of uninhabitable houses.
The magnitude is really hard to describe. There are maybe one or two FEMA trailers, but the majority of the homes are just empty. Of course, you see the mold and the sediment that everyone talks about.
I walked the lower Ninth Ward recently and it was unbelievable to see the tapestry of people’s lives strewn like they had been through a shredder. There were shreds of their lives, a little piece of jewelry here, medicine over there, a piece of clothing.
Mott: LEAN is not a relief organization so why did people call your office for help?
MO: For 20 years we have serviced people on the environment. In the holistic sense, where you live, play, and work are all part of the environment. People see us as a leader in the community, and they had a record of coming to us to help solve their problems.
We knew the flood water was contaminated and there was a problem with the sediment. We don’t typically do direct relief work; we work on policy issues. But this was an emergency. People were going to die and you can’t make policy for dead people.
Mott: Describe LEAN’s Re-entry Protection Kits.
MO: We created an acronym for the kits we put together—RPKs. They consist of a mask, goggles, gloves, a suit and Clorox Ultra. We also add and subtract to those items depending on what the needs are. Almost 40,000 of some items have been distributed. People are still calling for these kits.
I was deeply concerned about the safety of young people from all over the United States who were coming to New Orleans to help out during spring break. They are at their peak reproductive age and you don’t want anything to happen to them because of the contaminants. They would be sleeping on the floors of gyms and churches, and be working at various sites unprotected so we provided these students with kits.
Mott: What has LEAN discovered from the sediment samplings it collected?
MO: We were the first nonprofit organization (NGO) doing sampling of the sediment—right after Katrina and the night of Hurricane Rita. We were in contact with the EPA senior staff people, saying “these are the areas we feel you need to go into.”
We found arsenic, lead and PAHS—I call that the fingerprints of petroleum products. Of course, there were high levels of bacteria, and Ecoli. What has disturbed us most is that the bacteria doesn’t seem to be disappearing. There appears to be new strains of strep and staph.
We also were deeply concerned about the debris issue. There has been about 23 to 25 million tons of debris collected from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. To put that in perspective, the debris from the World Trade Towers was 1.2 million tons.
Mott: What do you say to people who suggest it is time for the country to shift its focus to other matters because these hurricanes happened so many months ago?
MO: I want to bring them to Louisiana so they can hear the stories and see the people’s faces. I want them to see people who are working night and day to reclaim their homes and not asking anybody for anything. They are hard working people. There are people here who are slipping through the insurance cracks and not getting the money they deserve.
People have lost their jobs. People are sick. The last time I looked at a map, Louisiana was part of the USA—at least before Katrina we were. My daddy always used to say, “Community service is the rent you pay for the space you take up.” So I can’t imagine being part of this human community and seeing this level of suffering, and then doing nothing.
I had a wonderful lady come to help, but she was so far removed from reality. She couldn’t conceptualize the word “nothing.” When I would say, “These people have nothing,” she really couldn’t understand nothing. She would say things like, “Well, tell them to go get a generator or tell them to go get this or that.” I would tell her, “They have N-O-T-H-I-N-G.” It’s really hard to conceive of nothing. You build up from there.
Read more about how Mott grantees provided support to victims of Hurricane Katrina.