Listen to this articleToting signs and a portable amplifier and mic, Lower 9th Ward and Holy Cross residents poured into a Wednesday night meeting to fight a grain terminal project that many fear will harm the health and safety of their quiet river community.
The fight centers around the Alabo Street Wharf, which sits along the bank of the Mississippi River.
Bought by the Port of New Orleans in 1978, the terminal has been historically used to transport goods such as lumber and sugar, which arrive via barge and are shipped out via rail lines. Port leaders now want to revitalize the facility with a hotly opposed new development.
The port’s 15-year agreement with organic grain company Sunrise Foods International, struck in June, involves renovating the wharf warehouse and surrounding rail tracks to transport imported grains. Grain stored at the warehouse will be moved down Alabo Street tracks daily via a 10-car train, operated by Norfolk Southern, running through the neighborhoods.
Holy Cross and Lower 9th Ward residents expressed myriad concerns over impact of the Sunrise Foods deal, pointing to transparency from port officials, potential air pollution from grain dust, noise pollution from the trains and traffic delays.
Holy Cross Neighborhood Association board member Jeffrey Wittenbrink Jr. said he feels people will leave the area because of the project.
“When you drive out those people, it’s irrevocable damage that you can’t get back,” Wittenbrink said. “It hurts your economic development for the future, it hurts all of that economic planning you do. It hurts restaurants, grocery stores, small businesses that we do have.”
Many of the residents at the meeting, some holding up “People over Profit” signs, said they weren’t aware of the project until just weeks ago. The port, as required by law, published two public notices about the meeting in The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate in June, but many residents felt more could have been done to notify the community.
Cynthia Guillemet, president of the Lower 9th Ward Neighborhood Association, found out about the Sunrise Foods contract around a month ago.
“I don’t appreciate the lack of respect that the Port of New Orleans did to us by not notifying us,” Guillemet said, passing out leaflets with information on Sunrise Foods International to concerned neighbors. “They could have notified us and let us know what they were going to do. We had to come upon it by accident. Being a predominantly Black community, I have to look at it from that area.”
Wednesday night’s meeting originally started off as an open house, with representatives from Norfolk Southern, the Port of New Orleans and Sunrise Foods setting up informational tables at the Andrew P. Sanchez & Copelin-Byrd Multi-Service Center in the 9th Ward.
Norfolk Southern spokeswoman Heather Garcia said the rail company would work to minimize disruption but referred questions on dust and pest management to Sunrise Foods.
When asked about pest, noise and pollution concerns, Michael Corbett, vice president of strategy and infrastructure for Sunrise Foods, said the company was still in a “conceptual phase” of planning the project.
“We want feedback from the community as we start looking into the specifications, dust collection, things like that,” Corbett said. “So this is kind of the first [community hearing] in regards to us putting together the designs.”
Residents who attended the meeting wanted more concrete answers and demanded organizers hold a Q&A session instead of just staffing information tables. Project representatives were reluctant to step up to the microphone, turning the event into a gripe session/rally for neighbors with unanswered questions.
“We’re just supposed to roll over and accept the threat to our health?” asked Shelby Wilson, who said she has lived in the 9th Ward for decades, in an interview before the rally.
“Hell no,” she answered. “Leave us alone. We’re invested everything we have – blood, sweat, tears – in these modest homes of ours.”
Sarah Porteous, vice president of external affairs and chief of staff at the Port of New Orleans, declined to answer reporters’ questions. Instead, she gave a statement after community members left the meeting.
“I think we had some good discussions,” Porteous said. “I know people have certainly expressed some concerns, but my hope here tonight is that people got some answers and left with a clearer picture of what is actually happening with this project.”
She declined to respond when asked whether neighbors’ resistance would be taken into account as the project continues.
Local residents, including Wittenbrink, had an answer.
“Lawsuits are the next step,” he said. “Those will be really coming soon if they don’t abandon this project.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
