Plaquemines Parish fights to keep land

VENICE, La. — Way beyond the jazz halls of New Orleans, the hardworking fishermen and oil workers on the sparsely populated banks of the Mississippi River are wondering why the federal government is talking about surrendering their land to Mother Nature.

Federal officials announced Wednesday that they intend to protect all of hurricane-swamped southeastern Louisiana except, perhaps, a strip of land south of New Orleans known as lower Plaquemines Parish.

"We're part of America, too," grumbled Morris Hartt, a 51-year-old gas-station owner who runs one of the few places open in Venice, the last town on the highway south of New Orleans before Louisiana's marshes merge with the Gulf of Mexico.

The government's announcement has sent shock waves through the communities of fishermen, orange growers, sulfur miners and oil-field workers. The fear is that if the government decides not to spend about $1.6 billion to strengthen and raise the levees down here, it may be impossible for people to get flood insurance.

Donald Powell, the White House's point man for the Gulf Coast recovery, said officials will study the feasibility of building up the levees in lower Plaquemines and issue a report by June. Among other things, the government is not sure whether it is worthwhile to spend so much money to protect 14,000 people, or only 2 percent of the population of metropolitan New Orleans.

"We have sacrificed a great deal for this nation, and now to turn their back on us and cut us off would be un-American," said Benny Rousselle, the parish president. "We're fighting for our survival."

Gov. Kathleen Blanco said lower Plaquemines "has to stay in the mix."

One solution, she said, would be to take half of the royalties the federal government gets from offshore oil and natural-gas leases in the Gulf and spend it on protecting low-lying places such as Venice from hurricanes. For years, Louisiana politicians have made that argument without success.

People here are still working to reconstitute the lives they had before Hurricane Katrina pushed water over their roofs.

Utility crews are rewiring the parish, dump trucks are picking up piles of debris, and earth-moving machines are patching levees. Many of the homes that were not knocked over by Katrina are shells, with no signs of life. Crumpled schools, stores, marinas and churches dot the landscape. Uprooted and unclaimed coffins still lie in front of cemeteries.

People here argue the government should invest in building up the levees because lower Plaquemines plays a big role in providing the nation with oil and seafood.

"If they're going to do this after the trillions of dollars of natural resources they've been taking out of our parish, then maybe we should look into the legal possibility of seceding, and then apply for foreign aid," said Barney Schoenberger, an 80-year-old former sheriff, tax assessor and state representative from lower Plaquemines.

He added: "I'm not entirely serious. Tongue-in-cheek. But let's understand the analogy of it."