Horizon Initiative Water Mgmt.

Meeting November 4, 2009

City Park Casino Building
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The meeting began at 11:30 am.

Present were:
Billy Marchal (Flood Protection Alliance, Horizon Initiative Executive
Committee member)
Diane Baum (permitting and code enforcement)
Damian Tatum (mechanical engineering)
Grasshopper Mendoza (real estate development)
Cherrie Felder (ports and navigation)
Steve Picou (LSU AgCenter, sustainable development)
Thomas Rush (GNO Inc.)
Mark Schexnayder (LSU Ag Center, Sea Grant)
Whitford Remer (Loyola Law)
Bradford Case (City of New Orleans Hazard Mitigation/grant writing)
Tony Laska (Conservation Services Group)
Jeff Dauzat (DEQ Environmental Scientist)
Harvey Stern (Sewerage & Water Board Environmental Affairs Division)
Oliver Wise (RAND Gulf States)
Bill Kappel (Coastal Environments Inc.)
Prisca Weems (Futureproof)
Eldon C Blancher II (GroundWork)
John W. Burns Jr. (Surface Water Manager)
Tim Duggan (Make It Right)
Harold Gorman (Morgan Keegan)
Joe Evans (Future Proof)
Linda Stone (Global Green)

Grasshopper welcomed everyone and began the introductions and news

segment. She said David Waggoner is in Washington DC at a Dutch Embassy
event and couldn’t attend, and that he is frustrated by the lack of progress and
momentum on the Dutch Dialogues approach and noted the attention New
York is currently devoting to the subject.

Jeff Dauzat let everyone know about new noncompliance investigations they're
working on through DEQ. They have 40% noncompliance in their work area at
this time.

Steve Picou suggested everyone look at southernclimate.org, which is a

partnership between OSU and LSU on climate change research.

Damian Tatum said Tropical Storm Ida has formed and is en route to the Gulf
Coast. So if you found yourself lacking in urgency for our work, take note.
Whitford Remer noted a progressive environmental ruling by 5th Circuit on the
Murphy Oil case; the court granted plaintiff status to parties suing oil
companies for greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming and
hurricanes. If the case moves forward and finds in the plaintiffs' favor, oil
refineries would in principle be liable for portions of all hurricane and severe
weather damage world wide, disrupting the entire oil-based economy and
possibly shutting down Gulf Coast production and refining infrastructure.
Therefore, the fact that the 5th Circuit granted plaintiff status at all is
astounding.

Bill Kappel said they anticipate completing in a few days the property transfer
for the condo project mentioned in previous notes.

Diane Baum announced a compliance conference for lawyers and engineers,

that covers stormwater, wastewater, and going green. The conference is in
Alexandria, and endorsed by DEQ and DHH.

Eldon C Blancher II introduced himself, and said he works with LPBF, as well
as Ground Works NOLA, which has a big meeting coming up at Morial Center.
Chicago and New Orleans will alternate hosting this conference. He's putting
together watershed speakers, all local. Abstracts due December 1. He wants to
document activities underway in New Orleans. A Young Professionals
organization in Chicago set up a large number of events when they hosted the
conference, he wants to match that level of local participation and enthusiasm
here.

Prisca Weems said Futureproof is beefing up on educating people on long-

term savings achieved through sustainable landscaping. Want to frame it as a
pilot project.

Cane Bordeaux introduced himself as a journalist from the Associated Press.

He said he's not going to quote anyone, but just wants to learn about our work.

Mark Schexnayder said we can look outside and see the water monitors
discussed in previous meetings, which will keep tabs on the condition of the
City Park bayous and St. John. They're going to try to work an ecological
restoration provision into a federal funding bill, also for the St. John water
system. He now wants to instruct citizens and policy makers on how this
system works. On the negative side, Americorps just had its funding cut; they
do coastal restoration work. Grasshopper declares it an action item for
committee members to address this.

John Burns (surface water management, state and private) recently returned to
New Orleans from Florida. John spoke with Dr. Hendrick regarding the recent
Louisiana Urban Strormwater Coalition in Pineville. The Stormwater Coalition
will be having some meetings and is looking for input from us for their spring
meeting in Baton Rouge, fall in St. Tammany.

John said Dr. Hendrick is retiring but will still be involved in his previous work.
Diane lamented his retirement. Mark said LSU AgCenter is cutting people and
offered him a voluntary retirement package, which he accepted.

Also John said a rain garden was just installed at the Broadmoor farmer's
market.

Harvey Stern introduced himself and said new contractors need runoff
instruction, and the city needs a plan for how to get training in place before
permitting. He's working to enforce this. Also, Sierra Club commented on
Master Plan, requiring ordinance enforcement. Monday at 6:30 there will be an
informational meeting on the Hazard mitigation draft plan.

Brad Case said their first community meeting is November 19 on his hazard
mitigation work. He's looking forward to it, and it's needed to update the plan.

Linda Stone said she's doing a water reclamation project but is getting lots of
push back from the state and needs help. Louisiana regulators are rejecting
their rain water capture system for reasons that were not clear. Diane said
she's just gotten back from a conference and knows someone from DHH, but
the person she mentioned is the very person who has apparently vowed, over
her dead body, to block Linda's project, so the suggestion fell rather flat. Other
names were thrown out for Linda to reference. Grasshopper suggested that
this issue could be a good action item for the policy and stormwater working
groups. The Dept. of Health refuses to sign off on the use of gray water
systems and other legal barriers exist.

Cherrie Felder said the governor has issued an executive order, commanding
her group to come up with a 5-year action plan that will promote economic
development and port growth. She's on the governor's board.

Billy Marchal said East Bank levee board will pay $350,000 to study his
longstanding polder plan. They also approved an east bank perimeter study to
see if any assets can be enhanced beyond 100 year protection for low cost.
Can you get 400 year protection by adding small features? This includes the
levee gap south of the airport along the Jefferson/St. Charles parish line, so
they'll study blocking that weakness and closing those openings. Timing TBD
but funding approved. See previous notes for additional details on these
issues.

Oliver Wise asked Billy if those three studies are in lieu of integrated water
management plan. Answer is no, they are in addition. No idea when bids will
hit the streets. LRA doesn't know either. Oliver said he has no big updates.
Joe Evans from Futureproof said he's happy that Global Green brought them
onto the Quickstart schools and thatthey produced a very water-centric system
for the Wilson school, and they've brought in other groups to do a rain garden
planting day, including a wetlands learning center, all funded by non-profits
despite FEMA's best efforts to derail these plans (efforts not described). They'll
start planning next week. Grasshopper asked Joe to post this to the blog.
There's a conference coming up, Brownfields 20009, on the 15 of November.

Tom Rush said National Center for Atmospheric Research expects 10 inches
more rainfall every year by 2050, due to climate change.

Tony Laska said we're used to going, for example, to St. Bernard and seeing
the launches flooded. He just got back from Maine where he saw ocean
flooding for the first time. He wondered if this was foreshadowing of larger
climate changes.

Grasshopper introduced Tim Duggan from Make It Right and praised his
group's best-practices work in the 9th Ward. Tim introduced himself as a
landscape architect from Kansas City; his firm was picked up by MIR, he took a
leave of absence and moved here. Has a Netherlands-understanding of water
control. Before New Orleans, Tim worked in Greensburg, KS which was
destroyed by a tornado. He then began his presentation.

Make it Right is centered adjacent to the Claiborne Bridge, and is beginning to

reach large density. Brad Pitt is associated with them, and pushes their
envelope with his financial support and bully pulpit. Their neighborhood is right
in the bulls-eye of the Industrial Canal. They say they can build safely and
sustainably even in a flood plain, and take pride in embracing this difficult task.

Tim showed a map demonstrating how many houses in Lower 9 were knocked
off their foundations. These residents are unnerved by water, but his group is
trying to change the paradigm of dealing with water to reverse this
apprehension. The project started with the "Pink Project" in which the washed-
away houses were replaced with internally-lit, glowing pink tents; publicity from
this art project got Bill Clinton's foundation involved.

They have 28 "LEED Platinum" houses up, the highest concentration in US,
and will finish 150 by December of next year. They built a permeable concrete
playground, which produces zero runoff for a 10-year storm. The playground is
done.

That led to broader sustainable material discussions with City Hall, and
permeable concrete is making inroads. Robert Mendoza said he was
handcuffed by the lack of data and technical expertise, so Tim offered to build
pilot projects MIR would take responsibility for, so Mendoza could get his data.
They want to unite sustainability, affordability, and design. They also want to
create jobs. They brought in concrete contractors and experts who started
certifying pervious concrete work among local contractors, to spread that
knowledge.

Diane said the Concrete Association has a formal standard for pervious now.

Tim said storm water is either detained or retained, nationwide. Here soils are
in question, and pervious material construction needs a large subbase. In New
Orleans, amended soils and rain gardens handle retention, they are also
building storage canals. They can attain zero runoff, but they have a sliding
scale of runoff versus cost for more realistic performance/cost points.

Micro-scale house needs: How do you stop runoff from leaving a site? They
don't control the land, lots come on hand randomly. They take an adaptive
management approach. They apply a process to a parcel, and that, in principle,
leads to a zero runoff neighborhood. Shows a baseline house: $8500 for the
entire landscaping job for a single residence. They found a number of ways to
reduce cost in the process. They're making their own soil mixes, from on-site
materials.

Showed their residential design strategies.

Native Plants: so you don't need a PhD to run your garden.
Rain Gardens: need to be aesthetic or there are complaints/can just look like
weeds.
Xeriscape Plantings:
Edible Gardens: makes heavy growth accepted and useful
Green Roofs: found some modular ones that can be compared by residents,
which was helpful for buy-in.
Street Trees: they reduce runoff, offer shade, are aesthetic, etc. MIR protects
their trees and have done research on how pervious materials affect them.

The pervious concrete they're using is reinforced by an alternate material to

rebar, which cannot oxidize in the aerated material, and they claim to have
nearly doubled the 5000 psi roadway pressure requirement needed for large
trucks. Tim said costs are comparable to concrete.

As the neighborhood is filling in, the strangeness of the houses is lessened.

Infrastructure is starting to lag (roadways and understructure). Mendoza said
new streets and sewerage were approved, but MIR didn't want them. I guess
they were afraid the streets, built with traditional techniques, would damage the
houses or nullify their effectiveness. They brought in a team to find ways to use
local labor to do a sustainable street system. They found some partners and
showed them the benefits of sustainable streets. The metric showed that X
sustainable streets produce Y less water that the city needs to pump.
It's tricky to build a rain garden near a street, since they can be mistaken for
weeds. They're finding neighborhood farming is effective, as are attractive rain
garden plants. "Success is not turning a bean counter into a tree hugger," it's
showing a bean counter that hugging trees is profitable. Every project Tim has
seen over emphasized up-front costs, and failed to extend that metric into the
future. His group is trying to demonstrate what those future costs are, for
smarter building today.

He then displayed some other projects he's worked on around the country:
Snuck some rain gardens into downtown Kansas City, and they're working as
intended. Said he's doing landscape interventions city wide. Built a rain garden
outside of Topeka. Did a wetland project, was the beta tester for a number of
LEED Platinum components. Also projects in Portland and so on. Beautify the
public space while reducing water runoff. Traffic calming: curb bump outs with
rain gardens can slow and reduced aggressive traffic.

They're partnered with MLK school in the 9th Ward to do education outreach.

Subsurface storage, retrofit phasing plan: They had to retrofit a street. Add
small bump outs in streets. Add greens to parking spots. Take on vacant lots,
add some green roofs, some pervious asphalt, add a tree canopy. They have a
10-year storm retention capability on their pilot street project. City wants them to
look at some more key technologies (gave a list). Need to partner with a
municipality or the city won't appreciate the production. A path toward
implementation in New Orleans was displayed and described briefly.

They thought they could remediate 300,000 gallons of rain water every storm
event, using their pilot project. Rain gardens at every property line, intersections
are raised and level with sidewalks and act as storage space (under the
intersection, I presume). MIR made vacant lots into storm retention, and that
made it easier for owners to upkeep their vacant lots.

They want to unify their ideas with local materials so there isn't a hodge podge.

Walter Hood from Oakland sent in a diagram of a non-car street. (The meaning
of this chart was not clear)

MIR brought in Majora Carter, who is focusing on creating jobs from all of these
topics.

They're going to build the next phase in February. Some of it is already there, of
course.

Diane asked about the void spaces in the permeable surfaces. What's in
them? Tim said there's washed, (that's expensive) crushed aggregate inside
the voids. You put it in the ground, wrap it, let water run through it, and pore
spaces develop. Maintainence includes a pressure wash every 2 years. In the
north, there are problems with freeze/thaw, but that's not problematic here. They
do the aggregate washing at the production facility, not on-site.

Whitford asked if there was a cost to move a gallon of storm water out of the
city. Tim said they came up with $0.04-0.05 per gallon to pump it over the levee.
But he thinks that's high. $0.005-$0.015 is probably more realistic. But the
savings are still real, and are impressing City Hall. Every gallon retained in the
neighborhood does represent a savings for the city.

Linda asked about the list of things he's working on, specifically cisterns. There
are self-sealed cisterns in their projects and every one is unapproved; they
hook them up as soon as City Hall leaves. He recognized that Linda has had
horrible problems with this. John Todd was identified as the person to talk to
(this information is unclear) for anyone who having these problems. Prisca
said the Louisiana Plumbing Code is the problem, they need to take on the
International Plumbing Code, and there's legislation pushing this. Tim said, if it
was him, he'd bring in a set of drawings stamped by a national and a
Louisiana engineer.

Bill Kappel asked if, on MIR's scale, has there been any study of subsidence
rates. Tim said generally, subsidence comes from pulling water out of the soil.
So their work should reduce subsidence. They are studying the subsidence in
their area, and their effect on it. They are getting better infiltration than they
would have expected, though. Apparently the conventional wisdom that clay
can't infiltrate is misguided. He brought in a number of the most
knowledgeable people and they've had good luck.

Tim spoke of the etymology of "discussion" and "charette," noting that a

discussion inherently implied to "break apart", whereas a "charette" had its
roots in the idea of collaborating while riding on a cart.

Discuss: c. 1340, from O.Fr. discussion, from L.L. discussionem "examination,

discussion," in classical L., "a shaking," from discussus, pp. of discutere "strike
asunder, break up," from dis- "apart" + quatere "to shake." Originally
"examination, investigation, judicial trial;" meaning of "talk over, debate" first
recorded 1448. Sense evolution in L. appears to have been from "smash apart"
to "scatter, disperse," then in post-classical times (via the mental process
involved) to "investigate, examine," then to "debate."

charette: c.1400, from O.Fr. charrette "wagon, cart" (12c.), dim. of charre (see
car). Thought to originate from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 19th
century, the word charrette is from the French for "cart" or "chariot." It was not
unknown for student architects to continue working furiously, at the last minute,
on the illustrations for their design presentations, even while riding in the school
cart (en charrette) through the streets of Paris en route to submit the projects to
their professors. Hence, the term metamorphosed into the current design-
related usage in conjunction with working right up until a deadline.

Grasshopper said we might have to move the break-out groups to next month
because we went past our planned time. She noted that leadership is really
important and asked that everyone keep sending her information and keep
developing community action. Keep pushing for city participation. There have
been a number of ideas proposed, please send them to her.

Diane mentioned her conversation with Gordon Austin at the last meeting. She
asked him if SWB performed monitoring of runoff water for pollution. He
assured her they did so, and suggested where she could look for the data (see
notes). She has since discovered that the most current monitoring dates back
to 2002 (attributed Marcia St. Martin). There have been no monitoring stations
set up since then. DEQ says there's been no monitoring analysis sent in. So
his claims were in error, at best. She needs to go run down where the
monitoring stations are, and see why they're down and when they might get
back up.

Grasshopper said they might combine Infrastructure and Storm Water

Management groups, also may gel together Policy and R&D.

Tim said eco-system management is just as important as manmade

infrastructure, so they should be joined too

Steve said someone should take leadership on timliness of getting our

discussion material out there for the upcoming mayoral elections. Get
candidates to buy in and get public to make this an election issue. Mark said
we should invite them to our meetings. Grasshopper wants us to do that. Policy
group should begin laying groundwork. Prisca said John Georges is going to
run on a green platform, so we could leverage that. Kappel said in 1994 they
formed a PAC that created an educational platform for school board races.
They had a platform the candidates could endorse or not. Although this may not
be the best way to proceed for us, he said it was effective then.

Billy said this could be woven into HI's general push to make the candidates
embrace a PPP. There's a lot of energy for that. He spoke in general about HI's
future and plans, and how those could mesh with this group's agenda.
Grasshopper said the Policy Group should address preparing a private forum
to educate the candidates on these topics.

Tim said the most renewable resource in LA is votes for new politicians, and
we should beware of getting greenwashed and distracted with smoke and
mirrors from candidates holding cheat sheets.
Kappel said Tim's note on metrics and Billy's on economic development need
to be coordinated, to build a hard-numbers campaign arguing that this is a real
issue with dollar value.

Cherrie said educating candidates is huge; she does this all the time, for ports
and waterways. She has to explain lots of things to them, and that's energy well
spent. Tim said he's really pleased by the Master Plan's sustainability, but
politicians may not understand what they're walking into. Mark said Murray
wants to abandon the Master Plan if elected.

Joe said it's an attractive idea to sponsor a debate where we frame the scope
and the discussion. Get a good moderator. Tim said they've had good luck with
doing things like that. Mark concurred. Grasshopper said Policy should do that
too. Mark said HI could also take a role in that.

Meeting adjourned.