Second Plaque Approved by Louisiana Historic Preservation Office

Artist's rendition of proposed London Avenue Canal Historic Plaque

The Louisiana State Office of Historic Preservation has approved Levees.org’s request for a Historic Plaque.

The request was submitted in January 2011.

The proposed Plaque, the group’s second, will be positioned near ground zero of the London Avenue Canal Breach site in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans.

The proposed site, chosen with input from neighborhood leaders and residents, will be the corner of Warrington Drive and Mirabeau Avenue.

The City of New Orleans Parks and Parkways Department has approved the location which is marked with a little purple flag.

Sponsored by Levees.org, the Plaque will be presented as a gift to the residents in the twenty one neighborhoods of Gentilly. An Unveiling Ceremony is being planned for mid to late May.

Levees.org unveiled a similar Historic Plaque last August timed with the anniversary of the levee breaches, the worst civil engineering failure in U.S. history.

That Historic Plaque is located at 6932 Bellaire Drive, near ground zero of the 17th Street Canal breach site.

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Code for America enlists Stanford Rosenthal, founding web designer for Levees.org

Stanford Rosenthal, age 20 currently a second year student at Washington University in St. Louis, MO

Barely past 15 years of age, my son Stanford Rosenthal designed and created Levees.org’s website.

Today he officially became a summer intern at Code for America which “enlists the talent of the web industry into public service to use their skills to solve core problems facing our communities.”

Stanford is continuing his civic contribution!

Sandy Rosenthal, proud mom and founder of Levees.org
www.levees.org

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Myth Buster #6 New Orleans is First in Nation to Place Experts on Local Levee Boards

Sheet piling from failed Industrial Canal I-wall in Lower 9th Ward. Photo/Francis James

One year after the levees broke, Louisiana made national headlines when 81% of its voting residents favored consolidating the New Orleans area levee boards from ten to two.

It was called Levee Board Reform, and it made the Governor-appointed individuals on the pre-Katrina levee boards look – wrongly – like they were responsible for the deadly flooding on August 29, 2005.

Media never reported that Louisiana was the very first state in the nation to require experts in flood control on its local levee boards. Or that Louisiana had to write the legislation from scratch because no models existed in the entire country to use as a starting point.

In fact, Louisiana is a model for the United States. Shortly after the impressive voter turnout, California followed suit and voted on a historic package of Flood Bills that put requirements on professional backgrounds of its board members similar to those in Louisiana.

And with the majority of the American population living in counties protected by levees, its likely that more states will join Louisiana’s example.

Click here for our oped in the New Orleans Times Picayune.

Our other Mythbusters can be seen here.

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