This story is one of five stories in The Lens’ Embracing Katrina Narratives project.

Arthur Johnson, 71, grew up visiting his grandmother on Forstall Street in the Lower 9. He moved to New Orleans full-time six years before Hurricane Katrina hit the city. He now leads the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development (L9 CSED), which stands a few blocks from the Mississippi River, on Chartres Street, in the Holy Cross neighborhood.

CSED was formed in 2006 by some Lower 9 residents he knew. At first, Johnson stepped in only as a fundraiser, to help CSED’s founders raise some money. But the concept made so much sense to him that he ended up becoming its executive director.

But now, he says, a new linear park along Florida Avenue has cut off access to Bayou Bienvenue, hampering the center’s flagship youth-research program, its education-by-kayak program and other key restoration work.

The organization’s pivotal educational program is an environmental research internship for students aged 12-18. Those young interns work with scientists conducting research in Bayou Bienvenue, focusing on how humans impact the wetland triangle.

In 2013, the nonprofit partnered with Colorado University to construct a viewing platform on the bayou, to allow wetland access to neighbors, fishermen and scientists alike. “The platform was created by the community and educators as an opportunity for anyone to access Bayou Bienvenue,” Johnson said. For more than a decade it has stood at the end of Caffin Avenue, now Fats Domino Avenue. 

But recently, access to the platform has been cut off by the development of the Sankofa Wetland Park, which is being built by the Sankofa Community Development Corporation and the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans. 

Part of the new park is a walking trail along Florida Avenue that renders the platform unreachable; it runs the length of the neighborhood from Jackson Barracks to the blue Florida Avenue bridge.

To Johnson, it feels like the impediment threatens one of the key post-Katrina gains made by environmentalists – the creation of a platform and a pathway, through a once-overgrown area, that finally gave neighbors a way to view the Bayou Wetland Triangle that had historically been difficult to access. “Bayou Bienvenue has always been there. But the accessibility hasn’t been there,” he said.

Johnson, too, has a Katrina narrative. He was a New Orleans East resident before the storm, but he and his family had evacuated at the last minute. They left on Sunday by car and finally ended up in Tallahassee, Florida. As they checked into a hotel, he saw television images of flooding. “Where is this?” he asked. “New Orleans,” he was told. 

As he watched, his heart sank. “I saw familiar street signs, almost underwater,” he said. Within the next few weeks, they were able to look online to see the condition of his home. A brick house, it was still standing. But he could see the water lines. It had taken in six feet of water. 

When he was able to make it to the Lower 9, he found his grandmother’s house in ruin. Though a new homeowner is now building a small house on the lot, for years, only a slab of concrete topped with concrete steps stood on the family property.

A few months later, when the community was finally allowed to return, he began envisioning a place in the city that could work to create a more sustainable environment. And L9 CSED has done that, working in the Lower 9 and in other Gulf Coast communities, to help residents prepare for the effects of climate change on infrastructure. 

The nonprofit also works with Glass Half Full to recycle glass from the community and grind it back into sand at a 9th Ward facility. And they work with the Brown Foundation and Pontchartrain Conservancy to cultivate thousands of cypress and tupelo trees and other native plants, at a tree nursery in Bucktown. 

But Bayou Bienvenue is at the heart of the organization. Once a thriving cypress swamp, the ecosystem was devastated by the construction of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) in the 1950s, which allowed salt water from the Gulf to poison the swamp forest. It’s never received state restoration funding, though the state Coastal Master Plan includes a project to revitalize it.

His young scientists have worked to plant native plants in and near the bayou. And they have learned about the environment of the city from their studies there, which for now, are curtailed.

A person familiar with the situation said that the overlook is not Sankofa’s concern – it is in disrepair and has no permit; the land and property ownership needs to be formally resolved.

The Orleans Levee District, which manages the levee on city-owned property, has always been aware that the overlook exists, said Johnson, who added it is tough to maintain the platform now without any access. To show how accepted the platform has been, Johnson noted that, a decade ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took the platform down to build a metal levee at the location. Once the levee was complete, the Army Corps put the platform back up, he said.

The platform changes things for the Lower 9 community, Johnson said. “We learn about our environment from the overlook. Within the triangle, as the bayou changed back from the salt water that had intruded from the Gulf to fresh water, there are freshwater habitats – birds that fly, things that swim and crawl – along with grasses and cypress trees. Kids can come up on that platform and see and touch what they learn about in their science books.”

But more than that, the overlook reflects the Lower 9 and its very identity, Johnson said. “This is a coastal area. It’s part of who we are as a community in the Lower 9. The whole idea of the platform is an opportunity to see visually how you can save and protect your community.”