2 Arrested in N.O. Housing Demolition

In normal times, redevelopment of public housing to make way for mixed-income neighborhoods might have gone largely unopposed. But passions are high in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, where residents are desperate for cheap housing.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to demolish about 4,500 public housing units at four of the city's largest complexes and replace them with mixed-income neighborhoods.

Protesters temporarily halted crews from demolishing decrepit buildings at the B.W. Cooper housing site on Thursday.

At least two protesters apparently occupied one of the buildings scheduled to be bulldozed, draping two handmade banners from the side Thursday. One read, ''Reopen now,'' and the other, ''No demolition.''

A man and a woman were arrested hours later on municipal trespassing charges.

Protesters have marched on Mayor Ray Nagin's home and disrupted City Council proceedings with chants. On Thursday, they kept up the pressure with a march at the HUD offices in Washington.

Civil rights lawyers also filed an 11th-hour suit in state court after a federal court suit failed to derail the demolition plan.

The protesters have won the blessing of one presidential contender, John Edwards.

''There is a housing crisis in New Orleans today -- the result of government policies that have failed the people of the Gulf,'' the Democrat said in a statement this week. ''Rents have doubled, families are being evicted from FEMA trailers and now the current administration is trying to make a bad situation worse.''

Opponents are suspicious of HUD because the redevelopment plans -- following a model used around the country to break up concentrations of poverty -- call for a reduction in subsidized housing and allow commercial development on the sites.

Tessua Faulk, a 31-year-old teacher, said she doesn't trust the plans because demolition at New Orleans' St. Thomas development, where she grew up, left some of her old neighbors homeless.

''They were too slick about the whole process, the so-called 'rebuilding,''' Faulk said as she watched the protesters chant ''Housing is a human right!'' and stare down demolition crews at B.W. Cooper. ''It needs to be a two-way street: Residents need to be involved from the beginning, every step of the way,'' she said.

The St. Thomas redevelopment has been a major source of distrust of housing plans in New Orleans. After it was torn down, a Wal-Mart superstore was built and most of the former residents wound up in other neighborhoods.

Many more demolitions are slated to begin after Saturday.

About 5,100 public housing units were occupied before the storm.

Meanwhile, air-quality tests on government-issued trailers housing thousands of hurricane victims were to begin by next week, nearly two months after the Federal Emergency Management Agency postponed them.

On Nov. 2, CDC scientists were scheduled to start testing FEMA trailers in Mississippi for levels of formaldehyde, a common preservative and embalming fluid found in building materials for manufactured homes.

FEMA postponed the tests, however, saying the agency needed more time to prepare.

Harvey Johnson, FEMA's deputy administrator, disclosed the agency's latest plans for the tests during a hearing Wednesday in Washington before the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Senators pressed Johnson to explain the delays in testing 500 occupied trailers in Mississippi and Louisiana, where tens of thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

''It's taken a long time in part because we have not had this problem before,'' Johnson said. ''This is the first time we've had people be in travel trailers for this length of time -- up to two years -- in which case some of these symptoms and the impacts on health have become more apparent.''

Officials from FEMA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were expected to outline the new testing plans Thursday at news conferences in New Orleans and Washington.

Many trailer occupants are blaming ailments on formaldehyde, which can cause respiratory problems and has been classified as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

HUD to Nagin: Demolition of Lafitte critical

The Housing Authority of New Orleans will lose out on $137 million in construction funding and 900 disaster housing vouchers if the City Council does not approve demolition plans for Lafitte, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said Thursday.

On Monday, a historic conservation committee deadlocked on demolishing Lafitte, tying 3-3. HANO said it will appeal to the City Council, which is likely to vote on the matter at its regular meeting Thursday. The committee approved demolition plans for B.W. Cooper and C.J. Peete.

In a letter to Mayor Ray Nagin, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said that HANO has already secured Gulf Opportunity Zone low-income housing tax credits and other federal grants to redevelop Lafitte into a "mixed income" neighborhood. A total of $137 million would be lost if the council doesn't approve Lafitte's demolition, Jackson said.

Jackson also said that former Lafitte residents could lose their disaster housing vouchers, which pay market-rate rents while they await the rebuilding of the complex. Those vouchers, provided by HUD, are directly linked to the plan to demolish and rebuild housing on the site, the letter said.

Lafitte, which housed 865 families before Hurricane Katrina, has been shuttered and vacant since the storm. HANO says that nonprofit developers will build 1,500 units of housing, including 296 public housing units and 624 units for low-income renters.

"Any action that would that would prevent the demolition of Lafitte will deny housing assistance to the displaced tenants, which, absent using their own funds, would likely make it very difficult for them to afford to pay their own rent," Jackson wrote.

HANO had planned to reopen at least 94 apartments at Lafitte, at a cost of $37,000 per unit, in order to allow families to live there while the complex is dismantled in phases, Jackson said.

"If these remaining units are not demolished and no redevelopment occurs at Lafitte, these 94 untis will not be refurbished, and HANO will have to locate returning public housing tenants elsewhere in the city," Jackson wrote.

Jackson said that HANO's master plan for redeveloping its properties began in 2002.

FEMA trailers to be tested for formaldehyde

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will begin testing Dec. 21 for formaldehyde in a sampling of trailers FEMA provided for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, FEMA and the CDC announced today.

The testing is scheduled to take 35 days, when results will be shared with residents. A final report will be made public in mid-May, the agencies said.

Dr. Henry Falk, director of CDC's Coordinating Center for Environmental Health and Injury Prevention, said 500 trailers will be tested. He said that number was chosen because it allows a representative sample of 11 types of trailers by different manufacturers. Scientists, accompanied by FEMA officials, will go to trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi proportional to the number of occupied trailers in each state.

There are about 46,000 families in FEMA travel trailers and mobile homes across the Gulf Coast.

Jim Stark, director of FEMA's Transitional Recovery Office in New Orleans, said FEMA has received 6,700 calls to its hotline from families concerned about formaldehyde levels since reports of poisonous levels came out 18 months ago. He said 3,700 of those families have already asked to move out because of those concerns.

Falk said there's no clear standard for dangerous levels of formaldehyde, just general guidelines. FEMA and CDC will use the results of the tests to generally advise families, but won't use any findings to forceably evict anyone, Stark said.

Formaldehyde exposure can affect eye, nose and throat membranes and cause irritation, cough and respiratory problems, Falk said. The effects can vary widely, though, Falk said, depending on the age of residents, their pre-existing health risks and how long they generally spend in the trailers.

Demolition crews arrive at B.W. Cooper

Demolition crews this afternoon began tearing down 14 brick buildings at the B.W. Cooper public housing development -- work that had been scheduled long before Hurricane Katrina struck two years ago.

That meant nothing to protesters who tried to block a second crane that arrived to the 3400 block of Erato Street after 3 p.m., chanting "Housing is a human right."

"This is immoral and must be stopped," said Don Everard, an activist who stood right in front of the wrecking crew's path. "It's a hate crime. It's a hate crime against poor people."

Attorney Bill Quigley, a Loyola Law School professor who is leading a civil rights lawsuit against the demolition of public housing, said that more protests will follow the wrecking crews, which are set to descend on Cooper and two other complexes Saturday.

"At least," said Quigley, eyeing the scores of protesters, which included members of Safe Streets New Orleans.

Known as the "new side" to Cooper residents, the flat-topped dormitory-style buildings were opened around 1950 and were designed much differently than the handsome pitched-roof style buildings that flank Earhart Bouelvard.

With open, common-use hallways, the buildings became crime havens, said B.W. Cooper Resident Management Corporation president Darrell Williams.

"They were never upgraded," said Williams. "The criminal element was always present. We welcomed those being torn down."

Sharon Sears Jasper, who lived at the St. Bernard complex before the storm forced her out, held a bullhorn and led protesters to condemn the demolition. By 6 p.m., a crowd of about 500 protesters had winnowed down to around 200, and backhoes had been silent since about 3 p.m. The crowd was a mix of residents with small children, and seasoned protestors who alternated chanting into a bullhorn.

In June, the Housing Authority of New Orleans and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced they would demolish the city's four largest developments -- B.W. Cooper, St. Bernard, C.J. Peete and Lafitte, to make way for "mixed income" modern-day housing.

Demolition on all sites except Lafitte is scheduled for Saturday.

Poor Hit Hardest by Climate Change

BALI, Indonesia (AP) -- Surrounded by rising seas and short of water, the glitzy city state of Singapore has built one of the world's largest desalination plants and is paying Dutch experts tens of millions of dollars to devise ways to protect their island.

Bangladesh, meanwhile, is digging out from a cyclone that killed at least 3,200 and left millions homeless. The impoverished country wants to build up its coastlines to ward off the potentially devastating impacts of global warming, but has no money.

The disparities between the rich and poor in adapting to encroaching oceans and the floods and droughts that are expected to worsen with rising temperatures have dominated the U.N. climate conference on Indonesia's resort island of Bali.

Many delegates touched Wednesday on the inequalities in both the levels of assistance and impacts of climate change when they spoke at the opening of high-level talks.

The haves -- which pump the lion's share of pollutants into the atmosphere -- are arguing about emission targets and high-tech solutions. The have-nots -- which contribute little to global warming but are disproportionately among the victims -- need tens of billions of dollars to save their sinking islands, to help farmers adapt and to relocate those in the path of destruction.

''The issue of equity is crucial. Climate affects us all, but does not affect us all equally,'' U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told delegates. ''Those who are least able to cope are being hit hardest. Those who have done the least to cause the problem bear the gravest consequences.''

The United Nations Development Program says 98 percent of the 262 million people hit by disasters from 2000 to 2004 came from impoverished countries, while the money to prevent disasters in the United Kingdom alone was six times what was spent in all poor countries.

The number of people affected by natural disasters has quadrupled over the past two decades -- from famines in Africa to floods in South Asia, according to Oxfam International, though it is not clear how much of that is due to global warming.

But with scientists predicting that temperatures could rise by as much as 5 degrees Celsius -- 9 degrees Fahrenheit -- things are only expected to get worse.

The U.N. predicts that about 1.8 billion of the most vulnerable people across the globe will be hit by water shortages, 600 million more will go hungry and 32 million will be displaced by droughts and floods.

''Poor countries have really urgent priorities -- putting food on the table, accessing water, health care,'' said Antonio Hill, a climate change expert with Oxfam. ''On all these issues, climate change is making these things worse.''

From Venice to New Orleans, the West is already taking action to fight climate change within their borders.

Canada said Monday it would spend $85.4 million on adaptation measures, including tens of millions of dollars to help its Inuit communities adapt to warming Arctic climate.

The low-lying Netherlands -- which for centuries has built a vast network of canal systems, experience it is now passing on -- is spending an additional $25 billion to improve its water defenses. Italy is doing the same.

Singapore, meanwhile, has built a 139 million desalination plant to boost its domestic water supply and teamed up with the Dutch engineering firm Delft Hydraulics as part of a more than $208 million effort to become a hub for climate change research -- much as it has for biotech and the medical industry.

The tiny city-state is itself vulnerable to global warming, but also realizes that ''there is great potential to make money,'' said Peter Ng, who is part of the Dutch partnership called Singapore Delft Water Alliance. ''If we play our cards right and do what we do well, other countries will come to us for help.''

Poor nations, in the meantime, are doing what little they can.

Some are creating early warning systems, building bamboo storm shelters on stilts or making plans to relocate island communities. But the money often does not reach villages hardest hit by worsening floods and the rising seas.

In Kaoakola located along Bangladesh's Jamuna River, for instance, Mohammad Sheikh complains he has been forced to move his house three times because of increased floods.

''We're very poor. We can't afford it,'' the 70-year-old said, adding that he has been forced to become a day laborer after his 300 acres were lost to flooding. ''The river, the floods have taken everything from me.''

The Maldives -- a popular tourist destination made up of more than 1,000 low-lying islands -- also exemplifies the limits of good intentions in developing countries. It has rolled out plans to move communities to a few, well-protected islands, but so far has only been able to come up with the money to build up one such island.

''Climate change has become a daily reality in the Maldives and other small island states,'' said the country's president, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, recalling how his islands were being hit by storm surges and erosion while fish were dying of mysterious diseases.

Even if the maximum suggested assistance is approved, it won't cover the costs.

Up to $300 million will be available annually if a U.N. adaptation fund is created in Bali as expected, and up to another $1.5 billion a year if an international climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, is approved.

That still falls far short of the nearly $86 billion the UNDP estimates is needed annually by 2015, prompting some to suggest that additional mechanisms, such as a tax on bunker fuels or, as Oxfam demands, funding targets for industrialized countries.

Impoverished nations are also demanding a post-Kyoto agreement offer increased access to technology for adaptation and assurances the money for climate response won't be taken from already meager development aid.

''The money they put up for this adaptation fund is peanuts. It's nothing,'' said Khandaker Rashedul Haque, a Ministry of Environment comparing his problems in Bangladesh to those of New Orleans, which is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina.

''Why are they putting up a few billion for a city like New Orleans when they are putting up a few million for the entire world?''