casinos in louisiana built on a landfill

Emotionally, the residents’ journey has been one of perseverance legally, it’s an anomaly across a movement where such victories remain rare.

The city set aside $35 million to buy out the homeowners.įor Gordon Plaza residents, their pending relocation represents long-awaited justice, even as the city’s action signals a wider trend of societal awareness of environmental inequities. In June last year, New Orleans officials at last agreed to relocate residents of Gordon Plaza, where 58 of 67 homes remained occupied by owners or renters. Dedmond – efforts that for years seemed fruitless – the lives of residents here at Gordon Plaza are poised to change. Now, after three decades of effort by residents including Ms. She doesn’t let her children play outside, out of fear of increasing their exposure to hazardous chemicals. Dedmond, shaking her head, says she couldn’t bear the guilt of exposing others to the dangers she and neighbors – second families, who helped raise her – face.

Dedmond’s received assurances of the development’s safety – and were placated by the allure of affordable property.įor hopeful buyers, a majority of whom were Black, it was a path to economic mobility.īut since then, those who call Gordon Plaza home have complained of chronic ailments that they say are due to toxins from the former landfill bubbling out of the earth. Homebuyers at the time were aware of the site’s history, but families like Ms. Dedmond says.īefore her parents and others trickled into a then-new development in the late 1970s, this 95-acre site was home to the Agriculture Street Landfill. The five-bedroom house she inherited from her late mother has done more to, than for, their family, Ms. Sheena Dedmond doesn’t invite company to her home in New Orleans’ Gordon Plaza subdivision anymore.

Casinos in louisiana built on a landfill