New Orleans residents angry over post-katrina tourism

NEW ORLEANS Some New Orleans residents and city officials are pushing back against tour operators who bus out-oftowners into the city’s Lower 9th Ward, where hurricane Katrina unleashed a wall of water that pushed homes off foundations and stranded residents on rooftops when the levees failed.

About nine million people visit New Orleans each year, mostly to see its stately homes along oak-lined avenues, dine at its renowned restaurants and take in the jazz and ribaldry of Bourbon Street. But Katrina’s devastation in August 2005 unleashed an unexpected cottage tourism industry, drawing a daily parade of rubbernecking tourists for a close-up look at the city’s hardhit Lower 9th Ward.

Worried that a flood of tour buses and vans would interfere with cleanup efforts, the city council approved an ordinance in 2006 banning them from crossing the prominent Industrial Canal and entering the neighbourhood that received Katrina’s fury. Now tour operators are crying foul, claiming the ordinance had been thinly enforced until recently.

They say a business that is bringing them and the city tourist dollars is being hurt.

“I can’t afford to keep paying tickets,” said David Lee Ducote, owner of Southern Style Tours.

As the Lower 9th Ward slowly rebuilds, visitor interest has also been piqued by housing built by actor Brad Pitt and his Make It Right foundation.

City councillor Ernest Charbonnet, who represents the neighbourhood, said residents complain the tour vehicles are blocking streets and damaging the roads.

They are also weary of being gawked at, he said.