Trash Force Sweeps New Orleans

Standing on a median strip on a busy thoroughfare, homemaker Becky Zaheri addresses a band of volunteers, clad in orange safety vests, with the zeal and authority of an Army sergeant.

“Bag everything you can bag, and what you can’t bag, sort it and stack it in neat piles to be picked up,” Zaheri, 38, tells the volunteers, who listen intently over rows of rakes, shovels, brooms and garbage bags in the glare of the morning sun. “Put all bags on the curbside corners, away from poles, posts and trees. Bring all supplies back with you at the end.”

The drill has become a ritual every Wednesday and Saturday, as Zaheri and her team -- most of them newly acquainted -- converge on New Orleans’ neighborhoods to attack what many now consider its greatest enemy: trash.

They are tackling the heaps of paper, cartons, blankets, tattered clothing, wood and rug remnants that litter the city’s streets and median strips -- referred to here as “neutral ground” -- six months after Hurricane Katrina tore through.

Residents acknowledge that the city has always struggled with garbage collection. But the local government has faced a myriad of other post-storm challenges, and only Friday kicked off a city-sponsored volunteer cleanup. Garbage has become New Orleans’ new emblem; in many neighborhoods, more rubbish than cars line curbs.

Zaheri and company have led the charge to get residents to help clean up.

“It’s going to take everyone who’s still left living here to get involved,” said Zaheri, whose trash force calls itself the Katrina Krewe and includes students, homemakers, retirees, teachers and other professionals. “We need all the citizens to take pride in our city, to take ownership of our city.”

As residents return home -- Mayor C. Ray Nagin estimates that about 200,000 are now back -- they are gutting structures and tossing sheet rock, furniture parts and defunct appliances wherever there is space outside. Food, diapers, newspapers, and other household waste is being mixed in with the larger storm debris.

According to the New Orleans Emergency Operations Center, storm debris removal is about 55% complete, excluding refuge from the demolition of structures.

And officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said that as of March 6, more than 11.5 million pounds of general waste had been collected and disposed.

Still, the magnitude of the trash appears to dwarf the official cleanup effort.

That’s why Zaheri is urging residents to get involved.

“You can’t come back to your city and sit back,” said the doctor’s wife and mother of two young children, whose home in the city’s Uptown neighborhood was spared major damage. “Do you want to turn every corner and it’s a junk yard?”

Her message appears to be getting through.

The number of volunteers has soared from 15 -- when Zaheri first sent out an e-mail appeal in November -- to between 150 and 500, the Katrina Krewe founder said. The helpers hail from all over the city -- and sometimes the country -- and typically cover a 15- to 20-block radius during each cleanup.

The group’s website (www.cleanNO.org) announces upcoming cleanup venues that are chosen on the basis of need and request.

Sporting bright pink baseball caps blaring the green Katrina Krewe logo, Zaheri and her committee leaders arrive early and await the workers. They unload supplies, set up tables and post fliers promoting the team.

After registering their names and signing a one-time waiver that absolves Zaheri of any liability, volunteers get to work.

Grabbing a garden rake and a box of black garbage bags, Dewey Knudson set off down Jefferson Avenue one recent Wednesday with his gloves stuffed in his back pocket and his wife, Julie, at his side. They have become regulars on the trash trail.

“Everybody’s got to chip in, in any way they can,” said Knudson, 57, a trade journalist who moved from North Carolina to New Orleans six days before Katrina hit. “Some people are helping to serve food, others are helping to gut houses. This is one way we can help. Waiting for somebody else to do it is not the answer.”

Robert Cremins, a teacher from Houston, shoved a handful of plaster, paper and dried leaves into a garbage bag and wistfully wiped his brow. Minutes before, he had tossed a pajama top -- white with blue stripes -- and one old sock, into the same bag.

“It was rather poignant,” said Cremins, who accompanied a group of Houston high school students to New Orleans so they could help with the recovery during their Spring Break.

“Most of the trash, you don’t think about,” said Cremins. “They’re objects to be picked up. Then all of a sudden it just hits you: This was somebody’s life, and it’s been trash out here for the last six months. It’s important to have that reminder every 10 to 15 minutes.”

A little farther down Jefferson Avenue, New Orleans native Patricia Lacoste came across some blue decorative picture molding, the type that lines the walls of many older homes here.

“I could tell it was in somebody’s bedroom, or living room,” said Lacoste, 38, a Katrina Krewe regular. “It’s so overwhelming to think that part of their life is on neutral ground, in a pile of trash.”

She stood curbside as a specially assigned city garbage truck hauled the mounting bags. Zaheri said independent contractors sometimes donated trucks and helped to collect larger debris like sheet rock, appliances, mattresses and ruined furniture.

Taking a short reprieve from stooping and scooping, Dara Furash said she was grateful that none of her personal belongings needed to be tossed; her home had withstood the wind and water.

“I have Katrina guilt,” said Furash, 42, a flight attendant on extended leave. “That’s why I wanted to get involved. I was one of the lucky ones who didn’t flood.”

However, Furash, like most residents, still has to contend with regular household trash that has also been piling up in the weeks since Feb. 20, when the Army Corps of Engineers handed supervision of such garbage collection back to the city.

The city contracted with Waste Management of Louisiana, which collected garbage in New Orleans before Katrina, but many residents complain of infrequent collections.

Rene Faucheux, community and municipal affairs manager for Waste Management, said the company was introducing new collection routes for Orleans Parish and that it would collect up to eight bags, or two 32-gallon containers, of household garbage from each home each week.

“We are applying additional resources every day to this task,” said Faucheux. “We are working seven days a week.” He added that he thought crews would be caught up “within the next couple of weeks.”

Faucheux said that when his company resumed residential collection, it inherited an inefficient route structure, and an imbalance in the frequency of neighborhood trash pickup, where some areas were getting service and others were not.

Nagin acknowledged that the fluidity of the city’s repopulation made it tough to keep tabs on households that were regularly producing trash.

He told a recent gathering of homeowners in the city’s Lower 9th Ward that with residents returning each day, trash was being generated faster than it could be collected.

“We are constantly chasing that dog,” the mayor said.

Standing beside three garbage cans in front of her Spanish-Caribbean-style house on Jefferson Avenue, Mary Stuart said she hoped this would be the day the city would keep its promise and send the collection trucks.

Looking out over her garbage-free median strip, she showered praise on the Katrina Krewe.

“Prior to the storm, litter was a big problem,” said Stuart, 47, a school teacher made jobless by the storm.

“Nobody had civic pride,” said Stuart, who plans to move to Houston. “People threw stuff everywhere. I can’t tell you how good it feels to see these people out here helping us out. I think that it’s fabulous that this city has again found its civic pride.”

“This is the most fulfilling volunteer work I have ever done,” said Jeanne Hunter, 64, whose sculpted silver coif remained unruffled as she snatched up pieces of paper and plaster, her hands protected by orange rubber gloves. “I look forward to coming twice a week.”