Under the Overpass: Noise and Toxic Pollution in New Orleans

Amy Stelly:
I can usually sleep fairly soundly, until about 4:45 AM. At 4:45 AM, the noise level increases dramatically. It’s just like a clock. On a fairly calm day, the noise level will be about 50 decibels inside of my house, which is pretty loud. It becomes white noise sometimes, but not all the time, and that’s unfortunate. That’s unfortunate.

Charles T. Brown:
Amy Stelly is an artist, urbanist, and designer who was born in the Treme District of New Orleans. She’s lived there nearly her entire life. Her house is near the Claiborne Expressway, a piece of Interstate 10 that was built through the neighborhood in 1969.

Amy Stelly:
It, at one time, was very much a neighborhood commercial corridor that had a really huge, beautiful median in the center of it that housed a huge stand of oak trees. As a child, I walked the corridor quite often because I would go shopping for my parents. There were lots of small neighborhood serving businesses. Dentists, doctors, lawyers, music stores, we had everything. It was the shopping district for Black people during Jim Crow, so it was a very, very important economic engine in the city of New Orleans.

The Claiborne Expressway. Well, it’s a behemoth. It was named The Monster not long after it went up. Now we have a corridor where the beautiful stand of oak trees has been replaced by an ugly concrete facility that sheds its water everywhere. It’s very noisy, it’s very dirty. It has attracted all kinds of crime. The shopping didn’t die immediately, but it died over time.

The neighborhood went, once the trees were destroyed, from a very pleasant place with a lot of character, a very lovable neighborhood, to one that became very dark. And in some places, very desolate.

Charles T. Brown:
The Claiborne Expressway is far from the only American highway to divide and deprive Black communities. For example, it has been argued that I-85 in Montgomery, Alabama, was driven through the city’s only middle class Black neighborhood, almost as a punishment for the organizers of the Civil Rights movement. In Nashville, Tennessee, I-40 was intentionally built around a white community, and instead routed through a prominent Black neighborhood. It knocked down hundreds of homes and businesses.

Not only has this infrastructure damaged these neighborhoods economically and culturally, but it’s also dangerous. These highways pollute the environment with high levels of noise and harmful particulate matter. Ever since she was a little girl, Amy Stelly has been determined to do something about the Claiborne Expressway.

Amy Stelly:
I decided as a kid that, when I could take it down, I would do that. When I grew up into enough to take it down, then I would do it.

Charles T. Brown:
My name is Charles T. Brown, and this is Arrested Mobility. This episode is based on reporting by a journalist named Drew Hawkins. He’s the health equity reporter for the Gulf States Newsroom. Drew wrote an article about Amy Stelly and the Claiborne Expressway in March 2024.

Drew Hawkins:
This is a story about the Claiborne Expressway, which is this stretch of Interstate 10 that runs through New Orleans. When it was built in the 1960s, it tore right through a neighborhood called the Treme. Which at the time, it was also the center of essentially Black excellence. There was this oak-lined avenue that had hundreds of storefronts, people walking through the city, music playing. We’re in New Orleans, this is where jazz was born. This place is hundreds of years old. It’s one of the oldest, if not the oldest Black neighborhoods in the country.

As you head towards the interstate, the sounds of the jazz coming from the clubs, the street musicians really gets overtaken by the ka-kunk, ka-kunk, ka-kunk of the constant traffic driving overhead. The community, I would argue, has really never recovered from that. There are a handful of businesses along the expressway now. But with the noise and the pollution, it’s not the bustling center of Black activity that it once was.

One of the areas I went to for the story that I reported was a little playground called Hunter’s Field Playground. Charles, you’ve got to see this thing. It just looks crazy, between these two twin expressways above. It is so loud there, we’re talking right around the 90s DB area. Which actually, can damage your hearing after prolonged exposure.

I’ll be honest, when I walked around that playground, the equipment was in great shape but that’s because it’s not used. This playground is over nine years old now and I did not see a single child. Which, I would say, is actually a good thing given the noise, the air pollution, and the litter, which included used needles. There’s this really striking juxtaposition of the image of a slide and monkey bars that still have that sheen on the paint because kids don’t use it. It’s almost a decade old, but you haven’t had kids swinging on it, or sliding down it nonstop, all day long because it’s so loud.

Amy Stelly has this great line where she says, “Yeah, kids don’t come here because kids are smart.” Kids aren’t going to come somewhere where it’s so loud, they can’t hear themselves talk.

Amy Stelly:
That playground is never occupied. It’s unfortunate in that space, because there’s a twin span going over the playground so it’s even worse. Not only is it noisy, it gets a lot of particulate matter. Which actually, I noticed the last time I was there, has coated all of the toys. For parents who may want to take their children to play there, they would have to think twice because their children would be touching the particulate matter that has settled on the toys. Now they could bring Lysol wipes and clean it, but they’d be cleaning the whole playground which is crazy.

The city doesn’t bother to maintain it. In its wisdom, the city built a resource center there that has never, ever opened. Why? Because it’s unpleasant under there and they built it in front of an amphitheater. It’s a very, very poorly designed space that has been rendered unusable, not only by the poor design that’s now inherent in the space, but it’s location. It’s terrible.

Charles T. Brown:
Amy Stelly co-founded a neighborhood advocacy group, a nonprofit called The Claiborne Avenue Alliance Design Studio. They applied for funding from a Federal program called Reconnecting Communities to study the impact of the expressway and asses the feasibility of moving it somewhere else in the city.

Drew Hawkins:
As part of his bipartisan infrastructure deal, President Biden has a program called Reconnecting Communities. The goal of it is to do what the name implies, which is to look at these divisive infrastructure across the country and try to mitigate that, try to solve these problems, or right the wrongs that were done in the 1950s and ’60s by the Federal government. It’s interesting because, in the White House memo, the press release talking about this program, lauding it the Claiborne Expressway is specifically mentioned as one of those projects. It’s the archetypal example of this divisive infrastructure.

Amy Stelly and her group, they applied to the Federal government to that program, to try to get funding to initially study potential mitigation things. Ideally, take a look at what removal could look like, what form that could take. That’s what her group was doing. But interestingly, at the same time, the state of Louisiana’s Department of Transportation and the City of New Orleans also submitted a separate proposal. Their proposal was more focused on things like looking at better lighting, cleaning it up, better drainage. I would say more improving the state of the expressway, rather than some of the more radical things that residents were calling for. Which were fewer on and off ramps, so that there’s less fast traffic driving through an area where people are walking. As well as the idea of eventually removing the expressway entirely.

The city-state proposal ultimately was the one that was approved. Amy Stelly and hers was denied.

Charles T. Brown:
That city-state proposal includes an initiative to develop an entertainment district under the Claiborne Expressway. The city already holds concerts in this space. Except, according to Amy, noise from the highway above makes it too loud to hear the music properly.

To be clear, I think the Reconnecting Communities program is well-intentioned and has a lot of potential to mitigate past wrongs. But ultimately, its success will be determined by those most impacted by it, community members like Amy Stelly and her neighbors.

Now, according to Drew Hawkins, the Reconnecting Communities program is not yet living up to its name in New Orleans.

Drew Hawkins:
It’s interesting that the mission of this Reconnecting Communities program is to right a wrong. There’s a historic injustice that’s been done here. It’s really great that the Federal government is recognizing that and saying that they want to address this, they want to fix this. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, it’s going to take years, but it’s also going to take money. Now they’re putting money behind it and that’s real.

But I think it’s a little bit disappointing to see that funding go to a proposal that seeks to put more things under the interstate when the divisive infrastructure itself is left there. This thing was built and it divided this community. Then you have a program called Reconnecting Communities and it doesn’t actually do that. It talks about mitigating the damage. Putting up sound, maybe taking off on and off ramps. These aren’t bad things. It’s better to not be as loud, it’s better to not have fast moving through, but the problem is still there. The whole thing still looms above this community.

I don’t know. It just seems a little disingenuous. To put a program together and say, “We’re going to reconnect these communities. We did something wrong. The United States government, in the ’50s and ’60s, built this infrastructure and divided communities, we’re going to reconnect them, except we’re not. What we’re going to do is make them look better, make it sound a little less loud, put up some better lighting, some better drainage.” In the case of New Orleans, “We’re going to put stages and vendor shops beneath it. We’re not going to actually remove this, we’re not going to actually reconnect this community.”

After her proposal was denied for the Reconnecting Communities program, Amy Stelly didn’t give up. She’s been fighting this her entire life. She grew up and lives two blocks away from the Claiborne Expressway. What she did is she said, “Okay, you know what? We’re going to still demonstrate that this is harmful. Even if we don’t have the money to do something about it, we’re going to show people that it impacts our health, the people that live there.”

What she did is she turned to an EPA funded study that’s going on at LSU right now. It’s just getting started, it’s going to take a couple years to complete. They’re taking continuous noise readings and air pollution readings. The real air pollutant that’s a problem here is called PM 2.5. It’s this really insidious, really fine, almost like a powder. It’s what comes out of the tail pipes of vehicles, really. It’s so small that, when you breathe it in, it slides right through your lungs and it’s transported directly through your circulatory system. Then it has access to every part of your body, so it really does impact every system. It’s your brain, your heart. It’s so small that, if you’re pregnant, it can get through the placenta barrier and it can affect growing fetuses and children. This is really insidious stuff that is constantly in the air.

Then of course, you’ve got the noise. In a city known for its music, its love of sound, we’re talking about readings that are as loud as a motor cycle engine if you’re standing up close to it. Highly dangerous to your hearing for prolonged exposure. If you lived there, yeah, that’s prolonged exposure. That is day in, day out, the traffic does not stop. It spikes, it gets louder at certain times of the day. But even at a low level, it’s still uncomfortable to be standing and walking in the area.

When you’re exposed to sound at that level, it actually stresses your body out. Your body releases cortisol in response to it. When your cortisol and stress levels are increased for years, and years, and years, it’s going to affect every part of your body. It’s going to affect your organs, it’s going to affect your mental health as well as your physical health.

Charles T. Brown:
Amy’s work with the EPA is meant to challenge the city’s plan for redeveloping the corridor. Ultimately, she wants to study what it would take to move the expressway somewhere else in the city and she won’t accept a compromise.

Amy Stelly:
Many folks have asked if there’s a mid-ground. I always answer there is no mid-ground because we will continue to get particulate matter and we’re going to keep the noise, so the things that are harmful for the community won’t go away. New Orleans is very compacted, it has a very efficient grid. If we build correctly and smartly, I don’t think we’re going to need a highway. Pre I-10, there were 600,000 people living in New Orleans. We are at half that population today. We moved more people before the highway then we have to move now. I don’t understand why this is not something we can do efficiently. We’re looking at half the population now and it’s dwindling. Clearly, our needs have changed.

Drew Hawkins:
There’s a pretty visceral reaction to a lot of people, including people in New Orleans, and many people even in these communities, when you talk about something like removing the Claiborne Expressway entirely. But I would say a radical act is putting an interstate directly through a Black neighborhood. If you put something there, you could definitely take it back.

Charles T. Brown:
Arrested Mobility refers to systemic limitations on mobility and its resulting impacts on Black communities. Often, through discriminatory transportation and urban planning policies. The Claiborne Expressway is a prime example of how infrastructure projects can exacerbate inequalities in economic mobility, air quality, and noise pollution, especially affecting historically Black neighborhoods.

I think it’s also important to highlight other sources of pollution in underserved communities. At the beginning of this season, we talked about railroads built through Black neighborhoods around the country, which are noisy, dangerous, and impede freedom of movement. You can also look at the demographics of neighborhoods near airports. The rhythmic drone of planes flying overhead is a common sound in many communities of color and low income neighborhoods. Arrested Mobility is an effective framework to understand different forms of pollution, and advocate for policy change that can lead to more equitable, healthy places.

I want to thank Amy Stelly and Drew Hawkins. Please go to our show notes and read Drew’s original article with the Gulf States Newsroom. You can also listen to a piece he produced with NPR on the subject.

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