Sisters of St. Joseph's Mirabeau Water Garden about 50% complete

 

The long-promised, 25-acre stormwater management and flood mitigation project called the Mirabeau Water Garden – made possible through the generosity of the Congregation of St. Joseph, who donated their former motherhouse campus to the city of New Orleans for $1 a year – is about 50% complete.

 

Ed Sutoris, executive director of the congregation in Chicago, said contractors have indicated the first phase of the project is expected to be completed by January 2026, barring weather delays.

 

The ambitious water garden, designed by New Orleans architects Waggonner & Ball, will have the capacity to store 9.5 million gallons of water in a park-like setting and then slowly release it back into the city’s overtaxed drainage system.

 

"The congregation feels that the Mirabeau Water Garden is a key project for water management to prevent flooding and potential loss of life for the people and city of New Orleans," Sutoris said. "Our leasing the land to the city is our witness to this important effort."

 

In an area where “100-year” storms have been a dime a dozen in the last 25 years, lead urban and environmental architect David Waggonner is itching to see how the innovative water retention area, crafted on the Mirabeau Avenue site in Gentilly on which the St. Joseph Sisters’ motherhouse stood before Hurricane Katrina, will transform both the hydraulics of the surrounding area and, more importantly, the deeply held view that the only solution to keeping the city safe from flooding is to pump water out of the New Orleans bowl.

The project was first envisioned in 2011, and Waggonner says the sisters have been the real champions in making the project possible.

 

When the motherhouse took on seven feet of flooding from Katrina in 2005 and then was struck by lightning and gutted by fire in 2006, the sisters prayed about what to do with the large and mostly undeveloped site they no longer needed. Waggonner, the founding principal of Waggonner & Ball, first approached the Sisters of St. Joseph in 2011 when he heard they might be thinking of making their land available for the project.

 

As New Orleanians began returning home from the Katrina diaspora, the sisters easily could have sold the undeveloped parcel for millions as homesites, using the money to provide for the retirement needs of their aging members.

 

Instead, after meeting for months with Waggonner and latching on to his vision about working with the environment to manage water – a project that might encourage others to do the same – the sisters decided to jump-start the project by leasing their land to the city for $1 a year, a monumental step on the way to securing FEMA and other governmental funding to construct the garden.

 

The project was slowed a month ago when U.S. immigration agents went to the work site and detained more than a dozen workers who did not have their identification documents with them.

 

After the detentions, the Sisters of St. Joseph released the following statement:

 

"The Congregation of St. Joseph is deeply troubled by the ICE raid and detention of individuals that took place on May 27 at the Mirabeau Water Garden construction site. The Congregation is dedicated to the love of every person without distinction, and we support efforts that ensure all people are treated with respect, dignity, and legal due process. Our welcome and support of those who seek protection and refuge make the actions by ICE especially unsettling, especially having taken place on land that is sacred to us and holds historic significance for our congregation. Please join us in prayer for those who have been directly affected by this upsetting action, and for all those people who have been detained."

 

Waggonner said he is curious to see how much water the Mirabeau Water Garden can actually hold. It is estimated at 9.5 million gallons, but he expects it will be more than that. He said even with the project's infrastructure incomplete, water is being retained to help the neighborhood.

 

The drone shot of the project's progress was taken by Bryan B. Smith of New Orleans.