Holy Cross homes tour helps mark Earth Day

People squinted up at flat black panels, using hands to shade their eyes from the intense midday sun. That same sun powered the house they stood beside, through solar electric systems installed last month on the house's roof.

Relatively unexciting topics -- solar electricity and energy efficiency -- drew a crowd of nearly 100 people to the Holy Cross neighborhood in the Lower 9th Ward on Sunday. The "Clean Energy Homes Tour" went from the solar-powered house on Tricou Street near the river levee and to an energy-efficient house on Dauphine Street.

The tour was one of several local events honoring Earth Day, the environmental-awareness day that's been celebrated in the United States since 1970.

In the Broadmoor area, 100 Jewish teenagers participated in J-Serve, a national day of volunteerism for Jewish youths, toting shovels and rakes, cleaning up three of the neighborhood's neutral grounds and planting azalea bushes and flowers there. In Central City, hundreds of students and young adults planted three "edible gardens" as part of a national event called Global Youth Service Day, which emphasizes the contributions that youth volunteers make to their communities year-round.

The Lower 9th Ward tour started at the corner of Chartres and Lizardi streets, at the Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development, where returning residents can learn about rebuilding their homes with Earth-friendly technologies and materials.

Sunday's group included several environmentalists but mostly was made up of Holy Cross residents, ranging in age from the toddlers in strollers pushed by their parents to the older folks who had lived more than a half-century in the neighborhood. By and large, their motivations were less about the green earth and more about green currency.

"For me, it's simple: economics," an older woman said. Others said high Entergy electricity bills have pushed them to think "green."

"When you hit people in the pocketbook, you hit a nerve," said Charles Allen III, vice president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, which he said is aiming to become a "truly energy-efficient, carbon-neutral community."

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