I thought the grain terminal project had halted, but it looks like it hasn’t. This grain hopper appeared the other day. (I don’t know what day, this was the first time I was up there to notice it.)
I haven’t joined in the protests against having a grain terminal on the levee in our neighborhood, because I’m not against it. The wharf needs to be in use, the French Quarter didn’t die when every one of those wharfs was busy all day long. There’s been a lot of complaint that it’ll fill our neighborhood with grain dust, and the train going through will vibrate everybody’s houses down. I don’t know, maybe they’re right. My Destrehan friends talk about the part of their neighborhood where houses are cheap because they’re close to the huge grain elevator Archer Daniels Midland has over there for offloading ships. It seems like many of these houses were here when the train went trough the neighborhood. Those rusty tracks were used at some point.
But maybe it’ll be horrible and I’m wrong. I will say, the Sunrise Foods peoples’ communications seem like honesty is just not important to them; I bet they’ve been lying to the protesters from the beginning, when they said they would listen to them. (I think this deal was done before it was ever put out there for public comment.) I couldn’t vocally support the people because of the ridiculous fearmongering AI art they put out at the beginning of this conflict, but maybe they’ve eased up on that.
If you want to see what the Stop The Grain Train group has to say: https://stopthegraintrain.com. I don’t want the things they say will come true to happen either; the problem is, I don’t think much of the future they predict will come true. I don’t think the train, if it ever comes, will have to honk a horn ten times at every traffic intersection. But perhaps I’m naive.