Mail delivery stats track city's growth

Mail delivery statistics from the U.S. Postal Service suggest that New Orleans’ population may have reached nearly two-thirds of its pre-Katrina level, or about 300,000 people, in June, according to a group tracking recovery trends.

That number is higher than recent estimates compiled by other methods.

Households “actively receiving mail” in Orleans Parish in June reached 66 percent of the pre-Katrina figure of 198,232, recorded in July 2005. That level is up from 49.5 percent last August, according to numbers released Wednesday by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center on the basis of Postal Service delivery statistics.

The Census Bureau placed the city’s population on July 1, 2005, two months before Hurricane Katrina hit, at just under 455,000, and 66 percent of that number would be 300,000.

The data center said the number of Jefferson Parish households receiving mail in June amounted to 98.2 percent of the parish’s pre-Katrina figure. The June figure for St. Tammany Parish was 103.2 percent, but in St. Bernard it was only 35.9 percent.

For the four-parish area, the number of households receiving mail in June was 82.9 percent of the pre-Katrina total, up from a low of 76.1 percent in August 2006, the Community Data Center said.

The center said that maps showing the percentages of active-mail households across New Orleans “reveal that many parts of the more heavily flooded neighborhoods are showing notable resurgence.”

Although the lowest monthly mail-delivery figure reported for Orleans Parish since Katrina was 49.5 percent in August, that does not mean the city never dipped below about 50 percent of its pre-storm population. The Postal Service was unable to compile meaningful numbers for several months after the storm, said Allison Plyer, deputy director of the data center.

Eventually, she said, the service was able to restore reliable data-gathering, and household counts have grown steadily since August.