The Fundred Dollar Bill Project

In 2005 after the hurricane, Mel Chin was one of a number of artists invited to New Orleans to contribute to rebuilding the social, cultural and physical infrastructure of the City.

Mel Chin is a conceptual artist working in many media. He is known for works that address environmental problems-and for his work called “Revival Field” a project working with hyper-accumulators, plants that remove heavy metals from contaminated soil.  When Mel visited New Orleans he became aware of the lead problem and of the work of scientist Howard Mielke.

Howard Mielke, one of the leading scientists working with lead contamination, is currently at Tulane University in New Orleans. He is one of the leading scientists that gave testimony to congress that ultimately affected legislation requiring lead-free gasoline. Dr. Mielke had worked on a test project addressing the contamination issues through a process of removing exposure to the lead dust in soil by covering contaminated areas with 3-6 inches of clean soil. With his 25 test properties, he saw an immediate drop in the blood-lead levels of the children who lived and played on those properties.

When Mel asked Howard the cost to implement a landscape project to treat the estimated 86,000 contaminated properties, he was told approximately $300,000,000
 

Mel’s response: I can’t raise that much, but we can MAKE it…we can CREATE it from the value of creativity…through a collective art project.

The idea of FUNDRED/PAYDIRT was born.

• FUNDRED is the national outreach to schools that, through a drawing project, will raise awareness and FUNDING for this science-based landscape project that is being researched and tested right now.
• PAYDIRT is the science-based landscape/soil project.

The fundred.org website is the primary resource for both FUNDRED and PAYDIRT information and the central place to go to get involved with FUNDRED.  The website provides all of the key information about the FUNDRED project.  This includes lesson plans, the FUNDRED Dollar Bill worksheets, and a map of Collection Centers.

 When a bunch of FUNDREDS are finished they are bundled up in the FUNDRED Currency Wrap (found on website) or other similar strip of paper, note how many bills are in the bundle, and mail them to the nearest Vault (a school that has volunteered to be a collection center holding the bills in safekeeping.

When we have 3 hundred million FUNDRED Dollars, which is 3 million artworks, an armored truck will be deployed from New Orleans to travel all around the U.S. in a documented performance to pick-up all of the bills. The ultimate destination of the truck is Washington D.C

The truck has been retrofitted with an engine modified to run on SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil) and will be refueling with used cooking oil picked up from school cafeterias along the way.

The Sous Terre Transport Company armored truck is painted with a “soil to grass” (brown to green) color scheme and detailed to include the Katrina date serial number to identify it as unique from most armored cars.  The estimated cargo of the 3,000,000 FUNDRED BILLS @ 1 gram each = 6614 lbs, a volume of 4 x 4 x 8 ft.

The truck is currently in New Orleans waiting for the word that the 3,000,000 artworks have been completed.

The truck will first attempt to deliver the 300,000,000 to the Federal Reserve to ask for an even exchange of bills for cash. We have heard from a fairly reliable source that they will probably say no.

The next step is to deliver the bills to Congress to ask for an even exchange of FUNDRED bills for goods, services, and money to support the PAYDIRT project. We are not just delivering the artwork, but also a pragmatic plan that will explain how to accomplish the PAYDIRT project
 

It is our intent that the delivery of the FUNDREDS will not be a surprise; it will in fact be a thank you as we are building the awareness of the project at the highest levels.…and, of course this request is not specifically for cash.

This type of funding exists in grants (such as HUD and Healthy Homes and Community grants).

Operation PAYDIRT

At its core, the PAYDIRT plan follows the science of using phosphates to render lead nonbio available, and then covers the treated ground with 3-6 inches of clean soil. The soil is Treated with a phosphate, which Locks the lead into a stable pyromorphite mineral rendering it non-bioavailable. So when a child plays in the dirt and subsequently puts their hand in their mouth, the lead is not absorbed but is excreted. (For more information visit the “About Paydirt” page of the website)

The very clean soil, known as “spillway sugar” will be used. This is the soil that is brought straight to NOLA from the Mississippi River at 300 tons a minute. This soil is available through the Army Corp of Engineer’s work in the shipping channels. We have had initial conversations with the Army Corp and these conversations have been encouraging. 

This system of working with the soil in-situ makes a lot of sense. To dig and dump on this scale isn’t environmentally or economically reasonable.  The interesting thing about NOLA is that there is a lot of clear land right now as they are rebuilding a large percentage of the housing stock. This creates a perfect opportunity to address the problem from “below the ground up” to ensure healthy rebuilding. This opportunity can then become a model for other cities. This system, this plan, can be a model that could significantly impact the health of our society.