News from Central Gulf Focus: La./Miss (Ala contributors)

[Audrey2Katrina]

Council revisits homesite approval

FEMA's begun work on land

By MELISSA M. SCALLAN -sunherald.com 6/14/06

GULFPORT - The City Council on Tuesday spent 90 minutes debating a FEMA trailer site members had approved in early November, despite a warning from the city attorney that changing the vote could result in legal action against the city.

Six months ago the council voted 6-1 to approve nearly 26 acres on John Hill Boulevard near U.S. 49 as a temporary housing site for residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Now, Ward 3 Councilwoman Ella Holmes-Hines believes 112 mobile homes are too many for that area and said she is concerned about crime and the effect on businesses on that street. She also said the North Gulfport Civic Club has written a letter opposing the site.

"I am truly opposed to this type of density," Holmes-Hines said. "This is a very poor site. This is not embracing this commercial area. It doesn't benefit Gulfport as a whole."

Holmes-Hines voted in favor of the site six months ago, along with five other council members. Council President Barbara Nalley abstained.

After an hour-and-a-half of talk Tuesday afternoon, the council took no action, but Holmes-Hines and Nalley plan to tour the site this week.

Gulfport currently has 588 FEMA trailers in four of its seven wards. Some of those are travel trailers, others are mobile homes. The site on John Hill Boulevard is the last one FEMA wants to open in Gulfport and would contain only mobile homes.

Rick Weaver, who has been handling housing issues for the city since Katrina, said there are 200 families in Gulfport who don't have places to live. FEMA has spent $100,000 cleaning up the site and making water and sewer improvements.

Rafaela Monchek, group-site coordinator for FEMA, said if the council changed its vote, it would take months to locate a new place and make the necessary improvements.

"We can't just hold off on construction," she said. "We have a lease, and we've done a lot of work."

The rest of the council agreed.

"We've voted on this," said Ward 4 Councilman Jackie Smith. "We need to go ahead."

[Audrey2Katrina]

Senate approves money for hurricane recovery

By Bruce Alpert
Washington bureau

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate voted 98-1 Thursday for a $94.5 billion emergency spending bill that includes money for levees and restoration for Louisiana’s hurricane devastated housing stock.

The White House said that Bush will sign the bill into law.

Under Louisiana’s Road Home program, the state will use the $4.2 billion in block grants, plus the $6.2 billion approved earlier, to pay homeowners for their uninsured, uncompensated damages — up to $150,000 — to repair, rebuild, take a buyout and relocate within Louisiana, or sell their homes and leave the state. It will also include funding to encourage construction of replacement rental housing.
Officials with the Louisiana Recovery Authority said that so far 90,000 people have applied to participate in the program out of the 120,000 they estimate are eligible. Checks could begin flowing by the end of the summer, an authority spokeswoman said Thursday.

Officials stress that even if a homeowner can’t qualify for a rebuilding grant because insurance and Federal Emergency Management Grants have covered all of their damages, they still could tap the Road Home fund for mitigation work to strengthen a home against wind or flood damage.

The levee financing includes $170 million for armoring critical areas of the levees in New Orleans; $495.3 million to raise levee heights for the Lake Pontchartrain and West Bank levee projects; $1.6 billion to reinforce or replace floodwalls; $530 million for levee closures and new pumping stations; $250 million to flood-proof interior pumping stations; and $350 million for construction of navigable closures on the Industrial Canal and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.

In all the bill includes $20 billion in recovery funds for Gulf Coast communities affected Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

The only no vote Thursday was cast by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who had complained that House Republicans leaders used the supplemental to reduce available 2007 financing for health, labor and education programs by about $7 billion.

Louisiana’s two senators, Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican David Vitter, said that the money for housing and levees in particular, would assure that southern Louisiana will rebuild from the staggering hurricane losses.

“The saddest thing was that many people didn't have insurance because they weren't in the flood plain,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. “They didn't have insurance because they had already paid for their homes. Their homes were paid in full, on high ground, not in a flood plain. Then the levees broke, and middle-income families, wealthy families, and poor families lost their largest asset — their security for their retirement, their emotional security, having worked a whole lifetime to build assets of a home, washed away. For some parents and for some grandparents, this was the way they were going to send their children or grandchildren to college. Gone.”

Without the block grant money, she said, many of her constituents “have no hope of restoring their asset or rebuilding their equity — no hope.”

Some of the assistance, such as $50 million in grants to help colleges damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and $400 million to develop alternatives to Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers, will require agencies to develop rules and guidelines before money is actually made available.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Another 'block party' scheduled for Saturday in Chalmette

Times Picayune - NOLA.com 6/15/06

The second in a series of free block parties for St. Bernard Parish residents will be Saturday in Chalmette.

The party will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Disaster Relief Center in the Super Wal-Mart parking lot, near the FEMA tent, a St. Bernard Parish news release says. Another block party is scheduled for June 24 at the same place and time.

The events, including inflatable attractions for youngsters, games, music, food and drinks, are sponsored by Operation Compassion, New Orleans Ministries and Care Center, Catholic Charities and businesses in St. Bernard Parish.

Tax-free contributions of a product or service will be accepted to be used as door prizes. Operation Compassion and N.O.M.A.C.C. are tax-exempt organizations as recognized by the Internal Revenue Service. Any business interested in helping to sponsor part of the block parties can call Dawn Taylor at (504) 756-1379 or Dana Bonvillian at (504) 234-2634

[Audrey2Katrina]

SWAT roll in Metairie

Thursday, June 15

Members of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office SWAT team were outside a Metairie house Thursday afternoon where a man barricaded himself and refused to come out, authorities said.

At 2:30 p.m., the unidentified man had been inside the house for a couple of hours.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Man to be arraigned in LaPlace murder

By Paul Bartels
River Parishes bureau

A former Kenner resident arrested in the fatal shooting of a Reserve man three months ago in a small shopping center in LaPlace will be arraigned on a second-degree murder charge Monday in state District Court in Edgard.

A St. John the Baptist Parish grand jury indicted Kendrell S. Lewis, 25, whose last known addresses were 704 Farrar Ave. in Kenner and 510 E. Club Drive in St. Rose, on the charge Wednesday.

Lewis was arrested April 27 in the March 17 shooting death of Morial D. Johnson, 28, of Reserve. Johnson was shot when he apparently intervened in a late-night dispute in a parking lot between Lewis and another man over a woman.

Johnson was shot once in the abdomen. He died in the hospital April 3, becoming St. John’s first murder of 2006.

The penalty for second-degree murder is life imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of sentence.

Lewis was on parole for a narcotics conviction at the time of Johnson’s slaying. He was arrested when he showed up for an appointment with his parole officer in New Orleans, where two St. John Parish detectives were waiting for him.

The grand jury also indicted Neyuka Untrell Ceaser, 30, of 1805 Cambridge Drive, LaPlace, on a charge of accessory after the fact of murder in the case. She was booked April 5 on that charge and obstruction of justice.

Investigators have identified Ceaser as Lewis’ girlfriend and believe she either was driving or riding in the car with the suspect after the shooting. The penalty for accessory is up to five years in prison, with or without hard labor, and a fine up to $500.

The grand jury declined to indict Ceaser’s brother, Deval Ceaser, 24, of 116 Dove St., LaPlace. A warrant for his arrest on the same charges as his sister was issued April 10 and he turned himself in to authorities May 2.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Slidell man pleads guilty to armed robbery, attempted murder

By St. Tammany bureau

A Slidell man faces 20 years in prison after pleading guilty Tuesday to armed robbery and attempted second-degree murder of a police officer. A second Slidell man, described by authorities as his accomplice, is awaiting trial for armed robbery.

Cecil Delaughter, 25, entered guilty pleas to the two charges Tuesday before state District Judge Donald Fendlason. The pleas came after a 12-member jury had been selected to hear the case. After dismissing the jury, Fendlason accepted the guilty pleas and immediately sentenced Delaughter.

Delaughter received 20 years for the attempted murder and 10 for the armed robbery but Fendlason ordered the two sentences to be served concurrently.

Meanwhile, Brandon Edwards, 19, is awaiting trial on the single charge of armed robbery.

Authorities said the two men robbed another man at gunpoint in Slidell in September 2004, firing a shot over the victim’s head after telling him to run away. That shot was heard by Slidell police who were nearby working another incident. When they saw police, Delaughter and Edwards fled, but were knocked down by a clothesline they could not see in the dark, authorities said.

Police said Delaughter jumped up and fired shots at a police officer, who fired back. Delaughter got away and was arrested the next morning. Edwards was arrested at the scene.

Fendlason ordered Delaughter to serve time without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of sentence.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Slidell area landfill seeks to expand

By Charlie Chapple
St. Tammany bureau

The only demolition and construction debris landfill in St. Tammany Parish is seeking a state permit to expand its facility south of Slidell.

Written public comments on the permit sought by Slidell Landfill LLC are being accepted by the state Department of Environmental Quality until July 5. A public hearing on the permit could be called if the agency finds “a significant degree of public interest,” DEQ officials said.

Slidell Landfill, headed by Chris Jean, is seeking a modification to a DEQ permit issued six years ago to operate 9- and 18.5-acre disposal pits, or cells, on a 68-acre company tract at 310 Howze Beach Road.

Because of the debris generated by Katrina, the two pits are nearing capacity, company attorney John King said. The modified permit would allow the landfill to increase its capacity to ensure that the north shore has a disposal facility for non-hazardous construction and demolition debris and woodwastes for years to come, King said.

The company is proposing to combine the two pits with an abutting 20.5-acre “old landfill” that operated from the late 1980s to April 2002 when it stopped accepting demolition and construction debris, according to documents filed by the company with the DEQ.

The company’s plan calls for filling the two pits to a level compatible to the adjacent landfill. Then the entire site, totaling 48 acres, would become one landfill, which would be allowed to expand vertically in a gradually sloping manner to a height of about 125 feet in the middle, according to the documents.

The current permit allows the company to vertically expand its two operating pits to a height of about 15 feet.

The company’s permit application can be viewed online at http://www.deq.state.la.us/new/PubNotice/. The applications plus additional documents are available for public review locally at the Slidell Branch library, 555 Robert Blvd.; the parish Department of Environmental Services office in the parish government complex, 21490 Koop Drive north of Mandeville; and at the DEQ’s southeast regional office, 645 N. Lotus Drive, Suite C, Mandeville.

Written comments should be submitted to Soumaya Ghosn at LDEQ Public Participation Group, P.O. Box 4313, Baton Rouge, 70821-4313. Written comments must by received by July 5 at 12:30 p.m., agency officials said.

When Slidell Landfill received the permit for its two operating pits in September 2000, the expected lifespan of the facility was 10 to 20 years.

That all changed after Katrina, according to the company. Since the hurricane, the landfill has accepted some 1.5 million cubic feet of debris, and the facility is nearing its capacity.

According to the application, the new permit would allow the landfill to operate another 10 years. The estimated final date of operation for the facility is December 2016, the company said in its application.


According to the application, the company:

* Expects to receive a maximum of approximately 900,000 tons of solid waste per year. The estimated per week maximum to be received at the landfill is 25,000 tons. This tonnage will be expected to decrease significantly as post-hurricane needs decrease.

* Will operate the facility on weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

* Will maintain a levee and drainage system around the entire 48-acre landfill to ensure that stormwater cannot enter the facility or exit the landfill expect at designated locations.

* Will double check vehicles to ensure that all materials being dumped at the site are construction debris or woodwaste only.

* Will cover materials dumped at the site with at least 12 inches of clay soil at least every 30 days.

* Will cover the entire landfill with two feet of clay and six inches of top soil when it is permanently closed.

[Audrey2Katrina]

City hires more staff to handle permits for construction zones

Trying to cope with an avalanche of permit requests, the city of New Orleans on Thursday said it's adding personnel to handle permits to temporarily use a public area as a construction zone, including placing dumpsters and containers.

Public Works Director Robert Mendoza said the Traffic Engineering Department has added a full-time traffic engineer and an office clerk, both new hires, to handle the ramped-up permitting workload. Their jobs are among almost 60 positions public works has filled since Mayor Ray Nagin fired 3,000 municipal workers in October in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Mendoza said that as the city has collected more fees with construction permits and parking tickets, department directors have been able to fill more “self-funded” jobs. Within public works, he said they have hired at least 46 additional parking control officers, eight new tow truck drivers and three laborers.

He said the department is now turning its attention to enforcing construction zone permits.

“We haven’t been actively out there enforcing these,” he said. “But on an annual basis, there’s (usually) enough revenue to support these (two) positions that are being filled.”
Officials hope the new personnel will help people applying for permits. The city has issued more than 70,000 residential and commercial construction permits since Katrina, but it expects a much higher volume of requests in coming months, as federal rebuilding dollars begin reaching homeowners.

The city also wants to reduce the number of people using public property for construction without a permit.

"We know that many people don't realize that permits are required, but we have to protect access to the city's sidewalks and streets," Mendoza said.

To that effect, the Traffic Engineering Division announced an amnesty for people who have started construction without a permit, to last until July 3. After that, those in violation can be fined $100 per day, the city said.

All permits have an application fee of $35. Temporary construction zone permits are $50 to $1000, depending on size and how many days it is needed. Dumpsters and containers in a temporary construction zone do not need a separate permit, but an additional fee is required if metered parking spaces are within the construction zone, the release said.

Applicants need a sketch and pictures showing the area where the construction zone, dumpster, or container are proposed or already placed. If a sidewalk or street closure is required, applicants also need a traffic control plan.

Applications for permits can be obtained from the Traffic Engineering Division in City Hall, 1300 Perdido St., suite 6W03. Office hours are Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The division can be reached at (504) 658-8040.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Four N.O. housing developments will be demolished

But 1,000 other units to reopen by August

Thursday, June 15, 2006
By Gwen Filosa
Staff writer

Promising a renaissance for public housing in New Orleans, federal housing officials said Wednesday that they will reopen 1,000 units by summer's end and within three years demolish four decades-old complexes, changing sections of the city's landscape by replacing the sprawling brick developments with a mix of single-family homes and apartments
"We want to redevelop these old, obsolete and just dangerous properties," said Scott Keller, deputy chief of staff for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. "We also want to return folks home."

Barracks-style brick buildings with deep concentrations of poverty are not in New Orleans' future, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson repeated Wednesday.

"Katrina put a spotlight on the condition of public housing in New Orleans," Jackson said. "I'm here to tell you we can do better."

St. Bernard, which had 1,300 units bounded by St. Bernard Avenue and Gibson, Senate and St. Denis streets, is among the properties HANO plans to eventually demolish and redevelop as modern-day public housing, Jackson said. The others are C.J. Peete in Central City, B.W. Cooper off Earhart Boulevard, and Lafitte near Treme.

St. Bernard is not on HUD's list of complexes that will reopen. Instead, units at C.J. Peete and Cooper will reopen in the coming months, with demolition and rebuilding happening around residents, just as it had pre-Katrina.

Wednesday's announcement by HUD is the first plan the agency has released since public housing was devastated by the deadly flooding after Hurricane Katrina.

Within the next 60 days, the Housing Authority of New Orleans will repair and reopen 1,000 units to public housing families who lived in the city before Katrina made landfall Aug. 29, HUD officials said.

Half the reopened units will be in the Iberville development, which was built in 1941 directly behind Canal Street and near the French Quarter.

The 1,000 units would restore New Orleans public housing to half of its capacity pre-Katrina.


Rent subsidies rising

The rest of the recovery plan includes raising Section 8 housing subsidy vouchers from $670 to about $900, and long-term redevelopment that will dramatically change the city's public housing landscape.

"We want to make sure there is a one-for-one replacement of affordable units," Keller said. "We're raising the value of Section 8 vouchers. No one in a public housing unit prior to Katrina won't have either a unit or a voucher."

The government's commitment to restoring public housing is part of the promise President Bush made to the region in his Sept. 15 televised speech at Jackson Square.

"We're making the president's vision a reality with an innovative plan which will reopen nearly half of the city's public housing but also bring about a renaissance in public housing neighborhoods," Jackson said. "Rebuilding and revitalizing public housing isn't something that will be done overnight. Our redevelopment represents a major step forward. Sadly, not all residents will be able to return home in the near future."

Jackson and other HUD officials spoke to reporters by telephone Wednesday, through their Washington, D.C., offices.

HUD has run the city's public housing authority since 2002, after years of rampant mismanagement and corruption took its toll on the complexes and their residents.

By late 2005, HANO, directed by a one-person board of commissioners who is appointed by HUD, was making headway in its far-reaching renovation of public housing complexes. Desire and Florida in the 9th Ward were pastel-colored rows of townhouses and shotgun-type homes.

"Katrina made a bad situation worse," Jackson said. "A massive redevelopment effort was under way when the hurricane hit."

Today, Desire -- renamed Abundance Square -- and Florida are vacant, muck-stained neighborhoods. Desire was a Hope IV project, part of a federal grant program that transforms public housing into mixed-income housing.

"The developer of Desire has indicated a strong desire to bring it back online as a development," Keller said. "They are working with the insurer right now to get funds available."

HANO helped house more than 14,000 families pre-Katrina, including 9,000 families in private-market homes mostly paid for with federal Section 8 vouchers. The city's housing crisis has squeezed out Section 8 renters, prompting HUD to increase its vouchers.

The HUD voucher increase announced Wednesday is 35 percent over the pre-Katrina level of $670.

After Katrina, HUD created "disaster" vouchers, a program that unlike FEMA rental assistance, does not expire.

As for the 1,000 units that will reopen by August, the families living in them pre-Katrina will have first dibs, Jackson said. "We have ways of contacting all the residents," Jackson said. "It would be unfair if we didn't give persons who lived in those units the right to return."


Controversial issues linger

Jackson reiterated his wish that all able-bodied public housing tenants secure employment upon return, a statement that offended residents who said their community already works for a living, just at low wages. But he conceded that HUD can't stop anyone from returning.

"We don't have the authority to refuse people's return," Jackson said. "Clearly we're going to ask that those who are physically able to go to work go to work. There are so many jobs open in New Orleans that we can't come close to filling them."

U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, said public housing residents remain locked out of New Orleans.

"The thing right now is to find people temporary housing that is secure and safe for them," Jefferson said. "The short-term remedy has to be fix first, before we start dreaming about what can happen three years from now."

Jefferson said at least HUD is saying that everyone is invited back.

"You have a lot of poor folks whose only sin is that they don't make a lot of money," Jefferson said. "For the most part, they work hard. For the most part, they aren't involved in any activity related to crime. They became victims of those who terrorized the neighborhood."

Residents and activists have complained that HANO has shut the poor out of New Orleans for the past nine months. This weekend, activists with "United Affordable Housing Front," a group headed by perennial housing advocate Elizabeth Cook, plan to march down St. Charles Avenue with residents to demand fair, affordable housing for all returning New Orleanians. The group said it will start at Napoleon Avenue and march down to the private gated community of Audubon Place.

Resident leaders recently protested outside the vacant, fenced-off St. Bernard complex, even putting up tents on the neutral ground as a pledge to return home.

Residents have returned over the past months to attend meetings and work on damaged properties. At least two tenants of the flooded-out Florida complex have returned this month to gut their homes.

But HUD officials said that no one on the city's public housing roster has been left out in the cold. There are "tenant protection vouchers" that cover residents' rent no matter where they have relocated, Jackson said.

Some residents of St. Bernard have moved into Iberville. Others have found public housing outside of New Orleans but still in Louisiana.


Scattered-site strategy

HANO has applied to the Louisiana Housing Finance Authority for millions of dollars worth of low-income tax credits to redevelop a series of 24-unit properties in New Orleans, including two sites on Imperial Drive and two sites at the former Florida complex -- one renamed "Mazant Royal" and the other "General Ogden."

The 11 applications would produce about 300 new units of public housing.

The housing authority has reopened 1,100 units over the past months at complexes that didn't flood during the levee failures nine months ago. But on Wednesday, six of the city's ten traditional complexes, including the sprawling St. Bernard in the 7th Ward, remained shuttered and vacant.

The Guste complex in Central City reopened not long after Katrina hit. Like its counterparts, Guste is undergoing construction of new units.

River Garden, located in the Lower Garden District, also made it through Katrina unscathed. The private development, which includes some public housing units, replaced the St. Thomas complex.

But fair housing advocates say River Garden falls short of serving low-income families, with fewer than 60 families from the St. Thomas complex living there today. Gov. Kathleen Blanco, Mayor Ray Nagin and other leaders refer to River Garden as the model for mixed-income housing in New Orleans.

HUD officials said Wednesday that the redeveloped properties -- St. Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper -- will comprise public housing only and will be managed by HANO.


Breeding crime

The historic St. Bernard complex, built as part of the 1937 Wagner Bill, welcomed its first residents in the 1940s. Then, the complex held 744 units in 74 buildings across about 31 acres.

Locals once called the complexes "the bricks" or "the projects," and the two- and three-story brick apartment buildings were built around playgrounds and parking lots.

The St. Bernard complex had recently been crisscrossed by street crime and murders, as drug dealers turned the grounds into turf. When HANO relocated St. Thomas residents into St. Bernard a few years ago, violence among rival groups erupted.

Still, St. Bernard remains home to its leaseholders, who are overwhelmingly women with children, along with retirees. Many residents insist that if you weren't participating in the city's illegal drug trade, you were safe to live at St. Bernard.

In recent years, as at other complexes in New Orleans, the number of occupied units had been reduced at St. Bernard.

[Audrey2Katrina]

For Those Familiar with the areas, THESE are the areas to be "demolished" and replaced.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Severe drought puts pressure on region

Extreme drought weighs on N.O. area

Thursday, June 15, 2006
By Michelle Hunter
East Jefferson bureau

After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita blew through the New Orleans area, dumping nearly 1 1/2 feet of rainwater, many prayed for drier days to make work easier for rescuers and give their submerged city a chance to dry out
"Be careful what you wish for," said state climatologist Barry Keim.

In a ironic twist after most of New Orleans sat submerged in water for weeks, the eight months since Oct. 1 have been the driest south Louisiana has seen in the 111 years that the state has kept rainfall records, he said.

Since October, most of the southern half of the state has averaged just 21 inches of rain, down from the usual 40-inch average, Keim said.

What's worse, other than a minor spike in rain chances beginning Friday and continuing into early next week, the rest of the month looks like more of the same, a National Weather Service forecaster said.

"We're in what's called extreme drought," Keim said of the state's record-breaking dry spell. "We've really been suffering here, especially since Katrina."

That has meant plenty of business for stores that sell sprinklers and hoses.

Charlotte Tatum and her mother, Evelyn Tatum, browsed the shelves of Lowe's Home Improvement Store in Harvey on Wednesday afternoon, looking for a new lawn sprinkler.

"We have a vegetable garden," said Tatum, who paused, closed her eyes and shook her head as if to mourn her withering plants and reconsider using the word "have."

Tatum, 56, of Algiers, said she's taken to extra waterings to save the okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, eggplants, onions and peppers growing in her small backyard garden. But she's already seen the water bill almost double.

"Watering helps, but we can't afford to keep doing it," she said.


Welcoming a storm


Without New Orleans' once-

dependable daily showers, lawns have browned, rice and sugar cane crops are suffering and residents like Tatum have emptied store shelves of hoses and other irrigation devices.

The increase in watering could stress city and parish pumping systems, and officials fear they could break because of ground subsidence caused by the lack of rain.

While nobody wants to see another strong hurricane target the city, there are probably more than a few who wouldn't mind a fast-moving squall that drops a few inches of rain and then heads on its way.

"A tropical storm would do wonders for us right now," Keim said. "A weak one, of course."

The forecast for rest of the month calls for little or no rain, said Mike Shields, senior forecaster at the National Weather Service office in Slidell.

Shields said there is a 30 percent chance of rain for the weekend and into next week -- spotty showers at best. "And then until the end of the month, it looks like the same pattern of high pressure still over us and keeping us dry," he said.

At the Lowe's in Slidell, the metal shelves of sprinklers and attachments had been picked clean, while one cardboard bin of all-weather garden hoses sat empty.

"Seems like everybody's watering as much as they can," store manager Mark Tortomasi said. "They're seasonal items, so we sell more in the summer. But they're probably selling more than average this year."


Problem before Katrina


Things were getting "drought-y" before Katrina arrived, Keim said. Southern Louisiana had been abnormally dry for about five months before the storm made landfall Aug. 29.

"The drought was interrupted, if you will, by Katrina, and we went back into the drought pattern. Then we got that deluge from Rita. And as soon as that storm left, we went right back into the drought pattern," he said.

To simplify the problem, Keim refreshed the old grade-

school explanation of the precipitation cycle: Humidity rises from the earth to the sky, the moisture forms a cloud and then raindrops fall back to the ground.

In Louisiana's case, a stable structure of atmosphere is hanging over the region, preventing the moisture from rising, he said. It's similar to the atmospheric conditions in arid states like Texas.

"For whatever reason, this dome of upper pressure in the atmosphere seems displaced east by a few hundred miles," Keim said.


Parched parks


The effects of the drought are being felt nearly everywhere.

At New Orleans' City Park, the lack of rain has affected everything from fish to flowers. After being flooded by Lake Pontchartrain's brackish water, the waterways that meander through the 1,300-acre park are still filled with uncommonly salty water nine months after the storm.

"We're not going to be able to begin restocking fish until the salinity level drops," said John Hopper, the park's development director.

Dry conditions also have stressed tender vegetation that park employees and legions of volunteers have planted to replace foliage killed by the flood, he said. To keep the maturing flowers alive, park officials have resorted to watering almost constantly around the park's few revenue-generating attractions.

"In the botanical garden, amusement park and in Storyland, the sprinklers are running 24 hours a day," Hopper said. "A lot of (sprinklers) they just leave on all night."

The drought also has hampered plans to reopen the North Course to golfers.

"Normally this time of year, we are bemoaning the fact that it is raining too much," Hopper said.

Across town at the golf course at Audubon Park, groundskeepers have tripled their frequency of watering -- from twice weekly to every night, said Larry Rivarde, managing director for the Uptown park and Audubon Zoo. Also "kicked up a notch" is the watering schedule for flower beds in the park and at the zoo, though Rivarde said his operating budget always includes a cushion to absorb extra water costs in the summer.

But drought brings problems bigger than St. Augustine grass that crunches underfoot. The state's agricultural industries are suffering, Keim said, particularly rice and sugar cane crops.

Residents grieving the so-so crawfish season have only the lack of rain to blame. Katrina's salty storm surge affected them as well. And because the grass isn't growing, farmers are using hay normally saved for the winter months to feed their skinny cattle, Keim said.


Dripping and blazing


Officials from the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board have blamed the dry conditions for soil subsidence that have led to recent water pipe fissures. Those breaks have compounded the number of leaks caused by Katrina, leading to a system that pours 85 million gallons of drinking water per day into the city's subsurface or onto streets and lawns.

Similar breaks have not been an issue for the water department in neighboring Jefferson Parish. But they're producing 71 million gallons of water a day, 17 million more than usual, Director Randy Shuler said. Officials in Jefferson also are concerned about subsidence. A dry spell three years ago cost $7 million in pipe repairs compared with the annually budgeted $2.5 million, he said.

And then there's the threat of fires. St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis imposed his fourth burn ban since Katrina because of the dry conditions. Firefighting crews there have been battling a rash of brush and wood fires. Fire departments in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish haven't seen similar blazes, but officials for both said they're concerned about dry grass along roadways being lit by cigarettes tossed out of windows.


'Crossing our fingers'


There is no clear picture for whether the drought will linger throughout the summer.

The national weather service's climate prediction center forecasts that precipitation in the area will return to normal levels in the next three months. But Keim said such predictions are often way off.

"We're crossing our fingers," forecaster Tim Destri said. "We can't say for sure, but we see some hope of getting back to the typical summer patter."

[Audrey2Katrina]

Largest of levee projects to finish soon

Corps: Work to start at 3 other Jeff sites

Thursday, June 15, 2006
By Sheila Grissett
East Jefferson bureau

The largest of several projects to temporarily ramp up the safety of East Jefferson's hurricane protection system until permanent fixes can be made should be complete by month's end, and work at three other sites should begin within a few weeks, said Army Corps of Engineers supervisors overseeing the improvements.

On the current schedule, at least one of those projects -- new walls to better connect Pump Station No. 2 to the levee on both sides of the plant at the Suburban Canal -- isn't likely to be finished before the historically most active part of the storm season, considered to be mid-August through late September.

But a corps project manager said that enough progress will have been made at that Metairie pump station, as well on new tie-in walls at the Elmwood Pump Station, to ensure that both sites will have better surge protection than last year.

"It's important to remember that the walls out there now held during Katrina, and Pump Station 2 was pretty well tested with water almost to the top," said Mervin Morehiser, corps project manager for the Lake Pontchartrain vicinity hurricane protection project.

Morehiser said separate contracts will be awarded for each project so that the work can be done simultaneously. He said it is hoped that both contracts can be awarded and negotiated by the end of June or early July.

"We're moving as quickly as we can on the priorities," Morehiser said, identifying those in East Jefferson as the Vintage wall, a low section of sheet-pile wall near the airport runway and the pump station tie-ins.

The Suburban Pump Station job, which must be done in 60 calendar days, includes closing a 160-foot gap east of the station that is traditionally sandbagged by the East Jefferson Levee District during tropical events.

Work at the Elmwood Station, which also includes new sheet pile walls providing 18 feet of protection, must be finished in 40 calendar days.

In addition to building new walls two feet higher to offset future subsidence, the corps also is substantially strengthening the transition points where the steel walls meet earthen levee. In many other areas of the region, transitions were a main point of failure during Katrina.

New, heavy-duty sheet piling also was the key to a major construction job now finishing up on either side of the Vintage Avenue gate in the West Return Canal floodwall, which separates heavily populated East Jefferson from Lake Pontchartrain and the LaBranche Wetlands in St. Charles Parish.

Along 1,500 feet of misshapen wall on either side of the gate, contractors have added five feet to the existing berm and built a second, back-up wall of heavy-duty steel sheeting that was driven 54 feet deep -- more than four times the depth of the existing sheet piling.


Up against the wall

Although most of the floodwall was designed and built as T-wall, a sturdier method of construction that includes horizontal bracing, this section of the structure was built as a less expensive and potentially less stable I-wall.

Corps officials have said they now expect to replace the entire wall, a project that could run upward of $200 million. There is no schedule yet on that project.

But for this season, the agency is bolstering the obvious weak links, including replacing more than 500 feet of old, flimsy sheet piling at the south end of the West Return Canal floodwall near the airport's east-west runway.

That section of wall part of an old nonfederal legacy levee built strictly of sheet piling that in some spots is only 14 feet deep and six feet tall. The corps plans to replace it with 60-foot-long sheets of steel piling driven 40 to 45 feet deep, but there's still no contract on that work.

"We're being as aggressive as we can be, but we have to work through obstacles to get contracts awarded on all these jobs, and I don't want to detail each obstacle because they constantly change," Morehiser said.

"But we recognize that we're getting closer to the peak of hurricane season and, one way or the other, we'll make that situation better within the next two weeks," he said.


Berm getting higher

If need be, he said, work crews will heighten the berm on the landside of the floodwall to add more strength and stability until the new sheet piling can be driven.

Corps officials also this week added an additional interim job in East Jefferson, saying that a recent assessment of the system indicated that a dirt berm near the Pontchartrain Center needs to be raised by 1 or 2 feet.

The berm is a grassy area on the land side of the levee, and its weight helps give the levee extra stability.

Calling it an easy job that should be quickly completed, Morehiser said an extra 1 to 2 feet of dirt will be added to about 1,000 feet of berm immediately west of Williams Boulevard.

The grassy berm has been used by the Pontchartrain Center for overflow parking.

The corps also is expected to add dirt behind a section of I-wall in the West Canal floodwall beneath Interstate 10, where there is too little room to drive sheet piling.

Morehiser said several features make corps engineers believe that that I-wall is stable enough to withstand high water, including the fact that massive I-10 bridge pilings provide additional stability and that both sides of the wall beneath the bridge are paved. The paving apparently was done to reduce maintenance under the bridge, he said, but as everyone has learned since Katrina, such "armoring" helps prevent erosion and structural failure during overtopping.


Giant sand baskets

Weeks ago, levee district personnel installed giant sand baskets along the crest of the levee between the St. Charles Parish line and the Duncan Canal, an area of the East Jefferson levee system known as Reach 1.

Each five-compartment basket holds 15,000 pounds of sand and the baskets are linked together to provide almost 3 additional feet of height against storm surge along this reach of levee. The area is 1 to 2 feet low in spots -- thanks mostly to the ravages of subsidence, rising sea level, and the corps' use of old elevation data.

A major construction project to raise Reach 1 to 17 feet should be awarded late this month or in early July. Because it generally takes a year or so to lift a reach of levee -- and all East Jefferson reaches are lifted on a rotating basis -- some of the work to continuously elevate the earthen levees must be done during hurricane seasons.

But at the levee district's insistence, the contractor is not allowed to take down more than 1,000 feet of giant sand baskets at a time during construction. And if tropical weather threatens, baskets will be replaced to provide a continuous line of protection.

In fact, huge sand baskets were in place during Hurricane Katrina and helped stop the overtopping of Reach 4 between Causeway Boulevard and the Suburban Canal, which was midway into a lift when the storm struck.

At the request of Jefferson Parish officials, the corps has also stockpiled on site materials that could be used in the event another breach threatens at the 17th Street Canal, where the east wall broke during Katrina and sent catastrophic floodwaters into much of New Orleans and a small portion of East Jefferson.

But corps engineers don't expect the materials to be needed.

Although individual teams investigating systemwide Katrina failures don't agree the stability of the canal's western wall -- which didn't fail -- they all agree that gating off the canal from future storm surges and keeping its water level low will protect against future breaks in the floodwalls.

[Audrey2Katrina]

From the GULF COAST NEWS: Update 6/15/06


Mississippi's Senator
Trent Lott - Rock Steady

Emerging From The 2002 “Thurmond Event” As The Legislative Go-To Guy, The Junior Senator From Mississippi Says This Last Run Is For The Folks Back Home.

Part 1 of 2

By Perry Hicks- Special to GulfCoastNews.com Filed 6/15/06 GCN

One has to have watched Trent Lott over a number of years to appreciate his consistency: What you see is what you get. When he greets you in his office smiling and shaking your hand, his grip is firm and his pleasure at meeting you is genuine as is his pride in Mississippi.

“All of the art work here are from Mississippi artists,” Lott said smiling as his eyes surveyed his senate office, “And that picture there was my home in Pascagoula.”

Katrina destroyed the Tidewater-style farmhouse so completely photos taken soon after the storm showed nary a trace of the 153 year old structure. It was almost as if a crew had come in to clear away even the smallest pieces of debris.

The home had apparently meant everything to Lott as his 2005 memoir, Herding Cats, refers repeatedly to it as a refuge away from the rigors of Washington, D.C.

Lott’s office occupies 10 rooms in the 100 year old Russell Senate Office building just northeast of the Capitol.

When he first came to the Senate in 1989, his office was in the 1970s designed Hart building. “I like the traditional style, high ceilings and moldings,” he added, “The Hart is too modern and the Dirksen is just too fifty-ish.”

The Beaux Arts style Russell Building was opened in 1909 to relieve extreme overcrowding in the Capitol building itself. At that time, each Senator was authorized just 2 rooms with a fireplace. The building is named after Georgia Senator Richard Brevard Russell, a Democrat.

Back in that day, each Senator had just 2 staffers; a secretary and a messenger. Today, the combined staff for all senators and committees numbers over 7000.

It should also be noted that Lott’s dedication to tradition goes well beyond architecture and interior design. He highly respects authority and reveres the institutions for which he serves. Ironically, these are the very qualities that both propelled and removed him from the very pinnacle of legislative power.

Decision 2000

Including his 4 years as a staffer, Lott has served in Washington a total of 38 years.

He first came to office in 1972 taking the seat from then retiring 5th Congressional District representative, William Colmer. 16 years later, he ran for and won the seat of Democrat John C. Stennis when the 87 year old senator announced that he would not run for another term.

“While the thought of retirement did come up in 2000, the fact that I had been continuously in a leadership position for so many years the idea of one more term giving me some kind of record helped me make the decision to stay,” said Lott.

2000 was an all-around tough electioneering year. The presidential race was so tight the U.S. Supreme Court had to overrule the Florida Supreme Court on the hanging chads controversy.

In the Senate, the 55 seat majority the Republicans had enjoyed from 1994 was whittled down to an even 50-50 split. While the Constitution anticipates ties in Presidential races, there are no provisions in it for handling organizational politics. There are no procedures for deciding who will be majority leader and which party will chair committees.

Power sharing is what Lott had to work out with then Democrat Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle, of South Dakota. While some Republicans felt the vice president gave them a 1 vote majority advantage, the senate parliamentarian ruled that the VP is not a senator. However, the fact that the VP could break tie votes was a strong incentive for Daschle to cooperate with Lott.

The resulting compromise gave Democrats parity with Republicans in regard to budgets, staffs and office space as well as representation on all committees. However, Lott retained the all important “priority right of recognition-” the first to be recognized by the presiding officer, the Vice President or, in his absence, the President Pro tempore of the United States Senate. Possessing this right allowed for Lott to control legislation.

The compromise was not welcomed by Republican firebrands but, as Lott points out in Herding Cats, if the senate had digressed into internecine warfare it would have negatively impacted the incoming Bush administration. Voters expect legislators to make laws, not to wage internal power struggles while nothing substantive gets done.

Still, some felt Lott was much too cozy with the highly partisan Daschle and any manner of power sharing would only open the door for Democrat troublemaking.

On this last point, his critics were correct.

Strom Thurmond Event

“It bothers them (the Washington elite) that I am from Mississippi and both pragmatic, and a populist,” Lott said smiling broadly. He then went on to give an example of how in his opinion the oil companies are hurting everyday Americans.

Indeed, as a Republican, Lott is hardly the stereotypical blue blood patrician. His father was a Carroll County sharecropper- a vocation that is at best abstract to most Washington journalists. Lott’s father first supplemented the farm income by doing part-time mechanical work. Later, he moved the family to Pascagoula where he worked full time in the shipyard.

The hardness of Lott’s early childhood life can only be understood in the context of Carroll County’s economic situation. After the civil war, viable towns such as Blackhawk and Carrolton withered when, purely for ease of laying track, railroads ran their lines far to the east. Ancient hamlets, such as Coila (pr. Co-eye-lah) fell into ruin.

But other places came into their own as train stops and watering stations brought populations to such towns as Vaiden (where the courthouse scene in the movie Mississippi Burning was filmed in 1988) and Grenada (located in an adjacent county and where Trent Lott was born in the fall of 1941.)

Carroll County was essentially bypassed by modern progress. Blackhawk and Carrollton changed so little over the decades, the movie The Reivers was shot in Carrollton because of its turn-of-the-century appearance. Little had to be done beyond covering the asphalt roads with pea gravel.

Lott’s mother taught school and attended classes at Holmes Junior college before taking correspondence courses from Ole Miss (University of Mississippi.) The lesson Lott learned was to work hard and constantly improve oneself.

While Lott’s memoir states that he had no ambition to enter politics while he was attending Ole Miss, two classmates, who have asked not to be identified, felt otherwise saying, “Trent was very ambitious. We always knew he would run for office.”

If anyone wanted to challenge Lott on his claim about irking liberals, one point is certainly indisputable; his deep southern roots.

In the salons of New York and Washington, being a conservative white southerner is equated with being a racist struggling to roll back the clock to the “good old days” of segregation.

At least that is what they would want you to believe. That is the point they hypocritically pounded home after Lott told the 100 year old Senator Strom Thurmond, “Mississippi had voted for him for president in 1948 and if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all of these problems over the years, either.”

The remark was actually the sort of nonsensical compliment one would throw to an old man who had spent nearly half a century in the U.S. Senate. Still, Thurmond had run on the segregationist Dixiecrat ticket 54 years prior and consequently Lott’s off-hand remark would be used to drive him from power.

This same level of criticism was certainly not applied to West Virginia’s Democrat senator, Robert C. Byrd. Beginning in the 1940s, Byrd was both a Klan recruiter (Kleagle) and an “Exalted Cyclops” or local chapter leader.

While Byrd claims that he quickly lost interest in the organization, as a U.S. Senator, Byrd not only voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he filibustered its passage for 14 hours.

Indeed, it was the Republicans who voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Democrats that fought to defeat it.

The cause for this liberal hypocrisy is fundamental: They have simply never forgiven Republicans for the “Southern Strategy” that busted up the old Democrat “Solid South.” While liberals would like you to think this emptied the Democrat Party of bigots, it also denied liberals the southern tier states and their precious and growing number of electoral votes.

Hence, liberals continually seek to marginalize the Reagan Revolution and all who participated in it as inherently racist.

Be it known that as a weapon of personal destruction, an accusation of racism has no peer. One needs no proof to make a charge stick and no defense can be adequate. Furthermore, there is presently no inoculation available to ward off infection. The most victims can hope for is the steadfast support of family and friends.

Unfortunately, Lott’s fellow Republicans did not stand by the man who had for all those years unswervingly stood by them.

Et Tu Caesar?

When GCN asked University of Virginia Professor of Political Science and frequent cable news guest, Larry Sabato, why the Republicans so readily abandoned Lott, he simply answered, “He made too many enemies.” When pressed for specifics Sabato could offer none.

But there are good reasons why Lott was forced to resign his post as Majority Leader. To simply chalk up this character assassination as an enemies list that reached critical mass will not suffice. Lott himself has alternatingly directed his blame between the current Majority Leader, Bill Frist, and George W. Bush.

“Did the president pull the rug out from under me? Probably,” Lott said in a tone of hesitant admission, “But it does no good to be bitter. This is a tough business and he did what he thought he had to do. The president is a good man and I continue to support him.”

However, Lott is a bit more sanguine in Herding Cats stating that he would still be Majority Leader if Bill Frist had not run for the post; a move Lott takes as a personal betrayal considering Frist had once been Lott’s protégé.

Lott also accuses White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, of masterminding the operation ostensibly because “the situation,” meaning the media coverage, was “spinning out of control.”

According to the memoir, the president would have backed off had Lott only delivered an emotional mea culpa sooner. Without the White House leaking and “stirring the pot,” as Lott calls it, his leadership would have survived.

As attractive as this notion may sound, it is incorrect. The real reason is ironically what brought him to national power in the first place: Pragmatism.

Clinton’s Impeachment

When the House Managers ceremonially walked their impeachment charges against Clinton over to the Senate, they had every reason to expect a full and impartial trial- followed by a conviction. Kenneth Starr’s $40 million investigation had showed that during the course of a sexual harassment trial in Arkansas (Paula Jones case,) Clinton had perjured himself and obstructed justice. The questions Clinton sought to avoid revolved around sexual escapades he had with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. Those escapades were alleged to have happened directly off of the Oval Office.

Regardless of what Democrat operatives may have said on television and radio about the allegations being merely about sex, the fact is that the president had been cited for contempt of court which later resulted in his disbarment from practicing law in both Arkansas and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Even worse were allegations that the president had not only molested Democrat volunteer Kathleen Willey in the White House in 1993, he had also been accused of the raping another Arkansas Democrat campaign volunteer back in 1978 (Juanita Broaddrick.)

As damning as Starr’s report was, there simply was not enough votes in the Senate to convict him. Lott knew this and felt that an extended trial stretching out for weeks and possibly even months would only soil the reputation of congress. The damage to the presidency had already been done. Daschle desperately wanted to avoid having a Democrat president driven from office.

Lott had spent the Reagan years as the House Minority Whip and one year as Senate Majority Whip before he became Majority Leader in 1996. He knows how to count votes and what he counted in a senate evenly split between Republicans and Democrats meant there was no possible conviction.

The rules set down were simple; the trial would be short and the witnesses would be limited. The House Impeachment Managers were incensed.

Lott’s pragmatic viewpoint seeing the senate saved from having to hear weeks, if not months, of sordid testimony. Furthermore, the honor of the office of president would not be damaged beyond repair.

In the end, the vote on Clinton came down along party lines.

For these transgressions, Lott became earmarked for destruction. While many would have thought Lott would resign from office- the preferred choice of an honorable man so dishonored- once again Lott’s pragmatism would direct his fate.

Only 3 years into a 6 year term, Lott fully realized that a senate appointment by then governor Ronnie Musgrove would have permanently handed his seat over the Democrats. That would have thrown the senate balance back to an untenable 50-50 split.

As Lott expressed it in Herding Cats, “… I couldn’t ruin this shining chance in which the White House, the House, and the Senate would all be controlled by Republicans.”

Lott decided to stay on in the Senate. His resignation would only go as far as Majority Leader.

Decision 2005

Last October, under speculation that he would seek to fill Trent Lott’s soon to be vacated seat, Congressman Gene Taylor announced that he would not be running for the U.S. Senate. This opened the door for other senate hopefuls. Lott’s staff was increasingly being asked what his intentions were.

Explaining the situation to GCN, Lott said, “In 2005 my mother died, my house in Pascagoula was destroyed by the storm, and I had a health problem- not a heart attack or something serious mind you- but an infection probably as a result of the hurricane. So, when I went home for Christmas, my wife and I felt this would be a good time to be retiring. We thought that an announcement after the holidays would be a good way to break the news. However, on the 27th, my wife, Tricia, came to me sensing a change in heart. She said to me, “You aren’t going to retire, are you?”

“While I was home, I had talked to friends- supporters- and my family and I saw that the folks on the Coast were hammered- tired- they kept asking me, “You are going to rebuild, aren’t you?”

“But what cemented it for me was my daughter, Tyler. While Tricia and my son, Chet, wanted me to retire, it was Tyler who was against it. I asked her what was different about her she said to me, “Dad, I live in Mississippi and I know how much we need you.”

Being a politician means that you have to always “be on;” there are few moments you can have all to yourself. Most days Lott’s schedule starts very early and runs into the evening. At critical times, Senate deliberations may even carry over into the wee hours of the morning.

It is in this context we can appreciate why Lott would look forward to retirement. It isn’t that he looks weary or is overwhelmed by the job. On the contrary, he remains a masterful legislator who continues to show great skill in threading bills through both houses.

“I still feel good about getting up and coming to work,” Lott said smiling, “And I am confident that I can still get legislation through congress. It is just that it is time.”

[Audrey2Katrina]

Dane’s Story – Part 2

The following is a recalling of recent events as they really happened days and months after Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Dane St. Pe tells us of just what transpired in his search to survive.

By Mark Proulx - Special to GCN

“You have no idea how bad it got, Mr. Mark” - Dane

“I had nowhere to go.”

Dane’s family - from New Orleans - was stuck in Shreveport, and he was told that it was almost impossible to get north from the coast. Parts of Hwy 603 in Hancock County was still flooded and debris was everywhere, making the road out of the area treacherous. Both bridges leading west (into New Orleans) and east (towards Biloxi) were completely gone. For all purposes, Bay St. Louis and Waveland had become a prison. Water-locked on three sides and with only one road out, many people took it upon themselves to walk the five to ten miles out to Interstate 10.

Dressed in the few rags of clothes, oversized boots he had scrounged from some piles of clothing that had been dumped in the parking lot, Dane decided he needed to get out of Mississippi.

“Something inside of me told me to go to Florida. I took a guess that my pastor from New Orleans was in his brother’s condo in Destin. I had talked to him the day before the storm and he said he and his family were leaving New Orleans, but he did not tell me where they were going. I didn’t know where his brother’s condo was, and the last time I had been to Destin I was about sixteen years old…but I figured at least I had a chance if I could only get there...”

So he walked to the edge of the Save-a-Center parking lot and asked a couple in a truck if they were going towards I-10. Not-so-coincidentally, they were since it was the only road out. At the intersection of Hwy 603 and I-10 five miles up the road, the couple let Dane out and wished him luck getting to where he needed to go.

Dane began walking along the interstate in the blistering post-hurricane South Mississippi heat.

“I would not have picked myself up hitchhiking the way I looked. I had on a pair of cut-off jeans, and I was wearing a pair of size thirteen steel toe work boots. (I wear a ten and a half.). I even had a woman’s shirt on. I couldn’t figure out why the sleeves were so short. Covered in that nasty mud from the waist down, carrying a plastic bag across my shoulder with two pairs of jeans a lady had given me at Stennis, not having shaved or bathed in four days, I looked like Dumbo the clown hitchhiking. I wouldn’t have even let myself ride in the back of my truck!”

Almost immediately, fortune smiled on Dane and he was picked up by a man looking for gas – but he only went about four miles to the Diamondhead exit, then got dropped off. Dane thanked him for the short ride, laughed and kept walking in the terrible heat and humidity that is Mississippi in August. After dragging himself only about fifty feet, a truck driver in the fast lane saw the rag-tag Dane clomping along and came all the way over to his side of the highway to pick him up.

“Do you know that a trucker can lose his license for picking up hitchhikers?" he said. "Come to find out, he was one of the truckers who had been giving out ice in Waveland. As I got into the truck, I leaned into the air conditioner vent and sighed. He laughed and turned the AC on full blast. God that felt good.”

The trucker asked where Dane was headed, so Dane filled him in on his plans to make it to Destin. The trucker wanted to take him, but had to get back to Savannah, GA. Feeling sorry for his passenger, the trucker turned on his cell phone, hoping to catch a signal. Communications had been completely knocked out along the MS coast and the trucker hadn’t bothered to turn on his phone, knowing there was no signals anywhere in the area. He took a chance, however, that something would pop up somewhere along the road.

About a mile before the trucker had to drop Dane off near Interstate 65, on the west side of Mobile, he got a signal on his cell phone. The trucker was polite enough to allow Dane a chance to call out to see if he could locate his family.

“I called the hotel my family was in, in Shreveport, and my sister-in-law answered the phone. When she heard my voice, we both began to cry. I assured them I was okay and that I was heading towards Florida, that I would contact them as soon as I could.”

When they finally got to Hwy 65, the trucker pulled over, gave Dane twenty dollars and was apologetic. It was all Dane could do to keep from crying again, and he assured the kind trucker that he would be alright now. Walking along the highway, Dane found more than a few people willing to pick him up and help him along the way east towards Destin.

Immediately after the storm, it was readily apparent that many people were completely destitute and motorists were going out of their way to help those in need. A lady and her son picked him up almost immediately after he got out of the eighteen wheeler. She was going to Mobile to look for supplies, and after she heard Dane’s story she said she would take him all the way to Pensacola, about an hour away.

Sometime during a trip to Pensacola, the lady driving allowed Dane to use her cell phone to try and get through to Destin. He called his pastor’s cell phone and after a couple of rings - to his surprise - his pastor actually answered the phone! When he heard Dane’s voice, he began to yell, “Brother Dane’s alive! Brother Dane’s alive!”

The goodness in people was brought out that day along I-10, as Dane wandered from car to truck, picking up rides all along the interstate. According to Dane, people just seemed to know that he was in desperate need and had to get to where he was going. With every ride and with every closing mile, Dane worried.

He had no way of knowing how to get to his pastor’s place. All along the journey, Dane wondered if his trip was for nothing.

Dane finally got directions to the condo and made it all the way to Highway 285, north of Destin where the pastor’s son met him and picked him up. Between walking and catching another ride, Dane – mentally and physically exhausted – dragged himself to the door of the condo…where he sat and cried. The pastor’s son opened the door and helped him in. Now in a fog, Dane took the time to shower and put on a fresh change of clothe, and passed out.

“I woke up the next morning, and went out on the balcony to look out the prettiest blue water and white sugar sand I had ever seen. It was like going from Hiroshima to Paradise overnight. I had a good breakfast for the first time in days. My pastor took me out afterwards to get some clothes, and his friend’s wife took me to a thrift store to get more.”

While Dane was in the thrift store, he began talking to a lady about his ordeal and in how bad it was in Mississippi. He casually mentioned that he was an electrician, and she gave him some company names and phone numbers of people he might want to contact for work. One number in particular interested Dane, for some unknown reason. Something told him to call that person, so he did.

The man who answered turned out to be a contractor working for a doctor in Destin, who mentioned he had rebuilt his pier that had been destroyed during Hurricane Ivan the previous year and needed someone to do the electrical work on it. Dane told the contractor he didn’t have any tools or a vehicle, since he lost everything in the storm. “No problem,” the man said. “I’m a carpenter and I did all this work on the pier, but I need someone who can do the electrical work. Can you come over and quote the job? I’ll pick you up, and you can use my tools.”

Very quickly, Dane found himself in paradise: waist deep in pretty blue water in the back bay in Destin with a beach hut, getting a tan and making money. He made $1800 in three days and bought himself a little work truck. On one trip for supplies to Home Depot with the doctor, whose pier on which he was working, Dane asked if he could get some hand tools to work with, and to please take it out of his pay.

“The doc said he would do no such thing. He insisted on buying me the tools I needed. As I was picking out the cheapest tools, he was putting them back and grabbing the best tools. He completely replaced my bag of hand tools to do my job. I really didn’t know what to say. Pretty soon, he started to refer me to his friends…all of whom tried to convince me to start an electrical contract company in Destin. I could have, you know, but something just wasn’t right. Here I was in Paradise and all I could think about was back home.”

He stayed in touch with his brother, but neither of them could find out where their father was. He had been in a nursing home in New Orleans East, but neither knew where he had been evacuated to or even if he was alive. Dane tried many times to get in touch with his ex-wife to know if his son was okay or not, since they lived in a double wide trailer in Bush, LA, just about an hour and a half north of New Orleans.

“I had a drinking problem since my divorce, and with all of this I started to drink more heavily. I believe I went into alcohol poisoning about three days before Christmas. I was more afraid of dying that day than I had been when I was on the roof during the storm. I resolved that if I made it through that night I would never touch another drop of alcohol, but man, what a bad night that was.”

In the ensuing weeks, Dane’s brother returned home to the Westbank to find his home was okay. He immediately started to look for their father. Through a series of hospital contacts and many, many phone calls around the state, his brother found out that their dad had been moved into New Orleans before the storm. When the levees broke, he was put on top of a police car and driven out of the flood waters near the river close to the French Quarter, and taken to Charity Hospital close to the Superdome.

He had been on a ventilator and a feeding tube. They learned that the whole time their father had a nurse breathe for him with an air bag for an entire day. When she couldn’t do it anymore, as the story goes, the father began breathing on his own. After being in that miserably hot hospital, he was heliported to Baton Rouge. After the nurses stabilized him, he was sent to yet another nursing home.

“My brother searched every hospital in Baton Rouge looking for our father. I felt so helpless being stuck in Florida. My brother said he would find him no matter what. We kept in constant contact, just knowing we would find him. I felt certain that we would find him safe and sound, even if it was stuck in the backroom of some ward in some out of the way building.

“After about a week of searching, my brother finally found the hospital he was sent to and was given the name of the nursing home he’d been sent to. I was overjoyed! I couldn’t wait to hear from my brother again, because I just knew I’d be hearing my daddy’s voice.”

When Dane’s brother got to the nursing home, however, he found out that their father had passed away almost a week before.

A nurse that had taken care of the father told Dane’s brother that his father was so worried about his boys that he would not sleep. The nurses found him on the floor of his room a couple of times trying to go to look for them. One of the nurses told Dane’s brother that when Hurricane Rita came into the Gulf, his dad told her that he couldn’t go on anymore. He took her Sharpie pen from her pocket and wrote Dane and his brother’s full names on his arm…and died that night.

Heartbroken, Dane went into a depression. So close. So very close. He cried at the fate that cost him his father’s life. More than that, his father died without his family around to comfort him. Had they tried hard enough? Is there anything that he could have done to find him? Guilt and severe depression started to sink in and Dane was on the verge of drinking heavily again.

By the end of that same day, Dane was feeling about as low as one person could. All he could think about doing was robotically dialing the phone and attempting to locate his ex-wife to find out if his son, DJ, nine years old, was alive. He finally called through to his son’s middle school and found a a teacher who knew his son. Not knowing if DJ was okay or not, the teacher took it upon himself to drive all the way up into the country to find them and deliver the message that his father was alive and well, and living in Florida. Reaching the property, the teacher was happy to find out that Dane’s son was alive and well, they just had very poor communications. Throughout the Mississippi Coast area, telephone communications was very poor after Katrina. Later that night, Dane was able to finally get through to his ex-wife and get to talk to his son. His son was alive!

Relieved beyond comprehension and with his faith restored, Dane decided to meet his life with a fresh attitude and vowed to live his life in the service of helping others.

Picking up odd jobs garnished Dane a good reputation with the doctor’s friends. He also worked projects, rather than hourly, and he got a feel for them in a hurry. The doctor’s friends also appreciated the quality of work. Within a very short period of time, Dane realized that he was destined for better things. He made up his mind that he didn’t have to rely on hourly wages, but that he had a knack for quoting jobs, not to mention a good deal of skill with completing complicated jobs, as well.

After receiving high praise for his quality of work and work ethic, Dane’s confidence soared. The help he received in getting back on his feet and the amount of people needing good help made him realize that he was now capable of doing far greater things. He began hinting that if he were to start a company, it would be back in Mississippi to help rebuild his hometown - not Florida. Standing in waist deep clear blue water at the end of the work day, Dane felt a calling to go home.

In Part Three, Dane’s decision to come home takes him down another bend in the road that he never saw coming.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Golden Fisherman Found

Biloxi City News

6/14/2006

Holloway: Golden Fisherman will be part of city’s future, in some form or fashion
Mayor A.J. Holloway said that remnants of the Golden Fisherman statue will have to be evaluated to determine the landmark’s future, once a criminal case involving its theft has run it course.

Biloxi Police, who worked with the Mobile County Sheriff’s Department to recover the statue from a creek in rural Mobile County, returned the dismembered work of art to the city today. Police said they had arrested a Semmes, Ala., man in connection with the case, and an investigation is continuing.

A flatbed truck carrying the statue’s torso, legs and arms arrived mid-afternoon and a city Public Works crew temporarily stored the pieces in a downtown warehouse, where it had been too large to house.

“The Fisherman is sort of like the city itself,” Holloway said. “It’s bruised and beaten up, but it’s not destroyed. We’ve lost so many landmarks, so many pieces of our history, that it’s important that we now have it back. This is not about a statue, per se. This is a tribute to the thousands of people who made Biloxi the seafood capital of the world, and to those who work in this important industry today. It’s about Biloxi -- past, present and future.”

Holloway commended the Biloxi Police Department for its efforts in the case, and he also noted that a number of local and out-of-town individuals and business owners have offered to help in any future plans the city has involving the Golden Fisherman.

The city-owned statue, which weighed more than a ton and once stood more than 17 feet tall, had been stolen from Point Cadet Plaza sometime Saturday night or early Sunday morning. The golden figure of a beak-nosed fisherman, with outstretched arms hoisting a castnet, had been damaged and knocked off its pedestal by Hurricane Katrina.

Although known as the Golden Fisherman, the hollow statue was believed to be constructed of phosphor bronzes, or tin bronzes, which are alloys containing copper, tin and phosphorous, which resisted corrosion. Ocean Springs artist Harry Reeks, who the city commissioned to create the statue in 1975, also used melted-down winches and cleats and other fixtures that had been donated from local shrimp boats. Said Holloway: “It had no huge value as far as precious metals, but it was precious to those families and to this community.”

In fact, the city was to unveil the results of that effort in late 2005 until Hurricane Katrina interrupted those plans. The storm’s winds and surge destroyed landscaping, sidewalks and benches that had been installed at the statue's waterfront site at Point Cadet.

“We’ll determine the next step in due time,” Holloway said. “Right now, you have to remember that the parts of this statue that have been recovered are evidence in a criminal case. But, rest assured, the Golden Fisherman or his remains will be part of our future, just as the seafood industry itself will be.”

Pre-Katrina picture of Golden Fisherman... from City of Biloxi Website:



Picture of the "return" of the Golden Fisherman... City of Biloxi Website:

[Audrey2Katrina]

House removes Jefferson from committee

By Bruce Alpert
Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The full U.S. House of Representatives voted Friday to remove Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans from his seat on the House Ways and Means Committee while he remains the target of a federal bribery investigation.

The move, by unanimous consent, came just hours after the House Democratic Caucus voted 99-58 late Thursday to recommend Jefferson’s ouster from the tax-writing panel.

Jefferson, who has not been charged and has maintained his innocence, said he is disappointed with the vote. He said he believes he could fight the ouster in court, but probably won’t do.

Jefferson, who is black, predicted that the decision will hurt the party with African-American and Hispanic lawmakers, most of whom supported his view that the action isn’t justified. Jefferson said the ouster breaks with House precedent and penalizes his constituents who need their representative on Ways and Means to help rebuild from the damage of Hurricane Katrina.

Historians said it was the first time in the 217-year history of Congress that a rank-and-file member had been removed from a committee. Party leaders and committee chairmen have been forced to step aside in the past.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hoping to establish the Democrats as the party of ethics reform during this election year, had pushed hard for Jefferson to voluntarily step aside.

Pelosi said Jefferson still enjoys a presumption of innocence and has the opportunity to defend himself in court. But she said she was so focused on persuading him to voluntarily give up the post or force a vote by the full House to oust him because she is determined that Democrats "uphold a higher ethical standard."

Membership on a committee is a privilege extended by members of each party's caucus, while election to Congress is determined by the voters, she said.

Federal investigators say Jefferson funneled more than $400,000 in payments to a company operated by his family in return for his assistance in winning Internet and cable contracts in Nigeria and Ghana for a small Kentucky firm. Two associates, including a former congressional aide and the CEO of the Kentucky firm, iGate Inc., have pleaded guilty in what the government calls an elaborate bribery scheme.

After talking to the Democratic Caucus for 10 minutes Thursday night, Jefferson calmly spoke to a crowd of nearly 50 reporters waiting outside.

"I pointed out that in my district, Katrina devastated it. We've done wonderful work here on the Ways and Means Committee, from the Go-Zone legislation to incentive housing production back home to unemployment compensation to welfare restoration to Medicaid issues and all the rest. . . . We've all done those and we've done them quite well as anyone on my committee would point out," Jefferson said.

Jefferson conceded that "serious allegations" have been made against him "by third parties and perhaps by some in the press" but said there is no procedure in House rules to oust a member from a committee based on allegations. He noted that he has not been charged with any crime and that to deprive him of membership on the committee would unfairly hurt his constituents.

In a letter to Pelosi on Wednesday, Jefferson offered to give up his Ways and Means seat under two conditions: that the party apply the same standards to other members under investigation and that it name Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, to replace him because he too represents a district that has been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Pelosi rejected the offer, spokeswoman Melanie Roussell said.

During the caucus meeting, Rep. Steven Rothman, D-N.J., made a motion to table the removal resolution so that the caucus could develop rules on how to deal with members under a criminal investigation. It was defeated 91-61.

"I felt this was extremely arbitrary and invited potential abuse," Rothman said, "the standard being if things look bad, remove him or her from the committee."

Rep. Albert Wynn, D-N.J., said four members pushed the motion, including Rothman and Melancon. Afterward, Melancon's spokeswoman said her boss served as the timekeeper for the advocates of the table resolution. She said she didn't know if Melancon spoke on behalf of the resolution and wouldn't say how he voted on the tabling motion or the resolution to seek Jefferson's removal from the Ways and Means Committee.

Pelosi said the debate did not produce angry arguments, but a clear debate on the issues.
"That is about an ethical standard that is different. I wish the White House would follow our lead," said Pelosi, alluding to President Bush's decision to retain his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, now that he has been told he won't face an indictment in an investigation of the leaking to the news media the name of a covert CIA agent.

During his remarks to reporters, Jefferson was asked if he felt the action being taken against him is racially motivated.

"Well, it's never happened before, and the first time it's happening, it's happening to an African-American. It does raise issues," he said.

[Audrey2Katrina]

FEMA to cut back on disaster victim cash to curb fraud

6/16/2006, 11:35 a.m. CT
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — FEMA is cutting back on the amount of cash it will give to future disaster victims in a nod to the rampant fraud that followed last year's hurricanes.

Instead of using debit cards worth $2,000, FEMA Director R. David Paulison said Friday, victims will only be able to withdraw about $500 for food, clothing, shelter and transportation costs.

At least 7,000 people signed up for the Federal Emergency Management Agency debit cards last year after hurricanes Katrina and Rita ransacked the Gulf Coast. Recipients got a card and a PIN number that could be used at ordinary cash machines to withdraw money.

Congressional auditors said this week that they found up to $1.4 billion in aid to individual hurricane victims was used for bogus expenditures like football tickets. This included questions about whether an estimated 750 debit cards — worth $1.5 million — went to Katrina's victims.

"We went out and gave people $2,000, and obviously a lot of those people did not live in Louisiana, did not live in the devastated areas, weren't who they said they were," Paulison told reporters in Washington.

He said FEMA has a new identity verification system in place for this year's storm season that will help ensure the cards are issued to victims and not people trying to cash in on a disaster.

"That's going to really get a major handle on the fraud issue — as far as how much money do we give out, and who we give it to," Paulison said.

A report issued this week by the Government Accountability Office found that the debit cards last year paid for a Caribbean vacation, season tickets to New Orleans Saints football games, adult erotica products and alcoholic beverages, including bottles of Dom Perignon champagne.

FEMA hastily scrapped the debit cards program two days after it began distributing them to victims at the Astrodome and other shelters in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, where many emigrated after the storm. At the time, FEMA officials said they believed they could get cash to victims faster through direct bank account deposits.

Paulison, who was not at FEMA during the debit card debacle, said the program "was something that FEMA had very, very rarely ever done."

"And when we did it, it was on a much, much smaller scale," he said.

[Audrey2Katrina]

HUD demolition plan protested

Residents say they're being shut out of city

Friday, June 16, 2006
By Gwen Filosa
Staff writer

Dozens of public housing residents Thursday protested the federal government's plan to demolish four complexes in New Orleans, saying they are left without homes in a city where rentals are nearly impossible to find.

One day after U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson announced that New Orleans would lose housing complexes but gain a "renaissance" of better low-income housing, some of the families who called St. Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper home cried foul at a City Council hearing.

"By tearing down developments you're not giving me the choice to come back home to New Orleans, where I was forced to leave," said Cherlynn Gaynor, 42, who grew up in the Lafitte complex and was raising her 11 year-old daughter there before the levee failures during Katrina drowned the city. "I pay taxes and I work. Why would you shut us out from where our culture is?"

Gaynor was joined by about two dozen residents who said they are hurt and frustrated by the plan to tear down complexes with the promise to redevelop them in three years.

"I just need somewhere to stay," said Patricia Thomas, who lost her apartment at Lafitte to the flooding but has lived at Iberville, C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper over the years. "We're losing our older people. They're dropping like flies . . . when they hear they can't come home."

HUD, which essentially runs the Housing Authority of New Orleans since it fell into dire mismanagement by 2002, said it will reopen 1,000 more units of public housing by August, bringing the number of units to more than 2,000: almost half the public housing stock that existed before Hurricane Katrina.

HUD also has raised its Section 8 and disaster housing vouchers by 35 percent to keep up with post-Katrina rent increases across the city.


HUD defends plan

"It's important to see everyone be able to come back," said Scott Keller, deputy chief of staff for HUD, who spoke in place of Jackson, who had to return to Washington, D.C., for a meeting. "We don't want gangs. We don't want unsafe conditions. We want single moms to be safe, and their children."

Keller said the plan will improve public housing and raise the standard of living for its residents. When one critic challenged the agency's intentions, Keller responded in kind.

"Are you defending the warehousing of folks so we can supply labor for this city?" Keller said. "The secretary finds that abhorrent."

The critic was attorney Tracie Washington of New Orleans, who said she was stunned by HUD officials and other outsiders who ask why residents would want to return to housing complexes such as St. Bernard.

Because it's home, Washington told the council.

"The fact that you have to ask that question after you've formed a proposal shows me that you don't know about us," Washington said. "You cannot go forward and we will not allow you to go forward."


Questioning vouchers

Before Katrina, New Orleans had 7,300 units of traditional pubic housing, but only about 5,100 units were occupied. HUD's announcement this week that HANO will demolish four complexes, including the sprawling and flooded-out St. Bernard near Gentilly, sounded like nothing more than a door slammed shut to the working poor and their supporters.

Federal housing vouchers, which HUD has raised from about $670 to up to $1,100, won't work in a city suffering from a dearth of available rentals, housing advocates said.

"We already had a massive loss of units long before the hurricane," said attorney Laura Tuggle of the New Orleans Legal Action Center. "To think vouchers are going to solve our problem is disingenuous. Giving a person a voucher is not going to solve the problem."

Council President Oliver Thomas, who hastily called the meeting after HUD's announcement Wednesday, said redevelopment plans will not occur overnight.

"This is just the first phase," Thomas said. "We will have a hearing on the entire plan within two weeks."


Ex-HANO chief ejected

Residents weren't the only people speaking out against HUD's plan.

Bob Tannen, an urban planner with 40 years of experience, said the Vieux Carre was once considered a slum until preserved with its historical value kept intact. The public housing neighborhoods on HUD's chopping block also are historically significant, he said.

Several speakers who consider themselves activists for the working poor don't live in public housing but have wound up being just about the only advocates for residents.

They include Mike Howells, a tarot card reader who attends every HANO meeting and repeatedly accuses its officials of "ethnic cleansing."

They also include Endesha Juakali, who was briefly a HANO chairman under Mayor Sidney Barthelemy until forced off the board. Juakali says he runs a youth center next to the St. Bernard.

On Thursday, Juakali disrupted the council hearing, trying to shout down Keller. When Juakali used an obscenity, Thomas had him thrown out by deputies. Howells and fellow activist Elizabeth Cook raced after him, appearing distressed.

Within moments Thomas reminded the audience that Juakali had tried to run public housing when HANO was known for mismanagement and plenty of failures.

"It's OK to throw a rock, but don't hide your hand," Thomas said, drawing a few cheers from residents. "What about when people were marching on him over the conditions he allowed? If he needs attention, I could give it to him one-on-one."

[Audrey2Katrina]

DOWN, BUT NOT OUT

Determined homeowners are leading the recovery in parts of parts of eastern New Orleans

Friday, June 16, 2006
By Leslie Williams
Staff writer

In about two weeks, Mtumishi St. Julien, an eastern New Orleans resident ousted from the city by Hurricane Katrina, will resettle into his two-story home in the Lake Bullard subdivision. He won't be returning to the wasteland some predicted the heavily flooded area east of the Industrial Canal would become
The jack-o'-lantern effect of one or two isolated homes lit up on some desolate streets is neither his reality nor that of many of the thousands of people and businesses repopulating eastern New Orleans more than nine months after lingering floodwaters and hurricane-force winds wrecked their neighborhoods.

The lights are on at more than 4,500 homes and businesses: 13 percent of the Entergy customers connected pre-Katrina in eastern New Orleans, according to figures compiled by the utility as of April 30. Statistics for active connections through mid-June may be available in a week. The numbers of active connections obviously represent many more people because each residential connection likely supports more than one person. And if post-Katrina housing patterns in eastern New Orleans resemble those in other parts of the city, residents there likely are sharing living space with family and friends.

Businesses comprise about 140 of the 4,500 customers receiving electrical service in the east, according to city records.

Assuming an average of three people per residence, the remaining 4,360 residential connections translates into more than 13,000 people. Although no one claims to know exactly how many of the more than 89,000 pre-Katrina residents of eastern New Orleans have returned, electrical connections and city building permits bring into focus the area's evolving footprint.


Permits also show pulse

Since Katrina, more than 22,000 permits needed to repair and build homes have been issued for planning districts 9, 10 and 11, which encompass eastern New Orleans, said Joseph St. Martin, chief executive officer for St. Martin Brown & Associates. The planning firm has started preparing the groundwork to develop a vision for a section of eastern New Orleans bordered by the Industrial Canal, Paris Road, Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet.

Certified public accountant Luther Speight, who was displaced from his Eastover neighborhood to Memphis, Tenn., was among those who obtained a permit to repair his two-story, 8,000-square-foot home on an acre lot. He recently began repairing the home's roof and its heavily damaged downstairs, as well as improving the landscaping.

Another Eastover resident -- former state Rep. Sherman Copelin Jr., who has led a group of eastern New Orleans business owners and homeowners in post-Katrina planning efforts -- has had a building permit for a while but hasn't started rebuilding his home, which his family hopes to reoccupy by Christmas.

"We've been busy working on projects that generate revenue," said Copelin, who, like other prosperous residents of the gated Eastover community, has acquired housing elsewhere and is under less pressure to quickly repair his flooded home.

Determining how many of those permits represent work under way is an imprecise science. How many get-to-it-when-I-can Copelins are out there? How many permits are a precursor to rebuilding as opposed to "saving a spot in line to be grandfathered in?" said John Beckman, a planner from the Philadelphia firm of Wallace, Roberts & Todd who assisted the Bring New Orleans Back Commission in crafting a rebuilding plan for the entire city. A building permit may protect a homeowner against changes in building requirements.

Still, the number of permits for eastern New Orleans is "impressive," Beckman said. And the electrical connections "show the grit and spirit of New Orleans: They're just going to do it."


Doughnut rebound

The footprint taking shape in a large part of eastern New Orleans -- a swath of real estate bounded by the Industrial Canal, Hayne Boulevard, Paris Road and Chef Menteur Highway -- thus far resembles a doughnut.

The resettlement there spreads inward from the long stretches of Hayne Boulevard and Chef Menteur Highway, which had little or no flooding, toward Interstate 10. The inactive areas, the doughnut's hole, are pockets of land on both sides of I-10. It's the landscape seen by many drivers cruising through eastern New Orleans who don't exit at Bullard Avenue or Read or Crowder boulevards.

Other rebounding areas include Village de l'Est and Venetian Isles, where more than half of its residents are rebuilding.

The configuration of the recovery makes sense "because Hayne and Chef were dry," said City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis, who represents most of eastern New Orleans.

Willard-Lewis, who has often complained about the slow response of government assistance in her council district, credited the indomitable spirit of residents for the recovery accomplished thus far.

Their efforts have been "Herculean," she said.

Glancing at a map showing where homes and business are using electricity, Willard-Lewis said the progress so far reveals what has occurred in five months, "not nine months."

"Look and leave was the law of the land" for eastern New Orleans residents "until the last week of December," she said. "And electricity wasn't fully restored till January." Considering the late start, the lack of government support and the uncertainty about the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet -- the man-made shortcut to the Gulf of Mexico that many residents blame for Katrina-related flooding -- "I'm really encouraged," Willard-Lewis said.

Greg Rigamer, chief executive officer of the planning firm GCR & Associates, agreed that assessing progress must occur in context.

Considering obstacles faced by those attempting to re-establish their neighborhoods in eastern New Orleans, a 13 percent Entergy reconnection rate as of April 30 reflects "very good growth," he said.

It was accomplished despite the lack of infrastructure that as provided to other parts of the city and with minimal services and almost no grocery stores or gas stations in the area, he said. Eastern New Orleans also had more flooding than other areas of the city, Rigamer said.

More than 80 percent of the east was soaked by floodwaters, Beckman said.


'Self-sustaining' areas

The map showing where residents are back on the electric grid indicates "self-sustaining areas" are leading the recovery, Rigamer said. Such areas have "high levels of home ownership, high home values and residents with high incomes," he said.

The homes in a rectangle bordered by Morrison Road, Downman Road, Hayne Boulevard and Poitevent Avenue represent one example of such an area, he said. Other examples are the rectangle bordered by Lacombe Street, Hayne Boulevard, Paris Road and I-10 and the rectangle bordered by Flake Avenue, Dwyer Road, Michoud Boulevard and Chef Menteur Highway.

People talk about the east as if it's one neighborhood, but it's many neighborhoods, said St. Julien, executive director of the New Orleans Finance Authority and co-chairman of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission's housing subcommittee. St. Julien plans to sell the house he bought in Baton Rouge after "chest-high" water soaked his Lake Bullard home.

"We're painting the upstairs now and Sheetrocking the downstairs," he said of his home here. "We won't be finished with the kitchen in two weeks, so we're going to live upstairs and cook in the trailer."

According to Rigamer's definition, St. Julien also lives in a self-sustaining neighborhood.

"I feel very confident about my area," St. Julien said. "Neighborhoods are built on assets, and in my area there are two (temporarily closed) hospitals, a library, one of the largest parks in the city, a complex of office buildings, three school sites, the transportation corridors of I-10 and I-510, the golf community in Eastover and a footprint for a massive shopping area."

Most of the recovery to date has been spurred by the return of middle- and upper-class homeowners with strong neighborhood associations, Willard-Lewis said. She adds Lake Barrington, Lake Carmel, McKendall Estates and Fairway Estates as neighborhoods on the rebound.

Pete Hamilton Jr., owner of the 21-unit Willow Oak apartment complex on Crowder Boulevard and a former president of the Lake Forest Estates Homeowners Association, said that -- based on where homes and businesses are receiving electrical service -- the neighborhoods of Lake Willow, Lake Forest Estates and Kenilworth are showing signs of life too.

"At the moment they seem to be staying away from the rental apartments along I-10, and there's not much business activity around the Plaza" shopping center, Hamilton said.

However, the rate of return so far has been "disappointing" for Hamilton, who plans to move out of eastern New Orleans to some other part of the city.

The withered population and the lack of big-box retailers and grocery stores are not among the primary reasons for Hamilton's departure. "It's the uncertainty about flood protection," Hamilton said. And, he said, he has been offered a handsome sum of money for his Lake Forest Estates home and his apartment complex.

"They say I'm abandoning the east," Hamilton said, "but I can't wait five or more years for them to figure out what to do with MR-GO."


Improving quality of life

The growing head count for eastern New Orleans is not a primary concern for the Rev. Luke Nguyen, associate pastor at Mary Queen of Vietnam, a Catholic church.

About 18 percent of the predominantly Vietnamese-American community of Village de l'Est has returned, he said.

Of the 6,000 Vietnamese residents and nearly 5,000 residents of African ancestry who lived there pre-Katrina, about 1,500 Vietnamese residents and 500 African-Americans have returned, Nguyen said.

The neighborhood has devoted most of its energy toward improving the quality of life, he said.

During Katrina, "one elderly, disabled woman died in her home and she was found three weeks later," he said. Inspired by this tragedy, the community is building a 300-unit complex strictly for seniors near the intersection of Willowbrook Drive and Dwyer Road. The sewer and water lines and other infrastructure are being put in now, Nguyen said, adding that about 30 percent of the Vietnamese-American population in the neighborhood is elderly.

Nguyen points to corridors of bustling economic activity on Alcee Fortier Boulevard and along Chef Menteur between Michoud and Alcee Fortier boulevards as another opportunity for an upgrade.

In the past, businesses have been arranged in chaotic fashion in Village de l'Est, he said. Now "we're developing a business district," he said. An architect will guide the design of a uniform, aesthetically pleasing "Viet Town" on a stretch of Chef Menteur between Michoud and Alcee Fortier boulevards, Nguyen said.

It's the quality of life that Nguyen and others seek that draws many eastern New Orleans residents back to their neighborhoods. For St. Julien, the aesthetics of suburban life within a city pulls him and others back to his beloved Lake Bullard subdivision, the kind of place where you easily can find a parking spot in front of your house.

A little more than 10 percent of the 200 homeowners in Lake Bullard are actively engaged in rebuilding, St. Julien said.

At the moment the pendulum in eastern New Orleans seems to be swinging toward reclaiming neighborhoods that were sturdy and organized pre-Katrina.

"Every time I drive around," St. Julien said, "I see more and more activity, people working on their homes."

[Audrey2Katrina]

Suspect surrenders, 81-year-old hostage, unharmed

Times Picayune NOLA.com update 6/16/06

A suspect believed to have shot and killed a St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff's deputy this morning surrendered without incident shortly before noon and released unharmed an 81-year-old man he'd held hostage in a River Ridge home.

State Police, who was in charge of negotiations, believe that Johnny Lee Cheek, 31, of Houston, was armed and had tied Clifford Lala up. The area has been cordoned off since early this morning when authorities evaucated residents along the street. Neighbors apparently told authorities that an elderly man lived in the house where Cheek's is believed to be hiding.

Cheek is thought to have shot and killed a St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff’s deputy early this morning. A woman accomplice, Crystal Reed , 27, was caught earlier this morning and is being held by Kenner Police.

Heavily armed police with dogs had been searching house-to-house for Cheeks who is believe to have shot and killed 40-year-old Cmdr. Octavio Gonzales, the commander of the St. John Sheriff's Office narcotics unit. He'd been with St. John for more than 13 years. He was married and has two young sons.

His colleagues, who knew him as "Ox" because of his tall, beefy frame, described him as a "cop's cop."

"Just an outstanding officer,'' Sheriff Wayne Jones said.

A second St. John deputy, Monty Adams, 36, was shot in the calf during an initial traffic stop.