I decided to hitchhike off Texas Stooge's thread (which I believe was done similar to Aussie's) for folks interested in the goings on in Louisiana, and Mississippi, with a focus on those areas most prone to Tropical hits. Sources will largely be NOLA.com (Times Picayune), ABC, FOX, et. al. Anyone else who's got a news item that might be of interest is not only welcome, but encouraged to post their items here, so us central GOM folks have a news/info resource to share. I don't have as much access to info about the Mobile area--but feel free to post here as well. We all need to keep up on the stories impacting our areas the most.
A2K
News from Central Gulf Focus: La./Miss (Ala contributors)
Moderator: S2k Moderators
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Audrey2Katrina
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Audrey2Katrina
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GATES WON'T BE READY BY JUNE 1
17th Street gets portable pumps; London Avenue needs sheet pilings
Friday, May 12, 2006
By Sheila Grissett and Mark Schleifstein%%par%%Staff writers
(Times Picayune)
Floodgates to block tidal surges out of the weakened 17th Street and London Avenue canals, and auxiliary pumps to help prevent inland flooding when the gates are closed, will not be ready as promised when the hurricane season opens June 1, Army Corps of Engineers officials confirmed late Thursday.
Corps commanders said braced-steel sheet piling will be installed at canal bridges to turn back high water, and portable pumps will be used to provide limited stormwater drainage if an early-season storm surge threatens the city before the work is complete. And they added that the work probably won't be finished before early- to mid-July.
"Our goal was to be able to shut the gates on June 1 to prevent a storm surge from entering the canals, but the real world requirement is to protect from surge by the time a storm threatens," said Col. Lewis Setliff III, chief of the corps' Task Force Guardian team overseeing repairs to all sections of the hurricane protection system damaged last season by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
"And if there's a storm on the horizon, we can defend against it. We can do that with these braced sheet-pile closures, just like we did during Hurricane Rita," he said of the storm that pushed a surge into Lake Pontchartrain just a few weeks after Katrina breached the London and 17th Street canals.
It isn't ideal, said Col. Richard Wagenaar, commander of the corps' New Orleans district, but the sheet-piling contingency plan will keep the floodwalls from breaching, as happened under the weight of Katrina's surge, inundating most of New Orleans and part of East Jefferson.
"We will be ready on 31 May to drive sheet piling and to bring in temporary pumps," Wagenaar said. "Driving sheet piling at the bridges is a reliable fallback that offers the same level of protection to the canals and the public as the gates. The gates are just more efficient."
'It cost us time'
Although the tight construction schedule required weeks of round-the-clock work, Setliff said all three canal projects could have been finished on time had not a different set of problems at the sites created delays.
At London Avenue, Setliff said there were problems installing the sill structure that gates on the east side of the canal will fit into.
"We backtracked it, pulled it and reinstalled it," he said. "It had to be done right, but it cost us time."
At the 17th Street Canal, where most of the work is being done on the west side in Jefferson Parish, the site is so packed with equipment and activity that Setliff said several different tasks couldn't be done at the same time as planned.
"We were designing, engineering and building unique structures that didn't exist before, and in the beginning, before they were even designed, our schedule was a best guess," he said. "But, still, we were close, very close."
Setliff said the delays mean that on June 1, the opening day of hurricane season, there will be gates but no pumps at the 17th Street Canal, and pumps but only half the required gates at London Avenue.
By late June, gates and pumps should be functional at the 17th Street Canal, and by July 1 at the London Avenue Canal. The most active part of the hurricane season normally begins in August. But Hurricane Cindy, for example, hit the New Orleans area on July 6 last year, followed less than a week later by the near-miss of Dennis, which made landfall in the Florida Panhandle.
The floodgate-and-pump project in the Orleans Avenue Canal was a less complex job and will be ready on June 1, Setliff said.
There will be no reduction in drainage out of that canal if its gates must be closed, because the capacity there is so small, less than 1,000 cubic feet per second, and the corps is able to provide that with auxiliary pumps.
Diminished capacity
But it won't be a pretty story at the 17th Street and London Avenue canals, where powerful New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board pumps are capable -- under ideal conditions -- of pumping water out at 10,000 cubic feet per second and 7,000 cubic feet per second, respectively.
Under the floodgate plan, the corps planned to install auxiliary pumps that would provide only 1,000 cubic feet per second of pumping capacity on June 1, with an increase to 2,800 cubic feet per second by July 1. But if portable pumps must be pressed into service, they'll provide even less capacity -- only 400 to 500 cubic feet per second at each canal.
"Yes, it means we will have diminished pump capacity from already diminished pump capacity, and I know that scares people," Setliff said.
"The members of Task Force Guardian and our contractors intimately understand the fear of flooding because a lot of them flooded, and believe me, we're doing absolutely everything we can do."
Setliff encouraged worried residents to remember that tropical events serious enough to drive a threatening storm surge are so rare in June and July that, historically, there is only a "minimal risk" that any protection will be needed before the projects are completed.
17th Street gets portable pumps; London Avenue needs sheet pilings
Friday, May 12, 2006
By Sheila Grissett and Mark Schleifstein%%par%%Staff writers
(Times Picayune)
Floodgates to block tidal surges out of the weakened 17th Street and London Avenue canals, and auxiliary pumps to help prevent inland flooding when the gates are closed, will not be ready as promised when the hurricane season opens June 1, Army Corps of Engineers officials confirmed late Thursday.
Corps commanders said braced-steel sheet piling will be installed at canal bridges to turn back high water, and portable pumps will be used to provide limited stormwater drainage if an early-season storm surge threatens the city before the work is complete. And they added that the work probably won't be finished before early- to mid-July.
"Our goal was to be able to shut the gates on June 1 to prevent a storm surge from entering the canals, but the real world requirement is to protect from surge by the time a storm threatens," said Col. Lewis Setliff III, chief of the corps' Task Force Guardian team overseeing repairs to all sections of the hurricane protection system damaged last season by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
"And if there's a storm on the horizon, we can defend against it. We can do that with these braced sheet-pile closures, just like we did during Hurricane Rita," he said of the storm that pushed a surge into Lake Pontchartrain just a few weeks after Katrina breached the London and 17th Street canals.
It isn't ideal, said Col. Richard Wagenaar, commander of the corps' New Orleans district, but the sheet-piling contingency plan will keep the floodwalls from breaching, as happened under the weight of Katrina's surge, inundating most of New Orleans and part of East Jefferson.
"We will be ready on 31 May to drive sheet piling and to bring in temporary pumps," Wagenaar said. "Driving sheet piling at the bridges is a reliable fallback that offers the same level of protection to the canals and the public as the gates. The gates are just more efficient."
'It cost us time'
Although the tight construction schedule required weeks of round-the-clock work, Setliff said all three canal projects could have been finished on time had not a different set of problems at the sites created delays.
At London Avenue, Setliff said there were problems installing the sill structure that gates on the east side of the canal will fit into.
"We backtracked it, pulled it and reinstalled it," he said. "It had to be done right, but it cost us time."
At the 17th Street Canal, where most of the work is being done on the west side in Jefferson Parish, the site is so packed with equipment and activity that Setliff said several different tasks couldn't be done at the same time as planned.
"We were designing, engineering and building unique structures that didn't exist before, and in the beginning, before they were even designed, our schedule was a best guess," he said. "But, still, we were close, very close."
Setliff said the delays mean that on June 1, the opening day of hurricane season, there will be gates but no pumps at the 17th Street Canal, and pumps but only half the required gates at London Avenue.
By late June, gates and pumps should be functional at the 17th Street Canal, and by July 1 at the London Avenue Canal. The most active part of the hurricane season normally begins in August. But Hurricane Cindy, for example, hit the New Orleans area on July 6 last year, followed less than a week later by the near-miss of Dennis, which made landfall in the Florida Panhandle.
The floodgate-and-pump project in the Orleans Avenue Canal was a less complex job and will be ready on June 1, Setliff said.
There will be no reduction in drainage out of that canal if its gates must be closed, because the capacity there is so small, less than 1,000 cubic feet per second, and the corps is able to provide that with auxiliary pumps.
Diminished capacity
But it won't be a pretty story at the 17th Street and London Avenue canals, where powerful New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board pumps are capable -- under ideal conditions -- of pumping water out at 10,000 cubic feet per second and 7,000 cubic feet per second, respectively.
Under the floodgate plan, the corps planned to install auxiliary pumps that would provide only 1,000 cubic feet per second of pumping capacity on June 1, with an increase to 2,800 cubic feet per second by July 1. But if portable pumps must be pressed into service, they'll provide even less capacity -- only 400 to 500 cubic feet per second at each canal.
"Yes, it means we will have diminished pump capacity from already diminished pump capacity, and I know that scares people," Setliff said.
"The members of Task Force Guardian and our contractors intimately understand the fear of flooding because a lot of them flooded, and believe me, we're doing absolutely everything we can do."
Setliff encouraged worried residents to remember that tropical events serious enough to drive a threatening storm surge are so rare in June and July that, historically, there is only a "minimal risk" that any protection will be needed before the projects are completed.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Landfill to close for testing
Nagin says it's history if hazards found
Thursday, May 11, 2006
By Gordon Russell Staff writer
Mayor Ray Nagin agreed Wednesday to close a controversial construction and demolition landfill in eastern New Orleans for 72 business hours to give environmental and community groups a chance to test the debris that has been dumped there and determine whether it poses hazards to nearby residents as well as to the adjacent Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge
More importantly, in the view of landfill opponents, Nagin promised to close the site if testing shows it to be "harmful" to nearby communities and to push the Army Corps of Engineers, which is supervising the removal of Hurricane Katrina debris, to allow nighttime hauling of construction detritus to other landfills outside the city.
"The shutdown will automatically end (after 72 hours), but we're not going to let (the landfill) go forward if we sense that there are any concerns from experts as far as it being harmful to the community," Nagin said. "If reports show that this material is toxic, we will shut it down."
He said the 72-hour period counts only the site's hours of operation, so the temporary closing likely will extend into next week. The landfill's schedule of operations was not available.
Nagin's actions came after a boisterous rally on the steps of City Hall by at least 200 people protesting the newly permitted Chef Menteur landfill, located near the Village de l'Est community in eastern New Orleans. During the rally, Nagin met with activists, ministers and neighborhood leaders in his office. The mood of the rally swung from hostile to jubilant as the results of the meeting were announced.
Hauling at night
If the corps agrees to Nagin's request that debris be moved at night -- a request landfill opponents support -- lawyer Joel Waltzer of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network said the need for a landfill in the city might be eliminated, or at least drastically reduced.
The change would let contractors bring the collected debris to a staging site during the day, then haul it to landfills outside the city at night, improving the efficiency of the operation and foregoing the need for landfills within the city. Proponents of the Chef Menteur landfill argue that it is needed because of the cost and logistics of bringing debris to more distant disposal sites.
"We've been able to call out the true issue: How do we get the city cleaned up fast, in a manner that's environmentally safe?" Waltzer said. "And the answer is nighttime hauling to permitted landfills."
Whether the corps will agree to nighttime hauling to farther sites is unclear. Doing so almost certainly would drive up the cost of debris removal, now being financed completely by the federal government, because haulers are paid based on how far they have to lug debris. However, it's not clear how much the price would increase, because the federal government has been unwilling to divulge precisely how much it is paying waste haulers.
The likely recipient of debris hauled at night would be the U.S. 90 construction and demolition landfill in Waggaman, which is farther from most points in the city than the Chef Menteur landfill.
Debris picked up in St. Bernard Parish, under a federally financed contract controlled by the parish and not the corps, has been hauled at night for months. Nagin said Wednesday, however, that he has asked the corps at least twice to approve nighttime hauling and that his request was denied because of "cost concerns."
Brenda Beasley, a corps spokeswoman, said late Wednesday that the agency had not received word of the mayor's request for nighttime hauling. Beasley said she could not say how the corps might react to the request.
Further investigation
While the corps considers the nighttime-hauling idea, Nagin said the city and various community groups would put together a "joint inspection team of experts" to investigate the landfill further.
Waltzer, who also attended the meeting, said the groups' aim would be to determine precisely what material is being deposited in the landfill, which opened about two weeks ago.
Construction and demolition landfills generally are viewed as more benign than those that accept household waste, and thus are subject to fewer environmental regulations. But Waltzer and other opponents note that the state expanded the definition of such debris in the wake of Katrina; it now includes mattresses, carpeting, furniture, treated lumber, painted wood and even asbestos-containing materials. They also worry that, as storm-damaged homes are torn down, waste that is even more hazardous than what is allowed under the less-stringent definitions will wind up at Chef Menteur.
The process "is designed to get the community comfortable that it is truly a C&D landfill," Nagin said.
The landfill dispute has raised questions about environmental justice because the site is near residential areas with a large presence of minorities. Village de l'Est is a mostly Vietnamese community, and much of eastern New Orleans is majority African-American. Representatives of the U.S. Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency's environmental justice section attended Wednesday's meeting, Waltzer said.
Trash 80 feet tall
If the Chef Menteur landfill remains open, it is projected to accept 6.5 million cubic feet of debris in a pile that could reach 80 feet high. The landfill received emergency approval in mid-April from the state Department of Environmental Quality and Army Corps of Engineers.
Before that, Nagin used his emergency authority to grant the landfill a zoning waiver. At the same time, the landfill's operator, Waste Management of Louisiana, granted the city a 22 percent share in the landfill's gross receipts. Nagin and Waste Management have denied that the revenue sharing was given in return for the mayor's zoning waiver.
Nagin's announcement Wednesday came a day after a state Senate committee approved a bill that could force landfills approved under emergency rules to close, if it is determined that the state has sufficient landfill capacity for the debris generated by Katrina.
Nagin says it's history if hazards found
Thursday, May 11, 2006
By Gordon Russell Staff writer
Mayor Ray Nagin agreed Wednesday to close a controversial construction and demolition landfill in eastern New Orleans for 72 business hours to give environmental and community groups a chance to test the debris that has been dumped there and determine whether it poses hazards to nearby residents as well as to the adjacent Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge
More importantly, in the view of landfill opponents, Nagin promised to close the site if testing shows it to be "harmful" to nearby communities and to push the Army Corps of Engineers, which is supervising the removal of Hurricane Katrina debris, to allow nighttime hauling of construction detritus to other landfills outside the city.
"The shutdown will automatically end (after 72 hours), but we're not going to let (the landfill) go forward if we sense that there are any concerns from experts as far as it being harmful to the community," Nagin said. "If reports show that this material is toxic, we will shut it down."
He said the 72-hour period counts only the site's hours of operation, so the temporary closing likely will extend into next week. The landfill's schedule of operations was not available.
Nagin's actions came after a boisterous rally on the steps of City Hall by at least 200 people protesting the newly permitted Chef Menteur landfill, located near the Village de l'Est community in eastern New Orleans. During the rally, Nagin met with activists, ministers and neighborhood leaders in his office. The mood of the rally swung from hostile to jubilant as the results of the meeting were announced.
Hauling at night
If the corps agrees to Nagin's request that debris be moved at night -- a request landfill opponents support -- lawyer Joel Waltzer of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network said the need for a landfill in the city might be eliminated, or at least drastically reduced.
The change would let contractors bring the collected debris to a staging site during the day, then haul it to landfills outside the city at night, improving the efficiency of the operation and foregoing the need for landfills within the city. Proponents of the Chef Menteur landfill argue that it is needed because of the cost and logistics of bringing debris to more distant disposal sites.
"We've been able to call out the true issue: How do we get the city cleaned up fast, in a manner that's environmentally safe?" Waltzer said. "And the answer is nighttime hauling to permitted landfills."
Whether the corps will agree to nighttime hauling to farther sites is unclear. Doing so almost certainly would drive up the cost of debris removal, now being financed completely by the federal government, because haulers are paid based on how far they have to lug debris. However, it's not clear how much the price would increase, because the federal government has been unwilling to divulge precisely how much it is paying waste haulers.
The likely recipient of debris hauled at night would be the U.S. 90 construction and demolition landfill in Waggaman, which is farther from most points in the city than the Chef Menteur landfill.
Debris picked up in St. Bernard Parish, under a federally financed contract controlled by the parish and not the corps, has been hauled at night for months. Nagin said Wednesday, however, that he has asked the corps at least twice to approve nighttime hauling and that his request was denied because of "cost concerns."
Brenda Beasley, a corps spokeswoman, said late Wednesday that the agency had not received word of the mayor's request for nighttime hauling. Beasley said she could not say how the corps might react to the request.
Further investigation
While the corps considers the nighttime-hauling idea, Nagin said the city and various community groups would put together a "joint inspection team of experts" to investigate the landfill further.
Waltzer, who also attended the meeting, said the groups' aim would be to determine precisely what material is being deposited in the landfill, which opened about two weeks ago.
Construction and demolition landfills generally are viewed as more benign than those that accept household waste, and thus are subject to fewer environmental regulations. But Waltzer and other opponents note that the state expanded the definition of such debris in the wake of Katrina; it now includes mattresses, carpeting, furniture, treated lumber, painted wood and even asbestos-containing materials. They also worry that, as storm-damaged homes are torn down, waste that is even more hazardous than what is allowed under the less-stringent definitions will wind up at Chef Menteur.
The process "is designed to get the community comfortable that it is truly a C&D landfill," Nagin said.
The landfill dispute has raised questions about environmental justice because the site is near residential areas with a large presence of minorities. Village de l'Est is a mostly Vietnamese community, and much of eastern New Orleans is majority African-American. Representatives of the U.S. Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency's environmental justice section attended Wednesday's meeting, Waltzer said.
Trash 80 feet tall
If the Chef Menteur landfill remains open, it is projected to accept 6.5 million cubic feet of debris in a pile that could reach 80 feet high. The landfill received emergency approval in mid-April from the state Department of Environmental Quality and Army Corps of Engineers.
Before that, Nagin used his emergency authority to grant the landfill a zoning waiver. At the same time, the landfill's operator, Waste Management of Louisiana, granted the city a 22 percent share in the landfill's gross receipts. Nagin and Waste Management have denied that the revenue sharing was given in return for the mayor's zoning waiver.
Nagin's announcement Wednesday came a day after a state Senate committee approved a bill that could force landfills approved under emergency rules to close, if it is determined that the state has sufficient landfill capacity for the debris generated by Katrina.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Lott Is Among Gulf Coast Homeowners to Sue
by Jim Zarroli
All Things Considered, May 12, 2006 · In many ways, Hurricane Katrina was an equal-opportunity disaster, destroying the homes of both rich and poor Gulf Coast residents. Among the most prominent victims was Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), whose 19th-century seaside home in Pascagoula, Miss., was obliterated by the storm.
Now, Lott is one of thousands of Mississippi homeowners who are suing their insurance companies. They believe their claims for coverage were unfairly rejected -- and many say they now have no way to rebuild the homes they lost.
by Jim Zarroli
All Things Considered, May 12, 2006 · In many ways, Hurricane Katrina was an equal-opportunity disaster, destroying the homes of both rich and poor Gulf Coast residents. Among the most prominent victims was Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), whose 19th-century seaside home in Pascagoula, Miss., was obliterated by the storm.
Now, Lott is one of thousands of Mississippi homeowners who are suing their insurance companies. They believe their claims for coverage were unfairly rejected -- and many say they now have no way to rebuild the homes they lost.
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Audrey2Katrina
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MGC: Travel trailers & mobile homes occupied by county:
From Gulf Coast News.com
Hancock: 9,124
Harrison: 13,014
Jackson: 10,094
Also, a total of 3,655 have been "deactivated."
Statewide total: Travel trailers: 34,475/mobile homes: 3,560 = 38,035
Remarkably, even after all of this time, there are still people on the list to receive a trailer in Hancock County, according to FEMA.
Projected travel trailers/mobile homes waiting: 222 in Hancock County only
In Hancock County, thousands of property owners have virtually walked away from their land since Hurricane Katrina leaving cleaning up the destroyed houses in the hands of the county government. County officials estimate that eight months after the hurricane nearly 3,000 property owners have abandoned their land. They all have missed FEMA right-of-entry filing deadlines. The county if facing a June 30th deadline for debris removing throughout the county. After that date, unless extended, the county will not receive 100 percent reimbursement for debris cleanup. The financially-strapped county does not have the money to do the work on their own.
Congress has approved billions of dollars in aid, and more money for Katrina-related recovery is being debated in Washington. It would be easy to think that with all of that money, the damages from Katrina should be quickly disappearing. But that isn't happening. You could almost call what is happening the Katrina Caveat because most of the aid money from Washington is not hitting the ground.
The reason is that almost all of the money requires local governments to meet a matching portion out of their own pockets. Money that the hard-hit cities and counties do not have. (Click Here for the full story in this GCN Special Report)
The streets are clean and the traffic is frequently heavy. At first glance, downtown Gulfport looks like the center of a thriving community. But looks are deceiving. Eight months after Hurricane Katrina, downtown Gulfport, which is just off the beach and Highway 90, is a center of mostly empty buildings. A ghost town with a crowd, as most of the traffic is just passing through, people going somewhere else. (Click Here for the full story including photos)
FEMA is in the process of mailing out eviction notices to a small number of residents living in temporary housing (mobile homes and travel trailers). Only 2 or 3 percent of Jackson County residents will receive these notices and have 30 days to appeal. These eviction notices are only being sent to residents who don’t qualify for housing assistance.
For example: Residents who have a travel trailer at a second house, or have no proof of pre-storm address, or residents who received multiple trainers after filing for divorce or separation.
FEMA and MEMA caseworkers are visiting with all Coast residents living in temporary housing in person to ensure “they are making an effort to move into permanent housing at the earliest possible opportunity.” Families in FEMA housing need to demonstrate every 60 to 90 days what they’re doing to pursuing permanent housing.
Exactly 10,062 Jackson Co. families are living in FEMA temporary housing (travel trailers and mobile homes) as of 04/28/06. FEMA has removed more than 3,000 travel trailers from JC private property since Jan. 2006.
From Gulf Coast News.com
Hancock: 9,124
Harrison: 13,014
Jackson: 10,094
Also, a total of 3,655 have been "deactivated."
Statewide total: Travel trailers: 34,475/mobile homes: 3,560 = 38,035
Remarkably, even after all of this time, there are still people on the list to receive a trailer in Hancock County, according to FEMA.
Projected travel trailers/mobile homes waiting: 222 in Hancock County only
In Hancock County, thousands of property owners have virtually walked away from their land since Hurricane Katrina leaving cleaning up the destroyed houses in the hands of the county government. County officials estimate that eight months after the hurricane nearly 3,000 property owners have abandoned their land. They all have missed FEMA right-of-entry filing deadlines. The county if facing a June 30th deadline for debris removing throughout the county. After that date, unless extended, the county will not receive 100 percent reimbursement for debris cleanup. The financially-strapped county does not have the money to do the work on their own.
Congress has approved billions of dollars in aid, and more money for Katrina-related recovery is being debated in Washington. It would be easy to think that with all of that money, the damages from Katrina should be quickly disappearing. But that isn't happening. You could almost call what is happening the Katrina Caveat because most of the aid money from Washington is not hitting the ground.
The reason is that almost all of the money requires local governments to meet a matching portion out of their own pockets. Money that the hard-hit cities and counties do not have. (Click Here for the full story in this GCN Special Report)
The streets are clean and the traffic is frequently heavy. At first glance, downtown Gulfport looks like the center of a thriving community. But looks are deceiving. Eight months after Hurricane Katrina, downtown Gulfport, which is just off the beach and Highway 90, is a center of mostly empty buildings. A ghost town with a crowd, as most of the traffic is just passing through, people going somewhere else. (Click Here for the full story including photos)
FEMA is in the process of mailing out eviction notices to a small number of residents living in temporary housing (mobile homes and travel trailers). Only 2 or 3 percent of Jackson County residents will receive these notices and have 30 days to appeal. These eviction notices are only being sent to residents who don’t qualify for housing assistance.
For example: Residents who have a travel trailer at a second house, or have no proof of pre-storm address, or residents who received multiple trainers after filing for divorce or separation.
FEMA and MEMA caseworkers are visiting with all Coast residents living in temporary housing in person to ensure “they are making an effort to move into permanent housing at the earliest possible opportunity.” Families in FEMA housing need to demonstrate every 60 to 90 days what they’re doing to pursuing permanent housing.
Exactly 10,062 Jackson Co. families are living in FEMA temporary housing (travel trailers and mobile homes) as of 04/28/06. FEMA has removed more than 3,000 travel trailers from JC private property since Jan. 2006.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Lott Strident In Keeping Veteran Home In Gulfport
Mississippi Delegation Crafts Bill To Keep Home At Present Location. Cost Of Rebuilding May Reach $240 Million.
By Perry Hicks- Special to GulfCoastNews 5/6/06
The growing congressional fiscal debate has once again spilled over onto the Coast with the questioned continuance of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Mississippi.
Founded originally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the Naval Asylum in 1834, the renamed U.S. Naval Home relocated to its present site in 1976. In 1991, the home’s charter, and consequently its name, was changed to provide refuge for retired military personnel of all services. The facility is capable of caring for a maximum of 600 residents.
What is at stake is not just the continuance of the home in its present location, or the fate of the 11 story resident tower, but the direct Federal care of America’s war heroes.
In a telephone interview with GCN, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott acknowledged that he sees the Armed Forces Retirement Home (AFRH) report to Congress as designed to close the Gulfport site. This apparent intent also attracted the attention of Senator Thad Cochran and the particular ire of Representative Gene Taylor.
“It is sometimes hard to explain why they (meaning the Pentagon,) do the things they do,” Senator Lott sighed, “Gene Taylor’s analysis indicates the Home could be repaired for about $50 to $60 million.”
This is an interesting sum considering the report was the product of a $45 million dollar study insisting the repair and upgrading of the 11 story residents tower would take 13 years and cost upwards of $610.34 million.
Lott has previously stated that $80 million would be more than adequate to reopen the Home as a “C-plus facility.”
When questioned about the AFRH estimates exceeding half a billion dollars, Lott waved the number aside saying, “The government has a tendency to gold plate everything.”
The report’s summary includes 5 options for dealing with the repair, complete rebuild, or abolishment of not just the Gulfport campus, but what was formerly known as the Soldier’s and Airmen’s Home in Washington, D.C.
Proposal before Congress
In the report summary from to Congress dated February 28th, 2006, five options have been sent up to Congress regarding the fate of the Gulfport campus. As Taylor complains, only two would maintain the facility in its present location.
Option #1, at the total cost of $589.54 million would restore the home over a span of 6 phases.
Option #2, would demolish the existing tower and rebuild the home to meet both future needs and ADA compliance. The cost: $383.8 million.
Option #3 would align AFRH- Gulfport with something called Coastal Renewal Vision, turning AFRH-Gulfport into a “blended use” facility and ending AFRH presence on the Coast. Price tag: $85.5 million.
Option #4 would relocate the facility to another undetermined location. Cost also $85.5 million.
Option #5 would be to abandon the Gulfport facility by selling it at fair market value with the proceeds going to the AFRH trust fund. Cost said to be unknown but minimal.
Cited in the report’s Option 3 was property disposal in alignment with something called the “Coastal Renewal Vision.” This option implies that after the Gulfport site is closed, residents would be kept permanently in Washington.
When asked who was promulgating said “vision,” Lott drew back admitting that he was not sure of its origin, but that he had heard it referenced several times.
“It may go back to (Gulfport) Mayor Brent Warr or even the state governor,” Lott said.
In addition to the $176 million to completely reconstruct the facility, Lott said the reallocation of existing funds would give AFRH a total of $240 million.
Starting over, the 11 story residential tower could be reconstructed, perhaps in a true campus style of multiple and lower buildings better able to weather storms and meet the future needs and expected numbers, as produced by the war on terror, of severely disabled veterans.
Senator Lott went on to say, “The Gulfport Home is situated on a magnificent location, and unlike the Washington home, its finances have actually stayed in the black.”
Non Mission Critical?
Money may well be the motivation to close the Home and move its residents to Washington, D.C. AFRH Report Option 5’s goal is to sell the Gulfport site thus “increasing revenue for AFRH Trust Fund” and allowing AFRH to “pursue Options 3 or 4.”
While both options close the Gulfport home, Option 4 speaks to transitioning AFRH into a non-governmental, most likely non-profit, CCRC (continuing care retirement community.) The reasoning for transferring veteran care is stated as relieving “DOD of oversight over a non mission critical activity.”
Read abandon both homes.
Closing veteran care facilities would not be an idea unique to AFRH. Beginning in 2001, Veterans Administration (VA) began reevaluating the location and efficacy of medical centers resulting in the closure of the Gulfport center and moving some of its elements to the Biloxi VAMC.
This program could be euphemistically called CARES, Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services. The idea was to close and or consolidate VA medical centers in order to save money and redirect services to where they are demographically most needed.
This closure resulted in greater resident reliance on AFRH medical personnel at a time when AFRH was itself cutting back- and as a result finding itself embroiled in litigation.
When Senator Lott was pressed about the reasoning for wanting to close AFRH-Gulfport, he indicated that in the past there had been a couple of issues regarding how the home was run.
“My experience is that when they (the Pentagon) see problems with an operation, their response sometimes is just to shut it down,” said Lott.
Toward the end of the interview Senator Lott became quite sanguine about the cost and intent of the passed AFRH funding explaining to GCN, “The money and language of the bill sends a message that they are not going to be able to slither away from the responsibilities we have to our veterans.”
Mississippi Delegation Crafts Bill To Keep Home At Present Location. Cost Of Rebuilding May Reach $240 Million.
By Perry Hicks- Special to GulfCoastNews 5/6/06
The growing congressional fiscal debate has once again spilled over onto the Coast with the questioned continuance of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Mississippi.
Founded originally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the Naval Asylum in 1834, the renamed U.S. Naval Home relocated to its present site in 1976. In 1991, the home’s charter, and consequently its name, was changed to provide refuge for retired military personnel of all services. The facility is capable of caring for a maximum of 600 residents.
What is at stake is not just the continuance of the home in its present location, or the fate of the 11 story resident tower, but the direct Federal care of America’s war heroes.
In a telephone interview with GCN, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott acknowledged that he sees the Armed Forces Retirement Home (AFRH) report to Congress as designed to close the Gulfport site. This apparent intent also attracted the attention of Senator Thad Cochran and the particular ire of Representative Gene Taylor.
“It is sometimes hard to explain why they (meaning the Pentagon,) do the things they do,” Senator Lott sighed, “Gene Taylor’s analysis indicates the Home could be repaired for about $50 to $60 million.”
This is an interesting sum considering the report was the product of a $45 million dollar study insisting the repair and upgrading of the 11 story residents tower would take 13 years and cost upwards of $610.34 million.
Lott has previously stated that $80 million would be more than adequate to reopen the Home as a “C-plus facility.”
When questioned about the AFRH estimates exceeding half a billion dollars, Lott waved the number aside saying, “The government has a tendency to gold plate everything.”
The report’s summary includes 5 options for dealing with the repair, complete rebuild, or abolishment of not just the Gulfport campus, but what was formerly known as the Soldier’s and Airmen’s Home in Washington, D.C.
Proposal before Congress
In the report summary from to Congress dated February 28th, 2006, five options have been sent up to Congress regarding the fate of the Gulfport campus. As Taylor complains, only two would maintain the facility in its present location.
Option #1, at the total cost of $589.54 million would restore the home over a span of 6 phases.
Option #2, would demolish the existing tower and rebuild the home to meet both future needs and ADA compliance. The cost: $383.8 million.
Option #3 would align AFRH- Gulfport with something called Coastal Renewal Vision, turning AFRH-Gulfport into a “blended use” facility and ending AFRH presence on the Coast. Price tag: $85.5 million.
Option #4 would relocate the facility to another undetermined location. Cost also $85.5 million.
Option #5 would be to abandon the Gulfport facility by selling it at fair market value with the proceeds going to the AFRH trust fund. Cost said to be unknown but minimal.
Cited in the report’s Option 3 was property disposal in alignment with something called the “Coastal Renewal Vision.” This option implies that after the Gulfport site is closed, residents would be kept permanently in Washington.
When asked who was promulgating said “vision,” Lott drew back admitting that he was not sure of its origin, but that he had heard it referenced several times.
“It may go back to (Gulfport) Mayor Brent Warr or even the state governor,” Lott said.
In addition to the $176 million to completely reconstruct the facility, Lott said the reallocation of existing funds would give AFRH a total of $240 million.
Starting over, the 11 story residential tower could be reconstructed, perhaps in a true campus style of multiple and lower buildings better able to weather storms and meet the future needs and expected numbers, as produced by the war on terror, of severely disabled veterans.
Senator Lott went on to say, “The Gulfport Home is situated on a magnificent location, and unlike the Washington home, its finances have actually stayed in the black.”
Non Mission Critical?
Money may well be the motivation to close the Home and move its residents to Washington, D.C. AFRH Report Option 5’s goal is to sell the Gulfport site thus “increasing revenue for AFRH Trust Fund” and allowing AFRH to “pursue Options 3 or 4.”
While both options close the Gulfport home, Option 4 speaks to transitioning AFRH into a non-governmental, most likely non-profit, CCRC (continuing care retirement community.) The reasoning for transferring veteran care is stated as relieving “DOD of oversight over a non mission critical activity.”
Read abandon both homes.
Closing veteran care facilities would not be an idea unique to AFRH. Beginning in 2001, Veterans Administration (VA) began reevaluating the location and efficacy of medical centers resulting in the closure of the Gulfport center and moving some of its elements to the Biloxi VAMC.
This program could be euphemistically called CARES, Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services. The idea was to close and or consolidate VA medical centers in order to save money and redirect services to where they are demographically most needed.
This closure resulted in greater resident reliance on AFRH medical personnel at a time when AFRH was itself cutting back- and as a result finding itself embroiled in litigation.
When Senator Lott was pressed about the reasoning for wanting to close AFRH-Gulfport, he indicated that in the past there had been a couple of issues regarding how the home was run.
“My experience is that when they (the Pentagon) see problems with an operation, their response sometimes is just to shut it down,” said Lott.
Toward the end of the interview Senator Lott became quite sanguine about the cost and intent of the passed AFRH funding explaining to GCN, “The money and language of the bill sends a message that they are not going to be able to slither away from the responsibilities we have to our veterans.”
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Audrey2Katrina
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Coast Guard honors its own for Hurricane Katrina rescues
Last Update: 5/12/2006 7:51:08 PM
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - Almost 100 of the U.S. Coast Guard's pilots, engineers, divers, ship captains and crews who helped with Hurricane Katrina rescues were honored Friday for their actions.
The Coast Guard assembled its largest rescue force in its history in response to the Aug. 29 hurricane, helping to save more than 4,800 lives within a two-week period.
The highest honors Friday, the Legion of Merit, went to Capts. David R. Callahan and James D. Bjostad, both assigned to the Mobile Coast Guard base. Callahan commands the Aviation Training Center and Bjostad leads Sector Mobile.
"I'm in charge of the boats. He does the planes," Bjostad said. He said most of the awards Friday went to aviators who worked the night Katrina struck. They were already experienced, having worked Hurricanes Dennis and Ivan, he said.
"Katrina was 10 Ivans," Bjostad said.
He said flight crews would head into New Orleans and return to Mobile for rest breaks.
Hundreds of Coast Guard members and their families and friends filled a meeting room at the Mobile Convention Center where the citations were briefly read for the 95 award recipients.
Petty Officer Jay Leahr of Cincinnati, Ohio, received the Distinguished Flying Cross, for rescues on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Leahr, a rescue swimmer, recalled flying 11 sorties into the Gulfport area, saving people who had not evacuated from apartments.
"We were running 24/7 for almost three weeks," he said.
Under Bjostad's command, more than 1,200 Coast Guard personnel from over 80 commands saved 4,812 lives and quickly opened more than 150 miles of the critical Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and five deepwater ports, his award citation said.
Callahan's flight crews had 1,193 sorties, over 2,200 flight hours in rescuing 4,812 people. They also delivered thousands of tons of food and water during rescue and recovery operations.
Callahan directed a temporary operations center here that gave logistics support for over 2,000 responders from 20 agencies, which directing around the clock flight operations, his citation says.
Last Update: 5/12/2006 7:51:08 PM
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - Almost 100 of the U.S. Coast Guard's pilots, engineers, divers, ship captains and crews who helped with Hurricane Katrina rescues were honored Friday for their actions.
The Coast Guard assembled its largest rescue force in its history in response to the Aug. 29 hurricane, helping to save more than 4,800 lives within a two-week period.
The highest honors Friday, the Legion of Merit, went to Capts. David R. Callahan and James D. Bjostad, both assigned to the Mobile Coast Guard base. Callahan commands the Aviation Training Center and Bjostad leads Sector Mobile.
"I'm in charge of the boats. He does the planes," Bjostad said. He said most of the awards Friday went to aviators who worked the night Katrina struck. They were already experienced, having worked Hurricanes Dennis and Ivan, he said.
"Katrina was 10 Ivans," Bjostad said.
He said flight crews would head into New Orleans and return to Mobile for rest breaks.
Hundreds of Coast Guard members and their families and friends filled a meeting room at the Mobile Convention Center where the citations were briefly read for the 95 award recipients.
Petty Officer Jay Leahr of Cincinnati, Ohio, received the Distinguished Flying Cross, for rescues on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Leahr, a rescue swimmer, recalled flying 11 sorties into the Gulfport area, saving people who had not evacuated from apartments.
"We were running 24/7 for almost three weeks," he said.
Under Bjostad's command, more than 1,200 Coast Guard personnel from over 80 commands saved 4,812 lives and quickly opened more than 150 miles of the critical Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and five deepwater ports, his award citation said.
Callahan's flight crews had 1,193 sorties, over 2,200 flight hours in rescuing 4,812 people. They also delivered thousands of tons of food and water during rescue and recovery operations.
Callahan directed a temporary operations center here that gave logistics support for over 2,000 responders from 20 agencies, which directing around the clock flight operations, his citation says.
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TexasStooge
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Audrey2Katrina
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Thanks... I've had some good mentors! 
A2K
A2K
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Flossy 56 Audrey 57 Hilda 64* Betsy 65* Camille 69* Edith 71 Carmen 74 Bob 79 Danny 85 Elena 85 Juan 85 Florence 88 Andrew 92*, Opal 95, Danny 97, Georges 98*, Isidore 02, Lili 02, Ivan 04, Cindy 05*, Dennis 05, Katrina 05*, Gustav 08*, Isaac 12*, Nate 17, Barry 19, Cristobal 20, Marco, 20, Sally, 20, Zeta 20*, Claudette 21 IDA* 21 Francine *24
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Audrey2Katrina
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FEMA says Katrina taught it a lesson
But concerns remain about preparedness
Saturday, May 13, 2006
By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- Chastened by its dismal performance in Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency says it is far better prepared now to cope with catastrophic natural disasters, although lawmakers on Capitol Hill and even some officials in the agency remain skeptical
Two weeks before hurricane season begins, FEMA already has begun storing water, food and medical supplies in warehouses throughout south Louisiana and other areas considered vulnerable to storms.
Shipments of supplies, which were lost or misdirected during Katrina, will be tracked by satellite with global positioning devices. Contracts for critical commodities such as ice already have been signed. And special federal advance teams will be outfitted with video cameras that will provide live feeds from a disaster zone back to headquarters.
"If CNN and Fox can do this, we should be able to do it," David Paulison, acting FEMA director, said in a recent interview. "You can't turn this agency around in six months. . . . But I think we'll be in pretty good shape."
Congressional investigators filled volumes with staggering tales of what went wrong with the government's response to Hurricane Katrina last year, but no agency came in for more criticism than FEMA. Paulison, who took over two weeks after the Aug. 29 storm, when the beleaguered Michael Brown was forced to resign, said the agency has taken the criticism to heart.
Key lawmakers credit the agency for facing its problems, but they remain wary about whether enough has been done to improve FEMA as the 2006 hurricane season looms.
"Look at all the vacancies they've got over there," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who led the House investigation that produced a report titled "A Failure of Initiative."
"They will be on their toes for the next storm, and they are better prepared than last year," he said. "But they aren't ready for something really catastrophic."
Even some of FEMA's own share that view. Wayne Fairley, response operations branch chief for the agency's Region 6 office that includes Louisiana, said the chain of command remains muddled. The Stafford Act gives authority to senior-level FEMA officials to make decisions in a disaster. Yet in Katrina, Fairley said, officials outside the agency claimed their own jurisdiction, citing other laws and leading to a breakdown in authority.
Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, hoped to draw lines of command early for this storm season by appointing lead disaster officials in April. He named experienced hands, such as Gil Jamieson as the "principal federal officer" overseeing disaster response along the Gulf Coast, and Nick Russo, to be the "federal coordinating officer" in Louisiana. But critics inside and outside the agency say it's unclear where the authority of one stops and the other begins.
"Hopefully in the next 30 days there will be a bit more clarity on who's really in charge," Fairley said.
Katrina changes all
FEMA was never meant to be a frontline disaster agency. Emergency response has always been left up to local authorities with FEMA acting as a funnel for the massive resources of the federal government. Katrina blew apart that model, as state and local efforts struggled in the aftermath of the storm and a near communications blackout threw the federal response into chaos. Top FEMA officials have acknowledged they didn't understand the magnitude of the problems in New Orleans as the city filled with floodwaters pouring over and through crumbling levees.
To improve "situational awareness," Paulison said, teams from a variety of agencies will deploy to areas where hurricanes are expected to make landfall. They will scour the disaster zones and beam back live images of what they see. They hope to avoid being caught unaware of calamities, such as when thousands of evacuees became stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, or bogus reports, such as estimates of 10,000 deaths in New Orleans, which prompted FEMA to ship tons of unneeded ice to the city.
"If we had that in Katrina, we would have avoided a lot of problems," Paulison said. "We would have been able to see what was happening with the levee breaches and at the Convention Center."
Another blind spot during Katrina was logistics: FEMA didn't know whether emergency supplies had arrived at their destinations or were still in transit. A Senate investigation found that some truck drivers claimed roads were closed because they were afraid to drive into the disaster zone. One driver reported making a delivery, only to be found dozing in his fully stocked truck in a parking lot.
FEMA has toyed for years with the concept of "total asset visibility," which would allow the agency to track shipments in a storm the way FedEx does on a daily basis. But it always shelved plans because of cost. Paulison said that soon, every shipment will be equipped with a global positioning device that can be tracked by satellite.
"In the past, once the stuff was shipped, we lost control of it," Paulison said.
Stocking up
Even before the first tropical depression forms, commodities are being moved into the region. FEMA and the state have identified warehouses throughout south Louisiana where food, medical supplies and other provisions are being stockpiled. The spots have been chosen to be close to interstates and on high ground.
In the run-up to Katrina, FEMA had positioned more supplies than it ever had before. But most were at Camp Beauregard near Alexandria, hours from New Orleans under the best of circumstances.
"We have moved supplies south, where we feel, in conjunction with FEMA, that we can push commodities into any affected area faster and more efficiently," said Lt. Col. Cathy Vittoria, head of logistics for the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the state's commodity tracking system provider, E-Team, will be up to the challenge. In disasters, local officials are supposed to enter their requests into the system, and they are either filled by state agencies or referred to FEMA. Katrina showed that some local officials had no capability to navigate E-Team, and investigations found that many requests -- some that FEMA got blamed for failing to act on -- were never entered into the system.
Vittoria said extra staff had been designated to make sure requests don't fall through the cracks. But FEMA's Jamieson raised concerns that the agency could again get inundated with requests that the state hasn't first prioritized. In the wake of the storm, FEMA was getting "emergency" requests for nonemergency items such as writing tablets.
"There is still an issue in terms of filtering the requests," he said. "We don't want to start answering requests that just pop into the system."
System in progress
State and federal authorities have put a premium on improving communications in the next disaster. The state has put out bids for mobile communications units that can be airlifted into areas where a storm has wiped out telephone service. FEMA officials also said mobile communications vans would be deployed to areas in advance of storms.
But no one denies gaps in emergency preparedness remain. Paulison acknowledged that he is uncertain how the video-equipped advance teams will perform, especially in a communications blackout, and the full rollout of the tracking system won't be in place until next year. Key vacancies also remain in the upper echelons of the agency. Paulison had hoped to have a new director of logistics in place for the start of hurricane season, but now that appears unlikely.
Despite all of the new planning, little of it has been tested. Alabama, which also got strafed by Katrina, has already held a "tabletop" exercise with local, state and federal officials to test their response capabilities. Louisiana is leaving little room for error. It will be conducting its own mock disaster response May 23 and 24, a week before the start of hurricane season.
But concerns remain about preparedness
Saturday, May 13, 2006
By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- Chastened by its dismal performance in Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency says it is far better prepared now to cope with catastrophic natural disasters, although lawmakers on Capitol Hill and even some officials in the agency remain skeptical
Two weeks before hurricane season begins, FEMA already has begun storing water, food and medical supplies in warehouses throughout south Louisiana and other areas considered vulnerable to storms.
Shipments of supplies, which were lost or misdirected during Katrina, will be tracked by satellite with global positioning devices. Contracts for critical commodities such as ice already have been signed. And special federal advance teams will be outfitted with video cameras that will provide live feeds from a disaster zone back to headquarters.
"If CNN and Fox can do this, we should be able to do it," David Paulison, acting FEMA director, said in a recent interview. "You can't turn this agency around in six months. . . . But I think we'll be in pretty good shape."
Congressional investigators filled volumes with staggering tales of what went wrong with the government's response to Hurricane Katrina last year, but no agency came in for more criticism than FEMA. Paulison, who took over two weeks after the Aug. 29 storm, when the beleaguered Michael Brown was forced to resign, said the agency has taken the criticism to heart.
Key lawmakers credit the agency for facing its problems, but they remain wary about whether enough has been done to improve FEMA as the 2006 hurricane season looms.
"Look at all the vacancies they've got over there," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who led the House investigation that produced a report titled "A Failure of Initiative."
"They will be on their toes for the next storm, and they are better prepared than last year," he said. "But they aren't ready for something really catastrophic."
Even some of FEMA's own share that view. Wayne Fairley, response operations branch chief for the agency's Region 6 office that includes Louisiana, said the chain of command remains muddled. The Stafford Act gives authority to senior-level FEMA officials to make decisions in a disaster. Yet in Katrina, Fairley said, officials outside the agency claimed their own jurisdiction, citing other laws and leading to a breakdown in authority.
Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, hoped to draw lines of command early for this storm season by appointing lead disaster officials in April. He named experienced hands, such as Gil Jamieson as the "principal federal officer" overseeing disaster response along the Gulf Coast, and Nick Russo, to be the "federal coordinating officer" in Louisiana. But critics inside and outside the agency say it's unclear where the authority of one stops and the other begins.
"Hopefully in the next 30 days there will be a bit more clarity on who's really in charge," Fairley said.
Katrina changes all
FEMA was never meant to be a frontline disaster agency. Emergency response has always been left up to local authorities with FEMA acting as a funnel for the massive resources of the federal government. Katrina blew apart that model, as state and local efforts struggled in the aftermath of the storm and a near communications blackout threw the federal response into chaos. Top FEMA officials have acknowledged they didn't understand the magnitude of the problems in New Orleans as the city filled with floodwaters pouring over and through crumbling levees.
To improve "situational awareness," Paulison said, teams from a variety of agencies will deploy to areas where hurricanes are expected to make landfall. They will scour the disaster zones and beam back live images of what they see. They hope to avoid being caught unaware of calamities, such as when thousands of evacuees became stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, or bogus reports, such as estimates of 10,000 deaths in New Orleans, which prompted FEMA to ship tons of unneeded ice to the city.
"If we had that in Katrina, we would have avoided a lot of problems," Paulison said. "We would have been able to see what was happening with the levee breaches and at the Convention Center."
Another blind spot during Katrina was logistics: FEMA didn't know whether emergency supplies had arrived at their destinations or were still in transit. A Senate investigation found that some truck drivers claimed roads were closed because they were afraid to drive into the disaster zone. One driver reported making a delivery, only to be found dozing in his fully stocked truck in a parking lot.
FEMA has toyed for years with the concept of "total asset visibility," which would allow the agency to track shipments in a storm the way FedEx does on a daily basis. But it always shelved plans because of cost. Paulison said that soon, every shipment will be equipped with a global positioning device that can be tracked by satellite.
"In the past, once the stuff was shipped, we lost control of it," Paulison said.
Stocking up
Even before the first tropical depression forms, commodities are being moved into the region. FEMA and the state have identified warehouses throughout south Louisiana where food, medical supplies and other provisions are being stockpiled. The spots have been chosen to be close to interstates and on high ground.
In the run-up to Katrina, FEMA had positioned more supplies than it ever had before. But most were at Camp Beauregard near Alexandria, hours from New Orleans under the best of circumstances.
"We have moved supplies south, where we feel, in conjunction with FEMA, that we can push commodities into any affected area faster and more efficiently," said Lt. Col. Cathy Vittoria, head of logistics for the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the state's commodity tracking system provider, E-Team, will be up to the challenge. In disasters, local officials are supposed to enter their requests into the system, and they are either filled by state agencies or referred to FEMA. Katrina showed that some local officials had no capability to navigate E-Team, and investigations found that many requests -- some that FEMA got blamed for failing to act on -- were never entered into the system.
Vittoria said extra staff had been designated to make sure requests don't fall through the cracks. But FEMA's Jamieson raised concerns that the agency could again get inundated with requests that the state hasn't first prioritized. In the wake of the storm, FEMA was getting "emergency" requests for nonemergency items such as writing tablets.
"There is still an issue in terms of filtering the requests," he said. "We don't want to start answering requests that just pop into the system."
System in progress
State and federal authorities have put a premium on improving communications in the next disaster. The state has put out bids for mobile communications units that can be airlifted into areas where a storm has wiped out telephone service. FEMA officials also said mobile communications vans would be deployed to areas in advance of storms.
But no one denies gaps in emergency preparedness remain. Paulison acknowledged that he is uncertain how the video-equipped advance teams will perform, especially in a communications blackout, and the full rollout of the tracking system won't be in place until next year. Key vacancies also remain in the upper echelons of the agency. Paulison had hoped to have a new director of logistics in place for the start of hurricane season, but now that appears unlikely.
Despite all of the new planning, little of it has been tested. Alabama, which also got strafed by Katrina, has already held a "tabletop" exercise with local, state and federal officials to test their response capabilities. Louisiana is leaving little room for error. It will be conducting its own mock disaster response May 23 and 24, a week before the start of hurricane season.
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Audrey2Katrina
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As a last resort, more than 350 homeowners have asked Jefferson Parish to demolish their storm-damaged houses
Saturday, May 13, 2006
By Mark Waller
East Jefferson bureau
The old house doesn't look like much now. Weeds dominate the lawn. The interior is a gutted void. A front corner sits askew on its support pier, opening a seam in the walls that lets daylight poke through.
To Allen and Joyce Suter, the hollowed-out wood-frame house on Maple Ridge Drive in Metairie was home, where they lived for 39 years, where they got involved in the neighborhood association, where they raised three children.
They visited for one of the last times this week. Saying Hurricane Katrina's flood left the house beyond repair, and their insurance doesn't cover demolition, they signed up for a government program to take it down, adding their house to a list of nearly 400 scheduled for razing in Jefferson Parish. The tear-downs could begin in the next two weeks.
On Tuesday, the Suters noted the floodwater grime still visible on a rear bay window. Joyce Suter pointed out places where they added onto the house or renovated. Allen Suter found the stain, under Sheetrock dust, where their sons accidentally burned the floor with a candle when they were boys.
"It was hard when we first came back," Joyce Suter said. "It was hard to see all our things totally destroyed, our memories lost. We were like so many people. We weren't unique."
The Suters' Old Metairie neighborhood, tucked between Airline Drive and the railroad tracks to the north, was one of the hardest-hit sections of Jefferson Parish, stewing in water for weeks, and it's the site of one of the biggest clusters of demolition requests.
The demolition applications show the pockets of Jefferson Parish that sustained the worst damage in last year's hurricane season, small areas compared with the vast desolation in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish. In addition to Maple Ridge, groups of homes slated for demolition are located in Bucktown, Kenner and Lafitte. In all, there are at least 240 in East Jefferson and 127 on the West Bank.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
By Mark Waller
East Jefferson bureau
The old house doesn't look like much now. Weeds dominate the lawn. The interior is a gutted void. A front corner sits askew on its support pier, opening a seam in the walls that lets daylight poke through.
To Allen and Joyce Suter, the hollowed-out wood-frame house on Maple Ridge Drive in Metairie was home, where they lived for 39 years, where they got involved in the neighborhood association, where they raised three children.
They visited for one of the last times this week. Saying Hurricane Katrina's flood left the house beyond repair, and their insurance doesn't cover demolition, they signed up for a government program to take it down, adding their house to a list of nearly 400 scheduled for razing in Jefferson Parish. The tear-downs could begin in the next two weeks.
On Tuesday, the Suters noted the floodwater grime still visible on a rear bay window. Joyce Suter pointed out places where they added onto the house or renovated. Allen Suter found the stain, under Sheetrock dust, where their sons accidentally burned the floor with a candle when they were boys.
"It was hard when we first came back," Joyce Suter said. "It was hard to see all our things totally destroyed, our memories lost. We were like so many people. We weren't unique."
The Suters' Old Metairie neighborhood, tucked between Airline Drive and the railroad tracks to the north, was one of the hardest-hit sections of Jefferson Parish, stewing in water for weeks, and it's the site of one of the biggest clusters of demolition requests.
The demolition applications show the pockets of Jefferson Parish that sustained the worst damage in last year's hurricane season, small areas compared with the vast desolation in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish. In addition to Maple Ridge, groups of homes slated for demolition are located in Bucktown, Kenner and Lafitte. In all, there are at least 240 in East Jefferson and 127 on the West Bank.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Where's The Money?
Billions Have Been Approved by Congress for Katrina Recovery, But the Money Isn't Hitting the Ground
By Keith Burton - GulfCoastNews.com Filed 5/5/06
We caught up with Waveland's Mayor Tommy Longo outside his office. He was talking to an elderly resident who was trying to get the city's help in removing her destroyed home but had missed a FEMA deadline for a right of entry and Longo had to explain the bad news. The woman had been out of town staying with relatives since Hurricane Katrina hit and the local media there didn't carry information on the deadline.
We went inside to the trailer that is Waveland's City Hall to talk more with the mayor. Even though it was mid morning, Longo looked as if he had worked all night. In a way he has. The mayor was clearly physically exhausted, his hands trembling slightly and his eyes sunken in their sockets from too many days of struggle.
Waveland, which was ground zero for Hurricane Katrina, is mostly a city that today exists largely in Longo's mind, the destruction from the storm was so complete. But Longo is a fighter, and daily works to find the money and resources to restore the city he loves. This is not simple task and and one that every city and county in the Katrina Disaster Zone faces. The key issue is money.
Almost every week there is a new announcement about millions of dollars in federal Hurricane Katrina recovery money coming to the area's hard hit cities. News reports are filled with announcements of billions of dollars in aid on their way to the Gulf Coast, with money for almost everything it would take to rebuild the Coast's devastated towns and cities. But you look around, and except for debris removal and FEMA trailers, nothing is happening.
THE KATRINA CAVEAT
Congress has approved billions of dollars in aid, and more money for Katrina-related recovery is being debated in Washington. It would be easy to think that with all of that money, the damages from Katrina should be quickly disappearing. But that isn't happening. You could almost call what is happening the Katrina Caveat because most of the aid money from Washington is not hitting the ground.
The reason is that almost all of the money requires local governments to meet a matching portion out of their own pockets. Money that the hard-hit cities and counties do not have.
Most of the money that the federal government is authorizing for hurricane recovery requires as much as a 10 percent local match before the city or county can access the money available. This matching money is almost impossible for most communities to find. That's because their revenue, from property and sales taxes, plus their current day-to-day expenses, are so meager they cannot put up the cash to draw down the federal aid.
This aid and the required matching money are not small change. The damages to the public buildings, road, libraries, water and sewer lines total in the multi-million of dollars for each local community.
The Mississippi Department of Transportation faces a similar issue. While the federal government has provided over a billion dollars in federal money to help rebuild damaged highways and bridges, MDOT must first spend their own money and then they are reimbursed. The problem is that MDOT doesn't have a billion extra dollars in the bank to spend, which limits how much money they can spend at any one time for roads and bridges. So while the federal emergency billion is available, only a bit of it can be drawn down at a time. And MDOT has chosen not to use money they have already in the bank for existing work for additional projects needed for Katrina related work.
For smaller cities like devastated Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Long Beach and D'Iberville, they do not have the money to get the aid they need.
For example, Waveland officials know that their city's water and sewer system was largely destroyed. While portions are working, it is on a wing and prayer, according to Mayor Tommy Longo.
Longo said the hurricane's salt water over-ran the system and corrosion is now eating away at pumps and lift stations. He told GCN recently that city engineers estimated after the hurricane it would last only a few months. Now it has been many more months and the system is beginning to fail.
Kathy Pinn, Waveland's public information officer told GCN recently that:
"Our infrastructure has been totally compromised, so, 100% of the infrastructure south of the railroad tracks in Waveland will have to be replaced. All water, sewer and gas lines must be replaced. FEMA requires that we pay 10% of the costs. Before we can even begin the process of going out for bids, we have to have 5% of the total cost in our bank account. The latest estimates are that $22 million will be needed to do the reconstruction south of the railroad tracks. They are still assessing the needs for north of the railroad tracks.
"FEMA has a 90-10 match and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) will give us 5 percent of that if we have the other 5 percent which would be approximately $1.1 million. Also we relied on gas service for City revenues. This 10 percent match is required for all public buildings and roadways that must be rebuilt," Pinn said.
Waveland lost all of its public buildings, fire engines and police cars and almost all of its commercial businesses and 80 percent of all of its homes. The city barely has enough money in the bank to operate the rest of the year.
This is similar to what the other cities are facing throughout the Katrina Disaster Zone. Cities large and small are finding it nearly impossible to put up the required matching money to get the federal aid dollars in the bank. As a result, nothing is happening.
The cities are hoping that somehow, a federal or state aid package will be found that will fund the needed matching money. Some cities are also borrowing money to access the federal aid. But for the most part, the counties and cities cannot afford to borrow any more.
There may be an answer in Mississippi from another federal Katrina aid program.
THE FICTION OF RELIEF
The state recently started helping homeowners who lost their homes from Katrina's storm surge who were outside the federal flood zones. The federal government provided nearly $5 billion in aid for the program, which would provide up to $150,000 in grants to homeowners to help them rebuild the their homes.
But only a portion of the money was to go for homeowners. Officials with Mississippi Development Authority, the agency administering the program, tell GCN that almost a billion dollars of that money will be spent in a program to help local cities with infrastructure money. But that program has yet to be developed, according to MDA spokesman Scott Hamilton, contacted by GCN.
"We will have to file an action plan with the federal Housing and Urban Development agency as to what we plan to do with the money," Hamilton said.
That process is not speedy. What people generally don't know about all the federal relief money is that this money is being filtered through various federal agencies like HUD, FEMA, the Federal Highway Administration and more. All of which have their own guidelines and regulations that local governments must hurdle over. In many cases, the agencies themselves are just now making up the rules for distributing the money.
What this means is that the needed relief money so generously approved by Congress and the president remain fictions of relief.
This fiction of relief has convinced the nation that states in the Katrina Disaster Zone are doing okay. After all, didn't they just get billions in aid? Yes, and unfortunately, no.
The state initially estimated that some 29,000 homeowners would participate in the grant program. But Hamilton says that they may have overestimated the number of people that could participate. There are a lot of caveats that would make it hard for many homeowners to participate. But the result may be that it will free more of the money that was anticipated for homeowners, money that could go to the cities to help them with their local matching money problem. But this won't happen quickly. Or maybe even in time to keep Waveland's water system running.
The problem is systemic. Most of the cities have yet to see a dime of all of this aid money, and Hamilton says that neither has the state. He didn't know who in the state was even coordinating this activity. He said the MDA's responsibility was just the grant program for homeowners at this time.
Local officials are struggling with the reality that they have to figure out how to get the federal aid money and that too has been nearly impossible. A program to provide manpower to sort through the maze of where the relief money is and how to apply for it has not been established. Local officials have hundreds of community buildings, streets, drains and water and sewer systems that need repairs. They know it will take time to sort this all out and the larger cities with the manpower and money are doing so. But it is also a challenge and is why so little has been accomplished.
Perhaps is it time that Congress end the local matching money requirements on major disaster recovery funds.
Billions Have Been Approved by Congress for Katrina Recovery, But the Money Isn't Hitting the Ground
By Keith Burton - GulfCoastNews.com Filed 5/5/06
We caught up with Waveland's Mayor Tommy Longo outside his office. He was talking to an elderly resident who was trying to get the city's help in removing her destroyed home but had missed a FEMA deadline for a right of entry and Longo had to explain the bad news. The woman had been out of town staying with relatives since Hurricane Katrina hit and the local media there didn't carry information on the deadline.
We went inside to the trailer that is Waveland's City Hall to talk more with the mayor. Even though it was mid morning, Longo looked as if he had worked all night. In a way he has. The mayor was clearly physically exhausted, his hands trembling slightly and his eyes sunken in their sockets from too many days of struggle.
Waveland, which was ground zero for Hurricane Katrina, is mostly a city that today exists largely in Longo's mind, the destruction from the storm was so complete. But Longo is a fighter, and daily works to find the money and resources to restore the city he loves. This is not simple task and and one that every city and county in the Katrina Disaster Zone faces. The key issue is money.
Almost every week there is a new announcement about millions of dollars in federal Hurricane Katrina recovery money coming to the area's hard hit cities. News reports are filled with announcements of billions of dollars in aid on their way to the Gulf Coast, with money for almost everything it would take to rebuild the Coast's devastated towns and cities. But you look around, and except for debris removal and FEMA trailers, nothing is happening.
THE KATRINA CAVEAT
Congress has approved billions of dollars in aid, and more money for Katrina-related recovery is being debated in Washington. It would be easy to think that with all of that money, the damages from Katrina should be quickly disappearing. But that isn't happening. You could almost call what is happening the Katrina Caveat because most of the aid money from Washington is not hitting the ground.
The reason is that almost all of the money requires local governments to meet a matching portion out of their own pockets. Money that the hard-hit cities and counties do not have.
Most of the money that the federal government is authorizing for hurricane recovery requires as much as a 10 percent local match before the city or county can access the money available. This matching money is almost impossible for most communities to find. That's because their revenue, from property and sales taxes, plus their current day-to-day expenses, are so meager they cannot put up the cash to draw down the federal aid.
This aid and the required matching money are not small change. The damages to the public buildings, road, libraries, water and sewer lines total in the multi-million of dollars for each local community.
The Mississippi Department of Transportation faces a similar issue. While the federal government has provided over a billion dollars in federal money to help rebuild damaged highways and bridges, MDOT must first spend their own money and then they are reimbursed. The problem is that MDOT doesn't have a billion extra dollars in the bank to spend, which limits how much money they can spend at any one time for roads and bridges. So while the federal emergency billion is available, only a bit of it can be drawn down at a time. And MDOT has chosen not to use money they have already in the bank for existing work for additional projects needed for Katrina related work.
For smaller cities like devastated Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Long Beach and D'Iberville, they do not have the money to get the aid they need.
For example, Waveland officials know that their city's water and sewer system was largely destroyed. While portions are working, it is on a wing and prayer, according to Mayor Tommy Longo.
Longo said the hurricane's salt water over-ran the system and corrosion is now eating away at pumps and lift stations. He told GCN recently that city engineers estimated after the hurricane it would last only a few months. Now it has been many more months and the system is beginning to fail.
Kathy Pinn, Waveland's public information officer told GCN recently that:
"Our infrastructure has been totally compromised, so, 100% of the infrastructure south of the railroad tracks in Waveland will have to be replaced. All water, sewer and gas lines must be replaced. FEMA requires that we pay 10% of the costs. Before we can even begin the process of going out for bids, we have to have 5% of the total cost in our bank account. The latest estimates are that $22 million will be needed to do the reconstruction south of the railroad tracks. They are still assessing the needs for north of the railroad tracks.
"FEMA has a 90-10 match and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) will give us 5 percent of that if we have the other 5 percent which would be approximately $1.1 million. Also we relied on gas service for City revenues. This 10 percent match is required for all public buildings and roadways that must be rebuilt," Pinn said.
Waveland lost all of its public buildings, fire engines and police cars and almost all of its commercial businesses and 80 percent of all of its homes. The city barely has enough money in the bank to operate the rest of the year.
This is similar to what the other cities are facing throughout the Katrina Disaster Zone. Cities large and small are finding it nearly impossible to put up the required matching money to get the federal aid dollars in the bank. As a result, nothing is happening.
The cities are hoping that somehow, a federal or state aid package will be found that will fund the needed matching money. Some cities are also borrowing money to access the federal aid. But for the most part, the counties and cities cannot afford to borrow any more.
There may be an answer in Mississippi from another federal Katrina aid program.
THE FICTION OF RELIEF
The state recently started helping homeowners who lost their homes from Katrina's storm surge who were outside the federal flood zones. The federal government provided nearly $5 billion in aid for the program, which would provide up to $150,000 in grants to homeowners to help them rebuild the their homes.
But only a portion of the money was to go for homeowners. Officials with Mississippi Development Authority, the agency administering the program, tell GCN that almost a billion dollars of that money will be spent in a program to help local cities with infrastructure money. But that program has yet to be developed, according to MDA spokesman Scott Hamilton, contacted by GCN.
"We will have to file an action plan with the federal Housing and Urban Development agency as to what we plan to do with the money," Hamilton said.
That process is not speedy. What people generally don't know about all the federal relief money is that this money is being filtered through various federal agencies like HUD, FEMA, the Federal Highway Administration and more. All of which have their own guidelines and regulations that local governments must hurdle over. In many cases, the agencies themselves are just now making up the rules for distributing the money.
What this means is that the needed relief money so generously approved by Congress and the president remain fictions of relief.
This fiction of relief has convinced the nation that states in the Katrina Disaster Zone are doing okay. After all, didn't they just get billions in aid? Yes, and unfortunately, no.
The state initially estimated that some 29,000 homeowners would participate in the grant program. But Hamilton says that they may have overestimated the number of people that could participate. There are a lot of caveats that would make it hard for many homeowners to participate. But the result may be that it will free more of the money that was anticipated for homeowners, money that could go to the cities to help them with their local matching money problem. But this won't happen quickly. Or maybe even in time to keep Waveland's water system running.
The problem is systemic. Most of the cities have yet to see a dime of all of this aid money, and Hamilton says that neither has the state. He didn't know who in the state was even coordinating this activity. He said the MDA's responsibility was just the grant program for homeowners at this time.
Local officials are struggling with the reality that they have to figure out how to get the federal aid money and that too has been nearly impossible. A program to provide manpower to sort through the maze of where the relief money is and how to apply for it has not been established. Local officials have hundreds of community buildings, streets, drains and water and sewer systems that need repairs. They know it will take time to sort this all out and the larger cities with the manpower and money are doing so. But it is also a challenge and is why so little has been accomplished.
Perhaps is it time that Congress end the local matching money requirements on major disaster recovery funds.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Ag. Department tries to soothe worries about bird flu
Last Update: 5/13/2006 9:49:33 AM
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Although a TV movie showed a deadly outbreak of avian flu spreading death and mayhem across the world this week, Alabama officials reassured the public Friday that they are safe from the disease.
Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks and state health officials outlined precautions the state is taking against the disease at a news conference in Montgomery.
The announcement came after Tuesday's broadcast of the ABC movie, "Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America," which followed the spread of the disease from Hong Kong to the rest of the world.
"It was a worst-case scenario, an exaggeration," Sparks said.
Although Sparks said he was concerned the movie might alarm some people, he said the news conference was part of an ongoing education effort, not simply a response to the movie. His department has not received any calls from people concerned about what they saw in the movie, he said.
Sparks and other officials tried to put human bird flu deaths into perspective.
There have been 113 human deaths reported in 33 countries from avian flu in the last three years, but the common flu kills 32,000 people a year, Sparks said.
He also said human bird flu cases occurred in parts of the world with looser standards than what is found in the U.S.
"Our poultry industry is safe," Sparks said.
Sparks said 11 birds out of every flock sent to market are checked, and there are strict standards for poultry workers. About 200,000 birds will be tested this year, compared to the previous standard of 50,000 to 60,000.
"There is no need to stop eating chicken," said Johnny Adams, executive director of the Alabama Poultry & Egg Association.
Officials even pointed out that cooking an infected chicken at a temperature of 160 degrees should kill the virus.
If a bird flu case is reported, the infected birds would be destroyed and the area where the case occurred would be isolated to prevent the disease from spreading, Sparks said. Bird flu was last reported in the state in 1975, in north Alabama.
"We are ready in case something goes wrong today," he said.
Last Update: 5/13/2006 9:49:33 AM
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Although a TV movie showed a deadly outbreak of avian flu spreading death and mayhem across the world this week, Alabama officials reassured the public Friday that they are safe from the disease.
Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks and state health officials outlined precautions the state is taking against the disease at a news conference in Montgomery.
The announcement came after Tuesday's broadcast of the ABC movie, "Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America," which followed the spread of the disease from Hong Kong to the rest of the world.
"It was a worst-case scenario, an exaggeration," Sparks said.
Although Sparks said he was concerned the movie might alarm some people, he said the news conference was part of an ongoing education effort, not simply a response to the movie. His department has not received any calls from people concerned about what they saw in the movie, he said.
Sparks and other officials tried to put human bird flu deaths into perspective.
There have been 113 human deaths reported in 33 countries from avian flu in the last three years, but the common flu kills 32,000 people a year, Sparks said.
He also said human bird flu cases occurred in parts of the world with looser standards than what is found in the U.S.
"Our poultry industry is safe," Sparks said.
Sparks said 11 birds out of every flock sent to market are checked, and there are strict standards for poultry workers. About 200,000 birds will be tested this year, compared to the previous standard of 50,000 to 60,000.
"There is no need to stop eating chicken," said Johnny Adams, executive director of the Alabama Poultry & Egg Association.
Officials even pointed out that cooking an infected chicken at a temperature of 160 degrees should kill the virus.
If a bird flu case is reported, the infected birds would be destroyed and the area where the case occurred would be isolated to prevent the disease from spreading, Sparks said. Bird flu was last reported in the state in 1975, in north Alabama.
"We are ready in case something goes wrong today," he said.
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Audrey2Katrina
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- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Pastor's business got big sewer contract
Firm incorporated after work began
Saturday, May 13, 2006
By Gordon Russell
Staff writer
A multimillion-dollar subcontract involving the inspection of the city's damaged sewer system was awarded in October to a company organized by a politically active minister who incorporated the firm months after the work began.
State records show the company, Management Construction Consultant Inc., was formed Dec. 20 by Bishop O.C. Coleman of Greater Light Ministries and two of Coleman's associates.
The company was incorporated nearly three months after the firm began sending invoices to Montgomery Watson Harza, the prime contractor overseeing the job for the Sewerage & Water Board. In total, MCCI was given subcontracts worth $2.5 million for work on the city's water and sewer systems.
The company also was a subcontractor on a separate $24 million contract awarded by the city's Department of Public Works to assess the drainage system, according to Sal Mansour, a vice president at Montgomery Watson. Mansour could not provide the amount of that subcontract, and it could not be obtained by The Times-Picayune by the close of business Friday.
Coleman has been a vocal supporter of Mayor Ray Nagin. Nagin said he had "no knowledge" of the subcontracts landed by Coleman, and said he hadn't intervened on the minister's behalf.
"The bishop (Coleman) hangs around City Hall quite a bit and was there before I became elected," Nagin said in an e-mail. "I have never lobbied on behalf of him" or his companies, he said.
Thus far, FEMA has paid only a fraction of the $14 million contract given to Montgomery Watson for the sewer analysis, though the work is complete. A "working document" prepared by FEMA said much of the work performed by subcontractors, including that done by MCCI, is "not eligible for reimbursement" because of a lack of a "clear scope of work."
According to Mansour, most of MCCI's work involved taking off manhole covers to visually assess damage. Records show the company billed between $90 and $106 per hour for such labor.
Mansour of Mongomery Watson said the back-and-forth with FEMA over record-keeping is routine and is likely to be resolved. MCCI, as well as all the other subcontractors, did everything expected of it, he said.
"Unfortunately, this is what it means to work with FEMA," Mansour said. "It's torture."
'A private matter'
How MCCI came to be hired -- given that it didn't exist on paper and still lacks a listed phone number -- is something of a mystery.
Coleman, who was one of a group of African-American ministers to express support for Nagin midway through his first term after the mayor came under fire from another powerful group of black ministers led by Bishop Paul Morton, declined to discuss the contract, calling it a private matter.
"I don't feel I need to explain myself," he said, adding that his lawyers had advised him not to talk to the media.
Mansour said Montgomery Watson largely relied on subcontractors or individuals it had previously done business with, but said he is not sure if MCCI fell into that category.
Mansour said he was not surprised or bothered to learn that MCCI didn't exist on paper at the time it was hired by Montgomery Watson. In the post-Katrina chaos, he said, everyone was focused on getting work done rather than filling out paperwork; in fact, he noted, Montgomery Watson's contract with the S&WB wasn't actually signed until March.
He said he believes someone from MCCI called his company after learning about the contract and offered to help.
"I don't recall how we found them," he said. "We were short on labor, and we tried to go to different places. This company was able to provide us with manpower."
Friendly relationship
The answer may lie in the person of Benjamin Edwards Sr., a longtime member of the water board who also is a politically active minister and a friend of Coleman.
Edwards, who was originally appointed to the water board by former Mayor Sidney Barthelemy -- and who was retained by Barthelemy's successor, Marc Morial -- has long been known for his activism in the board's contracting practices. Nagin has never appointed Edwards, but has allowed him to continue serving even though his term expired in late 2003.
Edwards has long been a staunch advocate for minority-owned businesses getting a fair slice of the board's work. He said he became aware of MCCI's existence last year, but has no relationship with the firm. "I've heard of every company that comes to the Sewerage & Water Board," he said.
Edwards described his relationship with Coleman as friendly, saying Coleman attends services at his 9th Ward ministry, Third Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, about once a year. But they've never done business together, Edwards said.
However, there is a pattern of coincidences between Edwards and Coleman. The two men, or entities they control, donated money in recent months on the same day and in the same amount to both Nagin and several City Council candidates.
In most cases, the donations are listed consecutively on campaign finance forms, suggesting they were received simultaneously.
For instance, City Councilman Oliver Thomas reported receiving $5,000 apiece on March 2 from Coleman's Management Construction Consultant Inc. and Third Shiloh Housing Inc., a nonprofit run by Edwards.
Moreover, Thomas' report notes that both were cashier's checks -- the only two contributions Thomas received that were so designated. The checks bear similar numbers as well, though they are not consecutive.
Nagin, meanwhile, reported receiving $5,000 apiece from the same two firms on March 27. The contributions are not listed consecutively -- Nagin's reports are filed electronically, in alphabetical order. The address Nagin's campaign listed for Third Shiloh, Edwards' nonprofit, is 4948 Chef Menteur Highway. That is the same address MCCI gives as its home base in state corporate filings.
Edwards said he has no idea why a check would have been recorded by the Nagin campaign that way. Nagin adviser David White said the campaign enters the address based on what's listed on the check, but he could not locate the actual checks late Friday.
Another detail shows that many of MCCI's employee time sheets, which were submitted to Montgomery Watson to back up its billing invoices, were signed by a supervisor whose name appears to be "B. Edwards."
Ben Edwards said he did not sign any invoices, and a check of Third Shiloh corporate documents he has signed shows a signature that is not similar to his. Coleman would not say who "B. Edwards" was. He referred questions to a cousin, who also said he did not have the answers.
Edwards said he does not know who "B. Edwards" is but said it is not his son, Benjamin Edwards Jr., who he said is a financial adviser based in Atlanta. Edwards added that he has "400 or 500 relatives" and does not know of any who work for MCCI. But he said he couldn't be sure that none did, either.
Independent spending
In total, MCCI has given Nagin's campaign $10,000, while Third Shiloh Housing Inc. has kicked in another $5,000 to the mayor's war chest. Neither firm has donated to Nagin's runoff opponent, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.
Edwards has acknowledged that the contributions from Third Shiloh, which is exempt from federal taxes, violates the housing group's nonprofit charter, which prohibits it from making political donations. He said he has asked some of the candidates who received the checks to return the money as a result.
White, Nagin's treasurer, said Edwards asked the campaign Thursday to return his $5,000 contribution because of the violation. White said he planned to send the money back, and noted that it's not the candidate's job to determine whether a corporation making a contribution is violating its tax-free status.
Even with his money being returned, Edwards has gone well beyond the traditional cap of $5,000 on individual donations to help Nagin's re-election campaign.
Last month, Edwards said he and other family members had spent more than $100,000 on pro-Nagin billboards in Atlanta, Houston and other hubs of Katrina evacuees. He said he planned to sponsor radio ads outside the city as well. By Friday, Edwards said his family's efforts had topped $171,000, and would exceed $200,000 by the May 20 runoff.
Nagin has raised only about $500,000 on his own behalf since Jan. 1.
"It's been a good run, and it's not over with yet," Edwards said. "I haven't spent this kind of money and been this excited about a race since I ran a campaign in 1985. I'm very excited about the direction this city is heading. I'm excited about the mayor and what he's doing."
Such spending is allowed under state law provided it is "independent," meaning the person or group paying for the ads does not collude or coordinate with the campaign. Both Edwards and Nagin campaign staffers said there has been no coordination between the two camps.
Under state law, individuals or groups who engage in such "independent expenditures" are required to file reports with the state showing where the money came from and how it was spent. Edwards said last month he was not aware of that law. He said Friday, however, that he planned to visit the state Ethics Commission, which supervises campaign-finance laws, to clarify the situation.
Edwards stressed that his strong backing of Nagin springs not from any sense of debt to the mayor but from a strong feeling that Nagin is the right man for the job.
Edwards also said he has spent about $700,000 of his own money since the storm offering rental assistance and free gutting to homeowners around the 9th Ward.
"My character and integrity speaks for itself," he said.
Edwards said he was able to bankroll the nearly $1 million cost of supporting both Nagin and his neighbors through a combination of hard work and wise investments.
In a long career at BellSouth, Edwards said he racked up thousands of hours of overtime, in part by working storm-damage details. After he left, he said, he formed a company called Edwards Telecommunications that was "very successful." Since then, the money has continued to accrue because of sound investments, he said.
Firm incorporated after work began
Saturday, May 13, 2006
By Gordon Russell
Staff writer
A multimillion-dollar subcontract involving the inspection of the city's damaged sewer system was awarded in October to a company organized by a politically active minister who incorporated the firm months after the work began.
State records show the company, Management Construction Consultant Inc., was formed Dec. 20 by Bishop O.C. Coleman of Greater Light Ministries and two of Coleman's associates.
The company was incorporated nearly three months after the firm began sending invoices to Montgomery Watson Harza, the prime contractor overseeing the job for the Sewerage & Water Board. In total, MCCI was given subcontracts worth $2.5 million for work on the city's water and sewer systems.
The company also was a subcontractor on a separate $24 million contract awarded by the city's Department of Public Works to assess the drainage system, according to Sal Mansour, a vice president at Montgomery Watson. Mansour could not provide the amount of that subcontract, and it could not be obtained by The Times-Picayune by the close of business Friday.
Coleman has been a vocal supporter of Mayor Ray Nagin. Nagin said he had "no knowledge" of the subcontracts landed by Coleman, and said he hadn't intervened on the minister's behalf.
"The bishop (Coleman) hangs around City Hall quite a bit and was there before I became elected," Nagin said in an e-mail. "I have never lobbied on behalf of him" or his companies, he said.
Thus far, FEMA has paid only a fraction of the $14 million contract given to Montgomery Watson for the sewer analysis, though the work is complete. A "working document" prepared by FEMA said much of the work performed by subcontractors, including that done by MCCI, is "not eligible for reimbursement" because of a lack of a "clear scope of work."
According to Mansour, most of MCCI's work involved taking off manhole covers to visually assess damage. Records show the company billed between $90 and $106 per hour for such labor.
Mansour of Mongomery Watson said the back-and-forth with FEMA over record-keeping is routine and is likely to be resolved. MCCI, as well as all the other subcontractors, did everything expected of it, he said.
"Unfortunately, this is what it means to work with FEMA," Mansour said. "It's torture."
'A private matter'
How MCCI came to be hired -- given that it didn't exist on paper and still lacks a listed phone number -- is something of a mystery.
Coleman, who was one of a group of African-American ministers to express support for Nagin midway through his first term after the mayor came under fire from another powerful group of black ministers led by Bishop Paul Morton, declined to discuss the contract, calling it a private matter.
"I don't feel I need to explain myself," he said, adding that his lawyers had advised him not to talk to the media.
Mansour said Montgomery Watson largely relied on subcontractors or individuals it had previously done business with, but said he is not sure if MCCI fell into that category.
Mansour said he was not surprised or bothered to learn that MCCI didn't exist on paper at the time it was hired by Montgomery Watson. In the post-Katrina chaos, he said, everyone was focused on getting work done rather than filling out paperwork; in fact, he noted, Montgomery Watson's contract with the S&WB wasn't actually signed until March.
He said he believes someone from MCCI called his company after learning about the contract and offered to help.
"I don't recall how we found them," he said. "We were short on labor, and we tried to go to different places. This company was able to provide us with manpower."
Friendly relationship
The answer may lie in the person of Benjamin Edwards Sr., a longtime member of the water board who also is a politically active minister and a friend of Coleman.
Edwards, who was originally appointed to the water board by former Mayor Sidney Barthelemy -- and who was retained by Barthelemy's successor, Marc Morial -- has long been known for his activism in the board's contracting practices. Nagin has never appointed Edwards, but has allowed him to continue serving even though his term expired in late 2003.
Edwards has long been a staunch advocate for minority-owned businesses getting a fair slice of the board's work. He said he became aware of MCCI's existence last year, but has no relationship with the firm. "I've heard of every company that comes to the Sewerage & Water Board," he said.
Edwards described his relationship with Coleman as friendly, saying Coleman attends services at his 9th Ward ministry, Third Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, about once a year. But they've never done business together, Edwards said.
However, there is a pattern of coincidences between Edwards and Coleman. The two men, or entities they control, donated money in recent months on the same day and in the same amount to both Nagin and several City Council candidates.
In most cases, the donations are listed consecutively on campaign finance forms, suggesting they were received simultaneously.
For instance, City Councilman Oliver Thomas reported receiving $5,000 apiece on March 2 from Coleman's Management Construction Consultant Inc. and Third Shiloh Housing Inc., a nonprofit run by Edwards.
Moreover, Thomas' report notes that both were cashier's checks -- the only two contributions Thomas received that were so designated. The checks bear similar numbers as well, though they are not consecutive.
Nagin, meanwhile, reported receiving $5,000 apiece from the same two firms on March 27. The contributions are not listed consecutively -- Nagin's reports are filed electronically, in alphabetical order. The address Nagin's campaign listed for Third Shiloh, Edwards' nonprofit, is 4948 Chef Menteur Highway. That is the same address MCCI gives as its home base in state corporate filings.
Edwards said he has no idea why a check would have been recorded by the Nagin campaign that way. Nagin adviser David White said the campaign enters the address based on what's listed on the check, but he could not locate the actual checks late Friday.
Another detail shows that many of MCCI's employee time sheets, which were submitted to Montgomery Watson to back up its billing invoices, were signed by a supervisor whose name appears to be "B. Edwards."
Ben Edwards said he did not sign any invoices, and a check of Third Shiloh corporate documents he has signed shows a signature that is not similar to his. Coleman would not say who "B. Edwards" was. He referred questions to a cousin, who also said he did not have the answers.
Edwards said he does not know who "B. Edwards" is but said it is not his son, Benjamin Edwards Jr., who he said is a financial adviser based in Atlanta. Edwards added that he has "400 or 500 relatives" and does not know of any who work for MCCI. But he said he couldn't be sure that none did, either.
Independent spending
In total, MCCI has given Nagin's campaign $10,000, while Third Shiloh Housing Inc. has kicked in another $5,000 to the mayor's war chest. Neither firm has donated to Nagin's runoff opponent, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.
Edwards has acknowledged that the contributions from Third Shiloh, which is exempt from federal taxes, violates the housing group's nonprofit charter, which prohibits it from making political donations. He said he has asked some of the candidates who received the checks to return the money as a result.
White, Nagin's treasurer, said Edwards asked the campaign Thursday to return his $5,000 contribution because of the violation. White said he planned to send the money back, and noted that it's not the candidate's job to determine whether a corporation making a contribution is violating its tax-free status.
Even with his money being returned, Edwards has gone well beyond the traditional cap of $5,000 on individual donations to help Nagin's re-election campaign.
Last month, Edwards said he and other family members had spent more than $100,000 on pro-Nagin billboards in Atlanta, Houston and other hubs of Katrina evacuees. He said he planned to sponsor radio ads outside the city as well. By Friday, Edwards said his family's efforts had topped $171,000, and would exceed $200,000 by the May 20 runoff.
Nagin has raised only about $500,000 on his own behalf since Jan. 1.
"It's been a good run, and it's not over with yet," Edwards said. "I haven't spent this kind of money and been this excited about a race since I ran a campaign in 1985. I'm very excited about the direction this city is heading. I'm excited about the mayor and what he's doing."
Such spending is allowed under state law provided it is "independent," meaning the person or group paying for the ads does not collude or coordinate with the campaign. Both Edwards and Nagin campaign staffers said there has been no coordination between the two camps.
Under state law, individuals or groups who engage in such "independent expenditures" are required to file reports with the state showing where the money came from and how it was spent. Edwards said last month he was not aware of that law. He said Friday, however, that he planned to visit the state Ethics Commission, which supervises campaign-finance laws, to clarify the situation.
Edwards stressed that his strong backing of Nagin springs not from any sense of debt to the mayor but from a strong feeling that Nagin is the right man for the job.
Edwards also said he has spent about $700,000 of his own money since the storm offering rental assistance and free gutting to homeowners around the 9th Ward.
"My character and integrity speaks for itself," he said.
Edwards said he was able to bankroll the nearly $1 million cost of supporting both Nagin and his neighbors through a combination of hard work and wise investments.
In a long career at BellSouth, Edwards said he racked up thousands of hours of overtime, in part by working storm-damage details. After he left, he said, he formed a company called Edwards Telecommunications that was "very successful." Since then, the money has continued to accrue because of sound investments, he said.
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Audrey2Katrina
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Candidates playing it safe on land use
Nagin and Landrieu are equally vague
Saturday, May 13, 2006
By Coleman Warner
Staff writer
Real estate sales executive Arthur Sterbcow, wrangling over who to support in the New Orleans mayor's race, isn't surprised that the runoff candidates are playing it safe on land-use issues: Both have refused to suggest the storm-ravaged city must shrink its footprint to provide affordable city services, and neither has discussed details about specific neighborhoods until a citywide planning exercise plays out.
But that process, first scheduled to begin in February, has yet to start.
"Any time you say yes, then you've offended someone who wanted you to say no," Sterbcow said. "It's called politics for a reason."
While there are differing nuances to their views, Mayor Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, candidates in the May 20 runoff, rejected advice from Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission that a moratorium be placed on building in especially flood-prone areas and that neighborhoods be required, through counts of returning residents, to prove their viability. To the contrary, the men say they hope the entire city will be redeveloped, a stance called "runoff politics" by pollster Ed Renwick.
"The footprint that we have right now is probably going to be what we're going to push over the next 12 months," Nagin said this week. "Here's the other piece that I think is missing about this whole footprint issue: St. Bernard and Plaquemines residents need places to stay, and I think some of those residents are going to settle in New Orleans. So we're probably going to have some new residents come to the table pretty soon."
Others would argue that, whatever the number of St. Bernard and Plaquemines parish residents seeking places to stay in New Orleans, they can't begin to fill up housing stock -- much of it badly damaged -- left idle by the loss of more than half New Orleans' pre-Katrina population.
Nagin and Landrieu said little more about whether the cash-starved city will be able to afford police, firefighters and other key services for a scattered population.
The incumbent mayor said that if a $150 million bank loan package the city is seeking comes through, "we should be able to stand up city government in its current form for the next 18 months, and then after that government should be self-sufficient."
Landrieu, pushing a "budgeting for outcomes" strategy that includes renegotiated bank debts and aggressive tax collections, conceded that tough budget choices lie ahead in serving thinly populated areas, even if levee improvements make them far more safe.
"Generally speaking, city services will follow large accumulations of people," he said.
Residents wait for guidance
Both candidates are looking to a citywide planning process, called for by Nagin's advisory panel, for guidance in how damaged neighborhoods should redevelop.
But that effort has been rife with frustration, as the Federal Emergency Management Agency rejected the city's early request for millions of dollars for technical help. Staging workshops in 13 districts fell months behind schedule. Weeks ago the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation, courted by the Louisiana Recovery Authority, committed $3.5 million to the task, generating new hope that the broad planning effort will get off the ground.
LRA member David Voelker, who is serving on a Greater New Orleans Foundation panel set up to administer the foundation grant, said he expects the citywide planning mechanism to take shape soon after the election. Whoever is mayor will have an important voice in how the process plays out, but won't be able to dictate which consultants are hired, he said. New Orleans architect Ray Manning and Tulane University architecture Dean Reed Kroloff, previously drafted by Nagin's rebuilding commission to oversee the neighborhood planning, can compete for paid roles in the program, but won't be in charge of it, Voelker said.
Asked about the dilution of the mayor's clout in the process, Voelker said: "There's only one problem -- he forgot to fund it. The funding did not follow."
Manning said that he "will be like the million other architects and planners" who compete for work in the planning effort.
Nagin has expressed optimism about the broad effort, despite heavy criticism of the delay in getting it launched. During a talk to the New Orleans Rotary Club this week, Nagin said, "We have the planning process that's in place."
But neighborhood activists generally say they have seen little evidence of the process, and have resorted to grass-roots planning efforts of their own. The American Institute of Architects will today host a planning charrette at the Intercontinental Hotel for the city's Planning District 4, inviting groups from Faubourg St. John, Mid-City, Esplanade Ridge, Treme and other neighborhoods. Manning is speaking at the meeting but won't run it.
Landrieu was critical of the delays in launching the citywide planning effort, saying the planning is needed to make important decisions about infrastructure work.
Landrieu said Nagin "clearly had the opportunity to start that process, and if they didn't have funds, go raise it. We didn't have to wait for the LRA to go do that. It's important for the LRA and the city to get on the same page."
In another issue sure to affect neighborhood redevelopment, Nagin and Landrieu agree that an Aug. 29 deadline set by the City Council, at the urging of Councilman Jay Batt, for homeowners to finalize plans for cleanup work should be delayed. The measure was praised by some residents fearing a sea of blight and criticized by others who believe it's unfair to force action in the midst of a new storm season.
The mayor said the deadline should be moved to the end of the year. Landrieu said that's too long to wait.
"I'm not sure the (Aug.) 29th deadline is the right one, but it can't be much further away than that," Landrieu said. "I would hate to see it move past the end of September."
Nagin said that after what he considers a fair deadline, he won't hesitate to use city expropriation powers to take control of abandoned homes.
"That's going to give us a lot of leeway to go in and do some of the hard stuff that we need to do," he said. "If a community is trending toward being blighted, absolutely we will use our expropriation powers."
Landrieu didn't rule out use of expropriation, but his campaign said neighborhood planning would influence his use of that tool.
Tweaking the state plan
Both candidates generally favor the multibillion-dollar "Road Home" grant program for flood victims crafted by the state and now facing a review by federal officials. But they each seek alterations to the LRA plan to protect flood victims.
Plans of both candidates said residents of a flood plain who move should be compensated for 100 percent of the pre-Katrina market value of their homes. And Landrieu's plan says the relief program should ensure that "homeowners in the flood plain who did not have insurance, but whose loss was due to levee failure, are not penalized for the man-made disaster."
The candidates said they would give high priority to rebuilding affordable housing.
Although public housing policy falls outside the mayor's control, Nagin said he will talk to federal housing officials about bringing mixed uses to the Iberville public housing development near the French Quarter. He didn't elaborate on the idea. Nagin said that, generally, he wants public housing renovated and reopened to former residents, who he said also should consider first-time homebuyer programs.
Landrieu hasn't targeted specific housing developments, but his campaign said he wants them made safe and he wants the density of residents to be lowered.
Professional planners say it's clear that big land-use changes will occur in the post-Katrina era. But, so far, they know little about the intentions of Landrieu or Nagin.
"I've not heard land use discussed at the forums I went to; it's all disjointed," said Steve Villavaso, president of the Louisiana chapter of the American Planning Association.
Jane Brooks, a University of New Orleans urban planning professor, said: "It's not clear at all, and I think that people would like to have a better idea. But on the other hand, there's not that much consensus. I don't know that they're (the candidates) getting a very clear message from the planning community."
Nagin and Landrieu are equally vague
Saturday, May 13, 2006
By Coleman Warner
Staff writer
Real estate sales executive Arthur Sterbcow, wrangling over who to support in the New Orleans mayor's race, isn't surprised that the runoff candidates are playing it safe on land-use issues: Both have refused to suggest the storm-ravaged city must shrink its footprint to provide affordable city services, and neither has discussed details about specific neighborhoods until a citywide planning exercise plays out.
But that process, first scheduled to begin in February, has yet to start.
"Any time you say yes, then you've offended someone who wanted you to say no," Sterbcow said. "It's called politics for a reason."
While there are differing nuances to their views, Mayor Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, candidates in the May 20 runoff, rejected advice from Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission that a moratorium be placed on building in especially flood-prone areas and that neighborhoods be required, through counts of returning residents, to prove their viability. To the contrary, the men say they hope the entire city will be redeveloped, a stance called "runoff politics" by pollster Ed Renwick.
"The footprint that we have right now is probably going to be what we're going to push over the next 12 months," Nagin said this week. "Here's the other piece that I think is missing about this whole footprint issue: St. Bernard and Plaquemines residents need places to stay, and I think some of those residents are going to settle in New Orleans. So we're probably going to have some new residents come to the table pretty soon."
Others would argue that, whatever the number of St. Bernard and Plaquemines parish residents seeking places to stay in New Orleans, they can't begin to fill up housing stock -- much of it badly damaged -- left idle by the loss of more than half New Orleans' pre-Katrina population.
Nagin and Landrieu said little more about whether the cash-starved city will be able to afford police, firefighters and other key services for a scattered population.
The incumbent mayor said that if a $150 million bank loan package the city is seeking comes through, "we should be able to stand up city government in its current form for the next 18 months, and then after that government should be self-sufficient."
Landrieu, pushing a "budgeting for outcomes" strategy that includes renegotiated bank debts and aggressive tax collections, conceded that tough budget choices lie ahead in serving thinly populated areas, even if levee improvements make them far more safe.
"Generally speaking, city services will follow large accumulations of people," he said.
Residents wait for guidance
Both candidates are looking to a citywide planning process, called for by Nagin's advisory panel, for guidance in how damaged neighborhoods should redevelop.
But that effort has been rife with frustration, as the Federal Emergency Management Agency rejected the city's early request for millions of dollars for technical help. Staging workshops in 13 districts fell months behind schedule. Weeks ago the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation, courted by the Louisiana Recovery Authority, committed $3.5 million to the task, generating new hope that the broad planning effort will get off the ground.
LRA member David Voelker, who is serving on a Greater New Orleans Foundation panel set up to administer the foundation grant, said he expects the citywide planning mechanism to take shape soon after the election. Whoever is mayor will have an important voice in how the process plays out, but won't be able to dictate which consultants are hired, he said. New Orleans architect Ray Manning and Tulane University architecture Dean Reed Kroloff, previously drafted by Nagin's rebuilding commission to oversee the neighborhood planning, can compete for paid roles in the program, but won't be in charge of it, Voelker said.
Asked about the dilution of the mayor's clout in the process, Voelker said: "There's only one problem -- he forgot to fund it. The funding did not follow."
Manning said that he "will be like the million other architects and planners" who compete for work in the planning effort.
Nagin has expressed optimism about the broad effort, despite heavy criticism of the delay in getting it launched. During a talk to the New Orleans Rotary Club this week, Nagin said, "We have the planning process that's in place."
But neighborhood activists generally say they have seen little evidence of the process, and have resorted to grass-roots planning efforts of their own. The American Institute of Architects will today host a planning charrette at the Intercontinental Hotel for the city's Planning District 4, inviting groups from Faubourg St. John, Mid-City, Esplanade Ridge, Treme and other neighborhoods. Manning is speaking at the meeting but won't run it.
Landrieu was critical of the delays in launching the citywide planning effort, saying the planning is needed to make important decisions about infrastructure work.
Landrieu said Nagin "clearly had the opportunity to start that process, and if they didn't have funds, go raise it. We didn't have to wait for the LRA to go do that. It's important for the LRA and the city to get on the same page."
In another issue sure to affect neighborhood redevelopment, Nagin and Landrieu agree that an Aug. 29 deadline set by the City Council, at the urging of Councilman Jay Batt, for homeowners to finalize plans for cleanup work should be delayed. The measure was praised by some residents fearing a sea of blight and criticized by others who believe it's unfair to force action in the midst of a new storm season.
The mayor said the deadline should be moved to the end of the year. Landrieu said that's too long to wait.
"I'm not sure the (Aug.) 29th deadline is the right one, but it can't be much further away than that," Landrieu said. "I would hate to see it move past the end of September."
Nagin said that after what he considers a fair deadline, he won't hesitate to use city expropriation powers to take control of abandoned homes.
"That's going to give us a lot of leeway to go in and do some of the hard stuff that we need to do," he said. "If a community is trending toward being blighted, absolutely we will use our expropriation powers."
Landrieu didn't rule out use of expropriation, but his campaign said neighborhood planning would influence his use of that tool.
Tweaking the state plan
Both candidates generally favor the multibillion-dollar "Road Home" grant program for flood victims crafted by the state and now facing a review by federal officials. But they each seek alterations to the LRA plan to protect flood victims.
Plans of both candidates said residents of a flood plain who move should be compensated for 100 percent of the pre-Katrina market value of their homes. And Landrieu's plan says the relief program should ensure that "homeowners in the flood plain who did not have insurance, but whose loss was due to levee failure, are not penalized for the man-made disaster."
The candidates said they would give high priority to rebuilding affordable housing.
Although public housing policy falls outside the mayor's control, Nagin said he will talk to federal housing officials about bringing mixed uses to the Iberville public housing development near the French Quarter. He didn't elaborate on the idea. Nagin said that, generally, he wants public housing renovated and reopened to former residents, who he said also should consider first-time homebuyer programs.
Landrieu hasn't targeted specific housing developments, but his campaign said he wants them made safe and he wants the density of residents to be lowered.
Professional planners say it's clear that big land-use changes will occur in the post-Katrina era. But, so far, they know little about the intentions of Landrieu or Nagin.
"I've not heard land use discussed at the forums I went to; it's all disjointed," said Steve Villavaso, president of the Louisiana chapter of the American Planning Association.
Jane Brooks, a University of New Orleans urban planning professor, said: "It's not clear at all, and I think that people would like to have a better idea. But on the other hand, there's not that much consensus. I don't know that they're (the candidates) getting a very clear message from the planning community."
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
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Animated Flashback of Hurricane Katrina's impact on NOLA!
This will doubtlessly be time-specific, so if you see this after 5/14/06 it is likely that it will not take you to the proper link.
This is a flash presentation Chronologically showing a map of New Orleans area and subsequent flooding as the storm moved in:
http://www.nola.com/#
Click on the map and see when/how the flooding took place hour by hour, and afterward, you can click an icon to show you specific depths of water.
Unbelievable nobody is talking about eliminating that MRGO monstrosity yet!
A2K
This will doubtlessly be time-specific, so if you see this after 5/14/06 it is likely that it will not take you to the proper link.
This is a flash presentation Chronologically showing a map of New Orleans area and subsequent flooding as the storm moved in:
http://www.nola.com/#
Click on the map and see when/how the flooding took place hour by hour, and afterward, you can click an icon to show you specific depths of water.
Unbelievable nobody is talking about eliminating that MRGO monstrosity yet!
A2K
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Audrey2Katrina
- Category 5
- Posts: 4252
- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
- Location: Metaire, La.
Storm takes center stage during Tulane graduation
Ceremony filled withbittersweet N.O. memories
Sunday, May 14, 2006
By John Pope
Staff writer --Times Picayune:
In an emotion-laden ceremony full of academic pomp, inspirational oratory, cheers, tears, laughter and songs evoking memories of New Orleans' struggle since Hurricane Katrina, 2,200 students graduated from Tulane University on Saturday.
The oratory came from Tulane President Scott Cowen and former Presidents Bush and Clinton, whose Katrina relief fund has given the university $750,000.
The songs -- "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," "Our Home, Louisiana" and "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" -- were sprinkled throughout the ceremony. As if the music weren't enough to make hurricane-battered spectators weep into the second-line handkerchiefs provided by Tulane, the songs' impact was slammed home by videos showing the flooded city, local landmarks such as St. Charles Avenue streetcars, and Tulane students and staffers gutting ruined homes and repairing their campus.
DeGenerosity
The laughs were provided by Ellen DeGeneres, a last-minute addition who strode onto the New Orleans Arena stage near the end of the ceremony in her trademark white sneakers -- and a white bathrobe.
"I was told everyone would be wearing robes," the New Orleans native deadpanned as she stood in front of rows of men and women on the podium wearing caps, gowns and academic hoods in an assortment of hues. The crowd of about 17,000 roared.
In contrast to Bush and Clinton, who urged the graduates to dream big and to devote themselves to volunteerism and public service, DeGeneres, whose mother once worked at Tulane's Newcomb College, told them to "exfoliate, hydrate, moisturize, exercise and floss."
And while Cowen bestowed honorary doctorates upon Bush and Clinton, he gave the Emmy-winning talk-show host a white parasol with green trim so she could second-line with the graduates behind Dr. Michael White's Original Liberty Jazz Band for the ceremony's traditional rousing finale, as confetti, streamers and 2,000 green-and-white beach balls rained down from the rafters.
Providing comic relief was fine with DeGeneres because, she said backstage, she was tired of crying about Hurricane Katrina's destruction.
'You are all miracles'
The storm, which shut down Tulane from late August until early January and left the university with about $300 million in damages and lost revenue, was a central feature of the ceremony.
The fact that Tulane's professors were able to continue educating students and turning out graduates in the wake of Katrina was, Cowen said, nothing short of miraculous.
"Eight months ago, I thought I'd never see this day," he said. "To be here, with Presidents Bush and Clinton, is a dream come true."
Speaking to the students, he praised their "resiliency, courage and . . . ability to overcome adversity," and said, "You are our inspiration, and you are all miracles."
Bush echoed Cowen in extolling the grit of Tulane students and New Orleanians in general.
"Katrina couldn't break the spirit of the people who call this remarkable, improbable city home," he said, noting that local residents have shown the world "the essence of the American spirit -- courage, compassion and resourcefulness."
Clinton said that the outpouring of help for the ravaged Gulf Coast shows "the most important fact of your lives: the interdependence of human beings on this planet."
Circle of life
A longtime fan of New Orleans and its music, Clinton cited "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" the way it was performed Saturday, in two tempos, as an example of the way life goes. White's jazz band played it first in slow time, which would accompany a cortege to the graveyard. Then the band added a frisky, up-tempo version of the spiritual, much like that played after a funeral, to acknowledge that the person is free of earthly bonds and troubles.
"Life's like that," Clinton said. "It's all about new beginnings. I wish you many."
The commencement was followed by ceremonies in which each college and school honored its degree recipients.
For the medical school, it was the first official event in New Orleans since the storm forced it to relocate to Houston. For Paul Tulane and Newcomb colleges, it marked the last graduation. In a post-Katrina cost-cutting measure, the liberal arts colleges for, respectively, men and women are to be merged July 1 into the Newcomb-Tulane College for all undergraduates.
Although the dissolution of Newcomb had sparked a rally, indignant e-mails and an unsuccessful lawsuit, protest at Saturday's ceremony was silent, limited to fleurs-de-lis in powder blue, one of Newcomb's colors, that Newcomb graduates stuck onto their mortarboards.
Newcomb graduate Casey Haugner, who received a master's degree in business administration Saturday, drew applause in her speech representing the Class of 2006 when she mentioned the 120-year-old women's college.
"I am proud to say that my education was learned, experienced and enriched at Tulane," she said.
Ceremony filled withbittersweet N.O. memories
Sunday, May 14, 2006
By John Pope
Staff writer --Times Picayune:
In an emotion-laden ceremony full of academic pomp, inspirational oratory, cheers, tears, laughter and songs evoking memories of New Orleans' struggle since Hurricane Katrina, 2,200 students graduated from Tulane University on Saturday.
The oratory came from Tulane President Scott Cowen and former Presidents Bush and Clinton, whose Katrina relief fund has given the university $750,000.
The songs -- "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," "Our Home, Louisiana" and "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" -- were sprinkled throughout the ceremony. As if the music weren't enough to make hurricane-battered spectators weep into the second-line handkerchiefs provided by Tulane, the songs' impact was slammed home by videos showing the flooded city, local landmarks such as St. Charles Avenue streetcars, and Tulane students and staffers gutting ruined homes and repairing their campus.
DeGenerosity
The laughs were provided by Ellen DeGeneres, a last-minute addition who strode onto the New Orleans Arena stage near the end of the ceremony in her trademark white sneakers -- and a white bathrobe.
"I was told everyone would be wearing robes," the New Orleans native deadpanned as she stood in front of rows of men and women on the podium wearing caps, gowns and academic hoods in an assortment of hues. The crowd of about 17,000 roared.
In contrast to Bush and Clinton, who urged the graduates to dream big and to devote themselves to volunteerism and public service, DeGeneres, whose mother once worked at Tulane's Newcomb College, told them to "exfoliate, hydrate, moisturize, exercise and floss."
And while Cowen bestowed honorary doctorates upon Bush and Clinton, he gave the Emmy-winning talk-show host a white parasol with green trim so she could second-line with the graduates behind Dr. Michael White's Original Liberty Jazz Band for the ceremony's traditional rousing finale, as confetti, streamers and 2,000 green-and-white beach balls rained down from the rafters.
Providing comic relief was fine with DeGeneres because, she said backstage, she was tired of crying about Hurricane Katrina's destruction.
'You are all miracles'
The storm, which shut down Tulane from late August until early January and left the university with about $300 million in damages and lost revenue, was a central feature of the ceremony.
The fact that Tulane's professors were able to continue educating students and turning out graduates in the wake of Katrina was, Cowen said, nothing short of miraculous.
"Eight months ago, I thought I'd never see this day," he said. "To be here, with Presidents Bush and Clinton, is a dream come true."
Speaking to the students, he praised their "resiliency, courage and . . . ability to overcome adversity," and said, "You are our inspiration, and you are all miracles."
Bush echoed Cowen in extolling the grit of Tulane students and New Orleanians in general.
"Katrina couldn't break the spirit of the people who call this remarkable, improbable city home," he said, noting that local residents have shown the world "the essence of the American spirit -- courage, compassion and resourcefulness."
Clinton said that the outpouring of help for the ravaged Gulf Coast shows "the most important fact of your lives: the interdependence of human beings on this planet."
Circle of life
A longtime fan of New Orleans and its music, Clinton cited "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" the way it was performed Saturday, in two tempos, as an example of the way life goes. White's jazz band played it first in slow time, which would accompany a cortege to the graveyard. Then the band added a frisky, up-tempo version of the spiritual, much like that played after a funeral, to acknowledge that the person is free of earthly bonds and troubles.
"Life's like that," Clinton said. "It's all about new beginnings. I wish you many."
The commencement was followed by ceremonies in which each college and school honored its degree recipients.
For the medical school, it was the first official event in New Orleans since the storm forced it to relocate to Houston. For Paul Tulane and Newcomb colleges, it marked the last graduation. In a post-Katrina cost-cutting measure, the liberal arts colleges for, respectively, men and women are to be merged July 1 into the Newcomb-Tulane College for all undergraduates.
Although the dissolution of Newcomb had sparked a rally, indignant e-mails and an unsuccessful lawsuit, protest at Saturday's ceremony was silent, limited to fleurs-de-lis in powder blue, one of Newcomb's colors, that Newcomb graduates stuck onto their mortarboards.
Newcomb graduate Casey Haugner, who received a master's degree in business administration Saturday, drew applause in her speech representing the Class of 2006 when she mentioned the 120-year-old women's college.
"I am proud to say that my education was learned, experienced and enriched at Tulane," she said.
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Audrey2Katrina
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- Age: 75
- Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 10:39 pm
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Lakeview revival on the way, leaders say
Building permits increasing for area
Sunday, May 14, 2006
By Karen Turni Bazile
Staff writer: Times Picayune
Lakeview neighborhood leaders said Saturday that they see evidence the community is beginning to bounce back from Hurricane Katrina devastation, pointing to a dramatic increase in city building permits issued for the area and the reopening of a smattering of businesses.
Activists urged residents meeting in the St. Dominic School gym to get involved with committees working on issues ranging from restoration of utilities to managing greenspace.
"We are on the way back," said Freddy Yoder, chairman of the Rebuild New Orleans District 5 Lake Area Infrastructure Committee. "Don't wait on the government to do it for you. If you have the financial resources, take action, and get on with it."
Yoder gently urged the audience to complete house-gutting, saying government-financed pickup of debris material "is not going to go on forever."
In addition, Yoder said building permits issued since Katrina in the city's Planning District 5, which includes about 11,500 homes in Lakeview, Lake Vista, Country Club Gardens and other enclaves, have escalated in the last few months.
Offering cumulative figures, he said there were 166 permits issued as of March 10; 2,783 permits by March 29; and 7,768 permits by April 30. In some cases, as many as three permits may be issued for a single house to cover different types of repair or construction, he said.
"That means there are about 3,000 homes where people are moving ahead," Yoder told about 300 residents at the meeting, called by the Lakeview Civic Improvement Association. "That's good news to me."
Civic association board member Kelly Alfortish said that among Lakeview residents responding to a recent survey, 75 percent said they are returning, 11 percent said they are not returning and 14 percent are undecided. The survey response rate wasn't immediately available.
Group members said they are heartened by the reopening of a few banks, restaurants, doctors' offices and a veterinary clinic, among other businesses. One office building on Robert E. Lee Boulevard has 13 active tenants and there are several businesses open on Harrison Avenue, leaders said.
Civic association President Jeb Bruneau provided fresh details about repairs to the levee system and the condition of utilities, and urged residents to get involved in one of the group's 72 subcommittees.
The meeting included appearances by several runoff candidates in the District A and at-large City Council races. State Rep. Emile "Peppi" Bruneau, R-New Orleans, father of the civic group's president and a well-known Lakeview figure, took the microphone to announce his endorsement for Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu in the mayor's race.
Bruneau, who backed unsuccessful mayoral candidate Ron Forman in the primary, said that in the runoff "you have to pick from the gene pool available. There is a fine young man available, and he is not the mayor."
Incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin, Landrieu's opponent, wasn't represented at the meeting.
Bruneau said it is wrong there are still abandoned cars and lack of proper garbage pickup eight months after the hurricane.
"I'm tired of Lakeview being a forgotten part of the city," he said. "It's not about ideology anymore. It's about practicality."
Lakeview Civic Improvement Association officials said volunteers are staffing a community information center Monday through Saturday at the Gulf Coast Bank & Trust office on Harrison Avenue. The group also is sponsoring a neutral-ground cleanup from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on May 21, using the corner of Harrison and Canal Boulevard as a staging point. More information is available at http://www.lakeviewcivic.org.
Building permits increasing for area
Sunday, May 14, 2006
By Karen Turni Bazile
Staff writer: Times Picayune
Lakeview neighborhood leaders said Saturday that they see evidence the community is beginning to bounce back from Hurricane Katrina devastation, pointing to a dramatic increase in city building permits issued for the area and the reopening of a smattering of businesses.
Activists urged residents meeting in the St. Dominic School gym to get involved with committees working on issues ranging from restoration of utilities to managing greenspace.
"We are on the way back," said Freddy Yoder, chairman of the Rebuild New Orleans District 5 Lake Area Infrastructure Committee. "Don't wait on the government to do it for you. If you have the financial resources, take action, and get on with it."
Yoder gently urged the audience to complete house-gutting, saying government-financed pickup of debris material "is not going to go on forever."
In addition, Yoder said building permits issued since Katrina in the city's Planning District 5, which includes about 11,500 homes in Lakeview, Lake Vista, Country Club Gardens and other enclaves, have escalated in the last few months.
Offering cumulative figures, he said there were 166 permits issued as of March 10; 2,783 permits by March 29; and 7,768 permits by April 30. In some cases, as many as three permits may be issued for a single house to cover different types of repair or construction, he said.
"That means there are about 3,000 homes where people are moving ahead," Yoder told about 300 residents at the meeting, called by the Lakeview Civic Improvement Association. "That's good news to me."
Civic association board member Kelly Alfortish said that among Lakeview residents responding to a recent survey, 75 percent said they are returning, 11 percent said they are not returning and 14 percent are undecided. The survey response rate wasn't immediately available.
Group members said they are heartened by the reopening of a few banks, restaurants, doctors' offices and a veterinary clinic, among other businesses. One office building on Robert E. Lee Boulevard has 13 active tenants and there are several businesses open on Harrison Avenue, leaders said.
Civic association President Jeb Bruneau provided fresh details about repairs to the levee system and the condition of utilities, and urged residents to get involved in one of the group's 72 subcommittees.
The meeting included appearances by several runoff candidates in the District A and at-large City Council races. State Rep. Emile "Peppi" Bruneau, R-New Orleans, father of the civic group's president and a well-known Lakeview figure, took the microphone to announce his endorsement for Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu in the mayor's race.
Bruneau, who backed unsuccessful mayoral candidate Ron Forman in the primary, said that in the runoff "you have to pick from the gene pool available. There is a fine young man available, and he is not the mayor."
Incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin, Landrieu's opponent, wasn't represented at the meeting.
Bruneau said it is wrong there are still abandoned cars and lack of proper garbage pickup eight months after the hurricane.
"I'm tired of Lakeview being a forgotten part of the city," he said. "It's not about ideology anymore. It's about practicality."
Lakeview Civic Improvement Association officials said volunteers are staffing a community information center Monday through Saturday at the Gulf Coast Bank & Trust office on Harrison Avenue. The group also is sponsoring a neutral-ground cleanup from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on May 21, using the corner of Harrison and Canal Boulevard as a staging point. More information is available at http://www.lakeviewcivic.org.
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Audrey2Katrina
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David Thomas guilty plea: His victim's family speaks out
Last Update: 5/12/2006 11:00:22 PM
(MOBILE, Ala.) NBC-15/Mobile:
After more than a year of waiting, instead of their day in court, they are receiving a confession. But is this enough? Nine-year-old Eugenia Thompson is getting back into the game.
"Now, I'm feeling good,” said Eugenia Thompson, the victim in the hit-and-run.
That wasn't the case 15 months ago, after former school board member David Thomas ran over the then-second-grader's foot after a Mardi Gras parade as she stood near a barricade, leaving her temporarily with a limp. Thomas then left the scene of the accident: a felony charge that Thomas now intends to plead guilty to.
Eugenia's aunt, who was a witness to the incident and had been subpoenaed to testify, says this apparent confession only three days before the trial was to get underway, is too little, too late.
"I just feel like he did it and he could have admitted it, so we wouldn't have had to go through all this,” said Yolanda Porter, Eugenia aunt. “It should have been over with."
It is an ordeal which has lasted more than a year, that Eugenia's aunt -- and softball coach -- says has taken a toll on the entire family, especially her niece.
“Gina… being a child… we wanted what is best for her,” said Porter, “because this placed a lot of pressure on her."
Eugenia's family says that the district attorney's office contacted them about the possibility of Thomas's guilty plea, but says that David Thomas never contacted the family this week himself.
While Thomas did meet with the family a few days after the Mardi Gras accident, there has been no contact since. “I think he should apologize and I think my sister deserves an apology," Porter added. “And I think my niece deserves an apology."
While the Thompson family may not be receiving an apology, David Thomas apparently does not know what punishment he will receive for pleading guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, saying in a court document he will "defer to the court" when it comes to his sentence.
Leaving the scene of an accident is a 'Class C' felony, meaning he could face between one and ten years in prison, and up to a five thousand dollar fine.
Last Update: 5/12/2006 11:00:22 PM
(MOBILE, Ala.) NBC-15/Mobile:
After more than a year of waiting, instead of their day in court, they are receiving a confession. But is this enough? Nine-year-old Eugenia Thompson is getting back into the game.
"Now, I'm feeling good,” said Eugenia Thompson, the victim in the hit-and-run.
That wasn't the case 15 months ago, after former school board member David Thomas ran over the then-second-grader's foot after a Mardi Gras parade as she stood near a barricade, leaving her temporarily with a limp. Thomas then left the scene of the accident: a felony charge that Thomas now intends to plead guilty to.
Eugenia's aunt, who was a witness to the incident and had been subpoenaed to testify, says this apparent confession only three days before the trial was to get underway, is too little, too late.
"I just feel like he did it and he could have admitted it, so we wouldn't have had to go through all this,” said Yolanda Porter, Eugenia aunt. “It should have been over with."
It is an ordeal which has lasted more than a year, that Eugenia's aunt -- and softball coach -- says has taken a toll on the entire family, especially her niece.
“Gina… being a child… we wanted what is best for her,” said Porter, “because this placed a lot of pressure on her."
Eugenia's family says that the district attorney's office contacted them about the possibility of Thomas's guilty plea, but says that David Thomas never contacted the family this week himself.
While Thomas did meet with the family a few days after the Mardi Gras accident, there has been no contact since. “I think he should apologize and I think my sister deserves an apology," Porter added. “And I think my niece deserves an apology."
While the Thompson family may not be receiving an apology, David Thomas apparently does not know what punishment he will receive for pleading guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, saying in a court document he will "defer to the court" when it comes to his sentence.
Leaving the scene of an accident is a 'Class C' felony, meaning he could face between one and ten years in prison, and up to a five thousand dollar fine.
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