History > 2006 > USA > Louisiana > Mississippi

Rebuilding (IV)

Editorial

A Reason to Drill in the Gulf

October 23, 2006
The New York Times

It is time to make a serious effort to save the vanishing wetlands and barrier islands along the coast of Louisiana. The best chance is a bill passed by the Senate that would guarantee Louisiana and three other coastal states a share of oil and gas revenues from drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The states would be expected to use the proceeds largely for coastal restoration and related projects. The House should adopt this measure in its present form during the coming lame-duck session, and President Bush should sign it.

Since the deluge of Hurricane Katrina anniversary coverage in August, there has been very little talk about the safety of New Orleans and the surrounding region. In fact, the city and the region are more vulnerable than ever.

Even before last year’s storms, the wetlands and barrier islands that provide a protective buffer were eroding at a rate of 25 square miles a year — the result of a half-century of calamitous mismanagement of Mississippi River water flows. Katrina and Rita together snatched away another 217 square miles. Levees, of course, are necessary to protect New Orleans and other low-lying areas, but they are only the final line of defense. Healthy wetlands are essential to any long-term plan.

The Senate bill — whose principal architect is Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat — would open up 8.3 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to new oil and gas development. Half the royalties would go to the federal treasury, 37.5 percent would go to the four coastal states, and the rest would go into a fund to help other states purchase open space.

Our support for this bill should not be taken as a blanket endorsement of offshore drilling — nor as an endorsement of a mischievous bill sponsored by Representative Richard Pombo, Republican of California, and passed by the House last summer. The Pombo bill would end a longstanding federal moratorium on oil and gas drilling on the entire American coastline. The Landrieu bill would simply enlarge the drilling area in the gulf, where oil and gas exploration has been broadly accepted for years.

Mr. Pombo is hoping that the Senate will agree to a conference committee in which the two bills can be married. But his bill is so poorly thought out as to be unacceptable, even as a starting point for compromise. A conference committee would also leave the protection of America’s coastal waters to the mercy of closed-door horse trading.

Ms. Landrieu opposes any such compromise and so, to his credit, does the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist. They are hoping to persuade the House to accept and approve Ms. Landrieu’s narrower bill before the present Congress comes to an end.

Is this an impossible objective?

Not if sensible people in the House think carefully about it. The Landrieu bill targets an immediate need. The House should not see it as a rival to Mr. Pombo’s bill — which has no chance of passing the Senate — or, for that matter, as primarily an energy bill. The House should instead see it as a way to restore the health of a battered ecosystem, as future protection for the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people, and as a way to deliver on unfulfilled promises.

    A Reason to Drill in the Gulf, NYT, 23.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/opinion/23mon1.html

Flood risk doesn't stop rebuilders

Updated 10/19/2006 2:08 AM ET
USA Today
By Anne Rochell Konigsmark

NEW ORLEANS — Nearly three-fourths of New Orleans homeowners applying for federal grants say they'll rebuild their Katrina-damaged homes in flood areas even though city restrictions are unlikely to prevent their houses from being wiped out if the levees fail again.

The restrictions, which say that the city's homes must be raised at least 3 feet to avoid flooding, have come under fire from some local officials and government watchdog groups. They say 3 feet of elevation is not needed in areas that did not flood after Hurricane Katrina, and 3 feet is too low in areas that saw 20 feet of water.

Even the Federal Emergency Management Agency says thousands of houses could flood again if they are rebuilt under the new rules. "If there is another catastrophic event, flooding will occur," says Doug Bellomo, a deputy director of risk analysis at FEMA.

The Louisiana Recovery Authority, which controls billions in federal relief money, expects about 53,000 New Orleans homeowners to apply for federal grants. The grants provide up to $150,000 for uninsured losses, and residents can use the money to rebuild or relocate.

So far, 14,534 New Orleanians have applied for grants; about 10,634 have said they want to rebuild where they were.

"The taxpayers are going to be subsidizing unwise construction," says Robert Hunter, director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America. About $7.5 billion is available to homeowners.

The New Orleans City Council adopted the 3-foot rule on Sept. 1 to avoid losing millions in federal grants. The recovery authority has said parishes that don't adopt the rules will be excluded from receiving some of the relief money.

St. Bernard Parish, where all but 50 homes flooded, is considering rejecting the rules. "Our goal is not to adopt them," says St. Bernard Councilman Craig Taffaro. "We don't agree with the science."

Paul Rainwater of the recovery authority says the rules are "not perfect," but will help residents get much-needed flood insurance.

    Flood risk doesn't stop rebuilders, UT, 19.10.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-18-flood-risk_x.htm

New Orleans Population Is Reduced Nearly 60%

October 7, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 6 — The city’s population has dropped by nearly 60 percent since Hurricane Katrina, far more sharply than recent optimistic estimates had suggested, according to an authoritative post-storm survey released this week.

The population of New Orleans is now only 187,525, well under half the pre-storm population of 454,863, according to the survey, commissioned by several state agencies. The United States Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised those who carried out the door-to-door population count this summer.

“We actually knocked on doors and asked how many people lived there,” said Dr. Alden Henderson of the centers. About 490 households were surveyed, and researchers went to more than 1,100 dwellings, he said.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin has suggested that about half of New Orleans’s former residents had returned, basing his projections partly on utility users. But the new numbers indicate that repopulation will take awhile to reach that level.

“The recovery is going to be slower than we anticipated,” said David Bowman, an official with the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which helped commission the survey. “It’s going to take time to get the housing stock back online.”

The margin of error for the survey was relatively high, plus or minus 12 percentage points.

The new figures also suggest that many more whites than blacks have returned to New Orleans. The white and black populations here are now separated by less than three percentage points, according to the survey — a gap much smaller than previously thought, and far less than the pre-hurricane divide, when New Orleans was 67 percent black. Whites now make up 44 percent of the population and blacks 46 percent, according to the new survey.

For months, neighborhood activists and housing advocates have suggested that the city’s African-American population has had a difficult time re-establishing itself. Much of the rental housing was destroyed by the storm, rents have risen significantly and federal housing aid has barely begun to flow. The new numbers appear to bear out these concerns. They also suggest that the relatively high black vote in last spring’s city elections — as much as 57 percent of the electorate — was elevated by citizens making the trip specifically to vote.

Still, officials expect these population figures to go up, eventually. More than 11,000 people from New Orleans have applied for federal rebuilding aid through the state’s Road Home program. Some 80,000 housing units were destroyed in Orleans Parish alone, and their reconstruction has hardly begun.

The new population count has taken analysts here somewhat aback.

“The conventional wisdom was higher,” said Richard Campanella, a Tulane University geographer. “It’s a little bit of a disappointment. I don’t question the numbers, that’s for sure. This is the most authoritative survey yet.”

Though officials acknowledged the new survey might not fully account for all of the city’s daytime population — many are still commuting in to work on their houses — they emphasized that it was likely to be far more reliable than previous efforts, which relied on measures like school enrollment and electricity use.

    New Orleans Population Is Reduced Nearly 60%, NYT, 7.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/us/07population.html

Minority Businesses Get Lead in Orleans

October 2, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:57 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- New Orleans' mayor signed an order Monday requiring that businesses use as many local and minority-owned firms as possible when they seek millions of dollars in tax incentives and grants for Hurricane Katrina recovery.

Mayor Ray Nagin's executive order requires large businesses seeking the tax incentives to use 50 percent local businesses and 35 percent women- or minority-controlled businesses whenever possible.

Similar requirements have been in place for government contracts, but the order expands the requirement to businesses asking for assistance promised by various hurricane recovery programs.

''We just want to make sure we don't go back to a city of haves and have-nots,'' Nagin said at a news conference. ''This is imperative, not only for us but for our kids and grandkids.''

    Minority Businesses Get Lead in Orleans, NYT, 2.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Nagin-Minority-Businesses.html