Gulf Coast Recovery?

You know, whenever I hear comments that NOLA is back to normal (it's never been normal, God forbid) I have to look no further than our delightful friends at FEMA. Unfortunately, stories like this one are few and far between. 3.9 billion in hurricane aid still unspent:

WASHINGTON — A massive effort to fix public works destroyed more than three years ago by the Gulf Coast hurricanes remains largely stalled, leaving more than $3.9 billion in federal aid unspent and key repairs far from complete.

The scale of that job is enormous. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has promised $5.8 billion to repair everything from flooded libraries and schools to sewer systems and roads that were ruined when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita obliterated huge sections of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005.

Nearly 3½ years after those storms hit, new FEMA accounting reports show two-thirds of the money to pay for permanent rebuilding work still has not been spent, the latest bottleneck in a recovery long beset by criticism that it has been too slow and inefficient. And despite a handful of high-profile successes, officials who had vowed to speed up the pace of repairs concede it is still going far more slowly than it should.

"I think it can go better. That's almost obvious," says James Stark, who runs FEMA's recovery effort in the region. "Public safety, health and education are critical. That's not proceeding as quickly as I think many people in southeast Louisiana would want." Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has ordered the agency to take a "fresh look" at those roadblocks. Its first report is due Tuesday.

The delays have led to "dilapidated buildings, roads and sewer systems in our communities," says Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who chairs a disaster recovery subcommittee. "As we approach the fourth anniversary of Katrina and Rita, we simply cannot permit billions off dollars to remain bottled up in bureaucratic red tape."

When I visited NOLA last summer few of my old friends wanted to talk about the Katrina/Rita debacle - most are Repubs, after all and didn't want to trash talk the party - (yes, I know) but others shared their stories and pictures and what the related left me speechless. One friend who lost her home on the MS coast (with 2 sons serving in Iraq) waited almost 2 years for a contaminated FEMA trailer. During the waiting period she spent 3 days a week in a tent on her property; the other 4 days with family in LA. Her new home still isn't completed.

Let's pray that President Obama gets on top of this and gets things straightened out.

And so it goes.
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