New Orleans, FEMA Wrangle Over Katrina Bills U.S. Agency Balks At Some Expenses; Longtime Potholes
By ALEX ROTH Wall Street Journal July 2, 2008; Page A4 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121496276667621821.html?mod=hps_us_editors_picks NEW ORLEANS -- Outside the popular Domilise's deli, a mile from Tulane University, the streets are so cratered that drivers experience amusement-park-like jolts when exceeding 10 miles an hour. Don't blame Hurricane Katrina. "They've been like that forever -- since I was little," said Patti Domilise, whose family has owned the deli for more than 80 years. "We don't have any good streets in New Orleans." As New Orleans officials negotiate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to try to get funding for hundreds of projects, from filling potholes to repairing water-pump stations, a point of debate is just how much of the city's crumbling infrastructure can be blamed on Katrina. City officials contend that flooding from the August 2005 storm, one of the costliest and deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history, dealt catastrophic damage to roads, water and sewer lines, city prisons, fire stations and other property, and that the city needs federal funds to repair or replace them. Storm flooding rendered buildings at a city jail complex virtually uninhabitable, says Edward Blakely, the city's director of recovery. The city asked FEMA for at least $30 million to raze some of the old prison buildings and build new ones in their place. But FEMA, which has agreed to spend $1.8 billion on Katrina-related projects in Orleans Parish, is balking at meeting the city's funding requests for many such projects, arguing that much of the damage that the city wants repaired existed before the hurricane. The federal agency says it isn't obligated to pay for damage that existed before the storm. The federal government is paying to rebuild levees and make other repairs essential to protect New Orleans from another flood, however. More than 370 public buildings were either destroyed or severely damaged by Katrina, New Orleans officials say. But even these officials admit that a countless number of these buildings, including the city jails, had significant structural problems well before 2005. FEMA has declined thus far to fund the city's request to replace the jail buildings, offering $3.8 million for repairs instead. The agency says it will reconsider the request if the city can prove that the Katrina damage to the buildings was more extensive. "FEMA's role is very specific," said Bob Josephson, FEMA's New Orleans-based director of external affairs. "Our role is to fund disaster-related damages, not deferred maintenance. Our job is to restore it to its predisaster function and capacity." FEMA officials say the city could be eligible for federal block-grant money to fund some of the projects that FEMA can't pay for. In the initial months after the storm, local officials and FEMA squabbled over who would pay for extensive repairs needed to the city's 1,600 miles of water and sewer lines, which had suffered damage not just in the flooding, but also in the cleanup. Construction crews routinely broke underground pipes while removing debris. About 80 million to 100 million gallons of water a day were leaking from the system. But FEMA officials say some of the century-old water pipes were so leaky to begin with that the city was losing 60 million gallons of drinking water a day even before Katrina hit. Last year, federal and local officials reached a compromise: FEMA would pay for water-pipe repairs until the city returned to its pre-Katrina levels of hemorrhaging. Today, the leak is down slightly, to about 77 million gallons of water a day, according to FEMA. Now, federal and local officials are in a dispute over the fate of three fire stations. The city says the stations were essentially destroyed by the floods and need to be rebuilt. FEMA has offered to repair them instead. City officials are also asking FEMA to help fix crumbling streets, a problem that unites poor neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward, wealthier ones like Lakeview, and almost everything in between. FEMA officials note that some of the city's bumpiest roads are on the west bank of the Mississippi River, which escaped flooding. Jim Stark, head of FEMA's Louisiana Transitional Recovery Office, said FEMA has agreed to give the city $16 million for road repairs. In the past few years, local and federal officials have walked neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street -- a total of 13,000 city blocks -- trying to separate the Katrina damage from the pre-existing craters and potholes. The wrangling over funding doesn't apply to repairs considered essential to protect New Orleans from another natural disaster. The Army Corps of Engineers has spent millions of dollars fixing and strengthening 220 miles of levees and flood walls and building canal protections as part of a nearly $15 billion project to protect the city from a so-called 100-year storm. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2011. Meanwhile, of the city's 24 pump stations that push water out of the city after a heavy rain, all but two have been repaired in the years since Katrina, according to Marcia A. St. Martin, executive director of the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu ******************************* * POST TO [EMAIL PROTECTED] * ******************************* Medianews mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
