Southern communities face high hurricane disaster risk

The Associated Press has identified five coastal areas of the United States that are particularly vulnerable to hurricane disasters -- and four of them are in the South.

The at-risk spots named by the AP are Florida's Lake Okeechobee, imperiled by the breach-prone Herbert Hoover Dike; Galveston, Texas, "sitting uneasily by the Gulf of Mexico, its residents limited to a single evacuation route"; New York City, "long spared a major storm but susceptible to a calamity of submerged subways and refugees caught in horrendous traffic jams"; North Carolina's Outer Banks, where experts warn that a Katrina-sized storm could wipe out 75 percent of the existing barrier islands; and Miami, "full of elderly people and others who might be trapped."

In an updated seasonal storm forecast released today, Colorado State University researcher William Gray predicted a 74 percent chance of a major hurricane hitting the U.S. coast in the season that begins tomorrow. He foresees 17 named storms and nine hurricanes -- five of them intense.

Meanwhile, a new Mason-Dixon poll released today finds that residents of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are unprepared for a serious storm, with 61 percent of those surveyed saying they have no hurricane survival kit and 16 percent saying they might not evacuate even if ordered to do so.

Apparently, not all of us have learned Katrina's hard lessons.

FEMA clueless about toxic trailer warnings?

At a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee on hurricane readiness held earlier this month, Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) asked Federal Emergency Management Agency Director David Paulison to address complaints that trailers housing Katrina and Rita survivors have dangerous levels of formaldehyde, the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger reports:

Paulison said he was unaware the trailers posed any health threats.

So apparently Paulison wasn't paying attention when Sierra Club issued a warning a year ago in the form of a fact sheet titled "Toxic Trailers?: Tests reveal high formaldehyde levels in FEMA trailers." Samples taken by the environmental advocacy group found that 83 percent of FEMA trailers tested in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi had levels of the chemical that exceeded recommended limits, with some of the trailers showing levels three times the safe limit.

Formaldehyde is emitted as vapors from insulating foams, adhesives used in wood products and carpeting, and some paints and other coating materials. Levels that surpass recommended limits can irritate the eyes and mucous membranes and cause headaches, sore throats and breathing problems. In addition, the International Agency for Research on Cancer has linked formaldehyde exposure to nasopharyngeal cancer.

But wait -- maybe Paulison was actually paying attention after all but simply thinks the problem is not his agency's. The paper goes on to say:

After the hearing, Paulison told reporters he was aware some trailers and mobile homes have high levels of formaldehyde gas. But he said it is the responsibility of hurricane victims to rid themselves of the danger.

"We've told people they can air those trailers out," Paulison said.

If only it were so easy. In fact, Becky Gillette, vice chair of the Sierra Club's Mississippi chapter, says tests found elevated formaldehyde levels in trailers that were 20 months old and have been aired out.

Besides ventilation, another technique recommended for reducing formaldehyde off-gassing is to seal the surfaces of the formaldehyde-containing products that are not already laminated or coated, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. That was also one of the recommendations offered by the Sierra Club -- but evidently not acted upon by FEMA.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, once again has requested FEMA documents regarding the trailers. He first raised concerns and asked FEMA for more information about formaldehyde levels last August but told the paper he's received little response.

FEMA slow to respond to a crisis? Please, Mr. Paulison, tell us it isn't so.

(Photo of FEMA trailer in New Orleans' 9th Ward by Marvin Nauman for FEMA.)

War spending bill nixes local match requirement

State and local governments in storm-stricken areas of the Gulf Coast will no longer have to put up their own money in order to get federal rebuilding funds, thanks to the emergency war spending bill approved by Congress last week and signed into law by President Bush.

The new law strikes the match requirement imposed by the Robert T. Stafford Act, a federal law governing disaster recovery efforts. The act normally imposes a 25 percent match requirement, which Bush reduced to 10 percent -- though that still proved onerous for devastated communities. The president had vetoed earlier legislation that waived the requirement, which he struck for New York following the 9/11 attacks.

As my Institute for Southern Studies colleague Chris Kromm and I reported in our recent Salon article on storm recovery in Mississippi, local elected officials in the Gulf blamed the requirement for slowing the pace of recovery in the region.

The language waiving the match requirement was written by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who fought to ensure it was included in the bill approved by the Senate and sent to the president:

"This was a landmark vote for south Louisiana's continued recovery from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the flooding that followed," Sen. Landrieu said. "The local match requirement costs our communities millions of dollars while drowning them in thousands of forms and regulations. Louisiana needs more money and less paper. The insurmountable red tape slows recovery to a crawl, and this bill is a key step to cutting through it."

The measure also offers about $3 billion in assistance to hurricane-affected areas throughout the Gulf Region, including:

* Forgiveness of Federal Emergency Management Agency Community Disaster Loans when independent audits determine a community's fiscal recovery is insufficient to repay the debt after a three-year grace period;

* $1.3 billion in levee funding;

* $60 million to recruit teachers and principals for K-12 schools in storm-affected areas;

* $50 million for several crime-fighting efforts;

* $35 million for for storm-impacted transit services;

* $30 million to help meet expenses incurred by higher education institutions that were forced to close, relocate or curtail their activities as a result of the 2005 hurricanes;

* $25 million for disaster loans to small businesses; and

* Extension of the deadline to use $150 million in Social Services Block Grants from September 2007 to Sept. 30, 2008.

GAO finds no wrongdoing in N.O. pump contract

The Government Accountability Office has released a report into concerns that cronyism tainted a deal that led to more than 30 problematic flood-control pumps being installed in New Orleans. The federal watchdog agency found that while the Army Corps of Engineers rushed to install the pumps, there was no wrongdoing:

In order to increase the likelihood that pumping capacity would be in place when needed, the Corps utilized several tools to expedite and streamline the acquisition process. The Corps appears to have had a valid reason for each of the iterative decisions it made at each stage of the procurement process. The cumulative effect of these decisions resulted in one supplier -- Moving Water Industries Corporation -- being in the strongest competitive position to receive the contract for the pumping systems.

A Florida firm headed by a major Republican donor and former business partner of Jeb Bush, MWI is currently being sued by the U.S. Justice Department over allegations of corrupt taxpayer-backed dealings in Nigeria.

Of the two pump suppliers that the Corps considered for the New Orleans job, only MWI had actually manufactured a pump with the specifications being sought, according to the GAO.

However, the pumps -- which were plagued with numerous mechanical problems -- will come under more scrutiny. That's because the emergency war spending bill approved by Congress last week and signed into law by President Bush includes language seeking a technical review of the pumps, thanks to Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). Said the senator in a statement on the legislation:

"Our recovery depends on confidence in our flood-control system," Sen. Landrieu said. "Reports that the Corps of Engineers installed faulty and untested pumps are gravely troubling. The supplemental spending bill will allow a technical review that will demonstrate what needs to be fixed so that we can make sure our communities are safe from flooding during future disasters."

'Less Meeting, More Fighting': Lessons Learned by Grassroots Katrina and Tsunami Social Justice Activists

by Bill Quigley

The tiny old woman with the tanned, deeply lined face stood up and told us what happened to her coastal village of 130 families in Tamil Nadu India, along the southeastern coast. Before the tsunami, villagers survived by gathering prawns by hand from shallow waters and by hiring out to work for people who owned fishing boats.

Without warning, on Dec. 26, 2004, a 30-foot tsunami wall of water roared through their coastal village sweeping aside everything in sight. The elderly woman was knocked down. With her hands she demonstrated how she was violently tumbled over and over by the powerful following waves. Finally able to wrap her arms high around a coconut tree, she clung to it as her clothes were ripped from her body by the surging waters. When the waters receded, every house in her village was gone. The tiny woman, now quietly crying as she told her story, was ashamed as she searched for something to cover her nakedness. She started searching for her missing family and the rest of her village. Many were dead. Some are still missing today. Those who remained were homeless.

Today, some families in her village live in newly constructed 340-square-foot concrete homes constructed by international relief agencies. Others live in temporary thatched huts perched on top of their neighbors' new homes. All are trying to rebuild their lives.

The Dec. 26, 2004 earthquake in the Indian Ocean measuring 9.3 in magnitude sparked a series of devastating tsunamis that killed over 230,000 people and made millions homeless. Since then, Indian community organizations have struggled in the face of unprecedented problems to try to recover and rebuild.

A group of grassroots Katrina social justice activists were recruited to visit with our Indian counterparts from the most devastated areas of coastal India to see what we could learn with and from each other.

Together we visited numerous villages up and down the Indian coast and listened to hundreds of people describe how the tsunami and its aftermath continues to impact them. We listened to displaced families as we sat on woven mats in steaming thatched huts as the temperatures passed 105. An entire fishing community told us their story under towering palm trees backed by the brilliant blue Bay of Bengal of the Indian Ocean. We ate rice, yogurt and fish off of banana leaves with our fingers while we visited with one village. Others shared what happened as we walked in the blazing sun through fields of women and men digging dirt with shovels and pails to construct a new road.

We shared the experiences of our Gulf Coast communities and the massive and continuing human rights violations perpetrated against Katrina survivors both at home and internally displaced. We shared a slide show illustrating human and civil rights violations after Katrina. After finding out that police fired weapons to turn away fleeing people trying to escape across the Mississippi river in New Orleans, the continuing displacement of hundreds of thousands, and the government's determination to demolish thousands of usable public housing apartments, our Indian friends were incredulous. One said, "This would never happen in our country. If this happened in India, there would be a revolution!"

Over hundreds of miles and days and nights of visits, we and our Indian friends found tremendous similarities in our experiences between the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

Our governments, on all levels, have failed and continue to fail us. The needs of poor and working people have been mainly neglected. Incredible incompetence and apparent lack of sustained concern have combined to aggravate and amplify the effects of the disasters. It is primarily through the efforts of small voluntary organizations that any real progress is being made.

We released a joint tsunami-Katrina statement at the end of our trip summarizing five of our observations.

We first agree that our communities have each been the victims of disaster capitalism. After each of our disasters, the tremendous loss and suffering of our people have been seized upon as opportunities for profit by commercial and financial interests. The rebuilding processes have been driven not by the needs of the people, but by economic and corporate interests which have neglected and over-ridden the needs and perspectives of local communities.

Second, we agree that technological and bureaucratic planning for disasters is not enough. Communities at risk of disaster must be respected and involved in all preparations for disaster. While we recognize the important responsibility of government in preparing for disaster, we have seen the failures of preparation that is based on technology alone. We have also seen the failures of bureaucratic and professional planners. These failures will continue until the communities themselves are given a priority in preparing and shaping and executing planning for disasters. All preparation must be sensitive to community needs and traditions.

Third, before, during, and after disasters, the needs of the least powerful must be made a priority. This is nearly the opposite of what has been occurring. These needs include the full implementation of human rights to housing, land, occupation and livelihood, freedom from discrimination, and the right to return.

Fourth, we insist on gender equity. Our experiences have clearly shown us that there is a systematic violation of the rights of women in every phase of disasters. In planning, preparation, evacuation, distribution of relief, rebuilding, the right to return, and in every phase of policy and decision making, the presence and participation and value of the role of women have been seriously inadequate. The human rights of women must be immediately respected as their suffering and disrespect continues today in both our countries.

Fifth, we demand accountability and transparency. Anyone who is raising, taking, or spending money in the name of our communities must be accountable to our people. We call specifically for our governments, our nongovernmental organizations and our non-profits to let our communities know how much has been raised, how much has been spent, how all funds have been spent, how it has been spent, and each organization, corporation, governmental unit or person who receives any funds. Our communities must participate in all these decisions. In order to have true community directed participation, we insist on our rights to accountability and transparency.

Our joint tsunami-Katrina statement can be supplemented by many other personal observations of this writer.

As social justice activists and organizers, we need to do a much better job of developing solidarity. We are battling for the very lives of our traditional communities, and we need each other's ideas and support. We cannot afford fragmentation. We cannot afford to consider one group more worthy or deserving than others. In the U.S., we need to do much more to forge linkages between the needs of coastal Louisiana and coastal Mississippi and the urban needs of the New Orleans metro area. Nationally, we need to strengthen our alliances with other communities fighting for justice. Internationally, we have much to learn from each other and we must build much better solidarity. Our Indian sisters and brothers told us if they knew what was going on after Katrina they would have demonstrated in front of the U.S. Embassy in India demanding the government respect our human rights. It is a tactic of our enemies to divide and conquer; it is our job to connect and conquer.

We must insist on rebuilding our own communities. In India, we found examples where the communities decided how to rebuild, chose to use local materials, and demanded and won the right for local people to do the rebuilding so they could learn new skills. We were shocked to find that many more new homes have already been built in India for their displaced than in the U.S. Nongovernmental agencies and non-profits, many with the best intentions, have come to our communities and have accomplished little good. They and the government must be held accountable. India is trying, and we have much to learn from them.

There is a universal need after the trauma of disasters for what the Indian activists call "psycho-social counseling." This need continues now and will continue until it is met. Recovery is not only about the physical aspects of rebuilding a place to stay or finding a job or getting some compensation. It is also about relationships. On the Gulf Coast in the U.S. and India we know there are hundreds of thousands of people who continue to deeply suffer the traumas of these disasters. They cannot "get over it" without trained assistance. The same is true in India; however, the Indians are training volunteer community counselors to help villages and organizations identify the non-physical effects and to help people and communities heal.

In India the caste system creates invisible divisions and tens of millions of invisible people. Dalits, or untouchables, built magnificent temples as slave laborers but are met with violence if they try to enter the temples their ancestors built. In the U.S., we use the systems of color to create our invisible people. No just solutions are possible without directly confronting the continuing existence and legacies of these systems.

At the same time, economic lines have been sharply drawn in both our nations. In the U.S. it is property ownership that draws the line. Two people who lived in different halves of the same house for the same number of years are treated dramatically differently if one owns the house and the other rents. Property owners may get up to $150,000 in compensation in Mississippi and Louisiana -- renters, nothing. In India, fisherfolk are eligible for compensation for their lost boats and new housing. Those who worked on the boats for the owner are entitled to nothing. Like most economic injustices, these artificial human distinctions -- often codified into unjust laws by those who profit from them -- must be challenged and dismantled. Our shared economic class issues must be a point of unity for us, across lines of caste and race.

In both countries, if you plot the intersection of race (or caste), gender, and economic status, you will find those who are left out of the repair and rebuilding. In both our countries the disabled were left behind at every step. This is not an accident. These are all human decisions and can and must be reversed.

As an important part of solidarity, we have to keep reminding ourselves and our organizations that action cannot be confused with progress. After a disaster, we are all very busy. We have all been subject to countless planning meetings and consultations and we have tried to participate in our communities. But the test of all actions should be, "Does this help build, expand, or defend a movement towards justice?" If it does not, we must re-think it. Because unless we are building a more just world, the next disaster will prey on the victims of injustice just as much as these did. Our Indian friends reminded us that economic equity is the best way to reduce the impact of disaster.

Disaster victims in both the U.S. and India are crippled, confused, and buried beneath bureaucratic paperwork demands. The approach in both countries is that one must prove they are eligible and worthy of assistance. Legal requirements and administrative schemes choke the distribution of help.

Right, not charity is our common demand. Human rights, not bureaucratic eligibility criteria, must be the foundation for relief, recovery and rebuilding. People have human rights to food and shelter and the opportunity and assistance necessary to live a life of dignity. The government must respect and implement human rights. The degradations and delays and disrespect of eligibility applications for basic human necessities must cease. Human rights must be our shared basis for going forward. Internationally, if the bottom of the North can link up with the bottom of the South, human rights will be our shared language.

The final and best piece of advice I received was from T. Peter, head of the Kerala Fish Workers Association. Their organization has struggled with elected officials, private companies, and the caste system in all phases of life. He leaned over, his dark face split by a broad smile, and told me what we in the U.S. should be doing to bring about justice for our Gulf Coast: "Less meeting, more fighting!" And so we will.

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and professor at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill recently returned from India where he and other Gulf Coast community activists toured hundreds of miles of coastal communities devastated by the tsunami. They met with Indian community members to discuss common challenges and strategies to rebuild their communities. In August, the Indian people will be visiting the Gulf Coast. The trips were sponsored by ActionAid International and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Bill can be reached at Quigley@loyno.edu.

Feds blame La. for housing program money crunch

Louisiana's largest state-led recovery initiative for hurricane victims -- the Road Home housing assistance program -- faces an estimated $3 billion shortfall, and federal officials yesterday told a Senate subcommittee that they have no plans to bail it out.

Convened by U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), the hearing of the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery examined the problems facing the Road Home. Among those testifying were Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding Donald Powell and Louisiana Recovery Authority Director Andy Kopplin, who offered very different explanations for the program's shortfall.

Powell blamed Louisiana for assisting wind damage victims when the program was supposed to help only those who suffered flood damage, reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

"We were always very clear that the federal government would not fund state housing programs to cover wind damage," he said.

Kopplin disputed the claim that the state agreed to limit the program to wind damage, saying Louisiana always intended to help residents with uncompensated storm damage, regardless of its cause.

"When the president said he would do what it takes, and stay as long as it takes, he didn't say 'except if you had wind damage,'" Kopplin said.

In many cases, the reason Road Home is paying for wind damage is because insurance companies did not -- either because homeowners lacked sufficient coverage or because the companies did not meet their obligations, according to a story that appeared in yesterday's Times-Picayune:

An LRA report says lower-than-expected insurance payouts have caused the Road Home to pay $1.3 billion that the state thought private insurers would have handled. It finds that insurance companies covered an average of 61 percent of all inspected damage, rather than the 76 percent payout rate the state expected when it set the Road Home budget. The report also finds that 37 percent of a sample of 46,223 insured Road Home applicants collected private insurance on less than half of their damage. And 11 percent got less than 10 percent of their total damage paid by insurance.

In that same article, Kopplin asked why if there was a federal directive against covering wind damage the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approved the state's plan. Federal officials said HUD lacked the legal power to reject it.

Also testifying at yesterday's hearing were Louisiana citizens who shared personal -- and at times very emotional -- stories about their Road Home experiences. Lower 9th Ward resident Walter Thomas, a cancer patient living in a FEMA trailer, described the tortuous process he's endured in trying to get his Road Home money:

"I've called 30 or 40 times. Every time I call, someone says, 'We'll get back to you.' " But he said no one has.

"I've given up," Thomas said.

The subcommittee plans to release a report next month with findings and recommendations for improving the Road Home program.

New book investigates Katrina disaster

With federal scientists this week announcing that they expect this year's hurricane season to be unusually intense, many Americans are wondering whether New Orleans -- one of the places that bore the brunt of Hurricane Katrina's devastation in 2005 -- is ready for what may lie ahead.

For answers, they might turn to a new book from the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.

For City Adrift: New Orleans Before and After Hurricane Katrina, the Center commissioned seven authors to investigate the storm's aftermath in the Big Easy and to find out what should happen now to prevent a similar catastrophe in the future. Contributors include Pulitzer Prize-winner John McQuaid, whose work predicted the levee failures; longtime Boston Globe reporter and Gulf coast resident Curtis Wilkie, who examines New Orleans' leadership crisis; and Katy Reckdahl, whose reporting on the housing problems facing the city's musicians was included in the Institute's own one-year report on Katrina. Renowned broadcast journalist Dan Rather wrote the book's foreword.

"Katrina remains one of the worst catastrophes in American history," says Bill Buzenberg, the Center's executive director. "The fact that more than a year and a half later a major city such as New Orleans is still struggling to repair itself is untenable, and must be called to account."

For more details about the book, biographies of the contributors, and information on ordering a copy, click here.

House OKs affordable housing fund for Gulf Coast

Help could be on its way to hurricane-stricken areas of Louisiana and Mississippi thanks to legislation passed yesterday by the U.S. House of Representatives toughening oversight of scandal-wracked home mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

That's because the measure would also create an affordable housing fund to help rebuild storm-ravaged communities.

The Federal Housing Finance Reform Act would take 1.2 percent of the portfolio value of the government-sponsored mortgage companies and put it into a fund for the construction and rehabilitation of affordable housing. The money would then go to the states, which would be responsible for allocating it to housing providers. In the first year of the fund's five-year life span, all of the money -- expected to be about $500 million -- would go to hurricane-afflicted areas of Louisiana and Mississippi.

Louisiana, which suffered 80 percent of the storm damage, would get 75 percent of the money. That represents more proportionate funding than was offered by some other programs designed to address storm victims' housing needs. For example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently awarded 70 percent of its Alternative Housing Pilot Program grants to Mississippi, even though that state suffered less than 25 percent of the housing loss caused by Katrina.

A lack of affordable housing remains one of the biggest barriers to Gulf Coast recovery. In fact, a post-Katrina status report released last month by the Albany, N.Y.-based Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government and the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana concluded that it represented the most pressing problem facing reconstruction:

By far, the one issue that dominates the recovery effort is housing -- that is, the lack of it. In all of the hard-hit areas -- even those where economies seem to be mending -- the problem of affordable housing continues to defy resolution. Many efforts now underway are the result of nonprofit and volunteer groups, and some developers willing to take a risk. But what is under construction or in the planning stages now is not nearly enough to meet the demand. Thousands remain in FEMA trailers across Louisiana and Mississippi, while thousands more are on the streets.

Though the bill -- whose primary sponsor was Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank (D-Mass.) -- ultimately passed the House in a bipartisan 313-104 vote, it still generated considerable controversy, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports:

With a sizable chunk of money in play, there were many hands grabbing at it. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, tried unsuccessfully to steer 10 percent of the money to his state, and Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., sought to spread it among all of the states that have suffered natural disasters. He too failed.

Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., said the House had spent enough recently on hurricane-damaged states.

"This bill creates $3 billion, much of which will go to Katrina. Well, it was only two months ago that we appropriated $3 billion for Katrina," Bachus said. "We didn't need $6 billion; we needed $3 billion."

The conservative Republican Study Committee took particular aim at the bill's affordable-housing fund. One member suggested it was tantamount to "socialism" to snatch profits from private corporations, and the group's briefing materials called it a "tax on consumers."

To call Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "private" corporations and leave it at that is rather misleading. In fact, the companies are what are known as "government-sponsored enterprises": While privately owned and operated by shareholders, they are protected financially by the federal government. They enjoy access to a line of credit through the U.S. Treasury, exemptions from state and local income taxes, and freedom from certain Securities and Exchange Commission registration requirements.

What especially bothers the RSC, led by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), is the fact that the grant funds could be provided to organizations whose politics it finds objectionable. In a list of talking points issued on the measure, the group charges that these grant recipients could ultimately use the funds for political activities -- even though acknowledging that the bill expressly disallows that:

While the bill does prohibit the use of these grant funds for political activities, advocacy, lobbying, etc., many conservatives in the past have expressed concerns that the Fund could still be used by liberal entities to displace other funds. Money is fungible, so that if a group cannot use Fund grants for political activities, it could certainly have more money freed up for political activities because of the injection of Fund grants.

The RSC points out that the largest organizations working on affordable housing issues include ACORN, the National Council of La Raza and Housing Works -- all of whom it criticizes for "partisan, liberal political activities." ACORN, it charges, "led voter registration efforts against Republicans, with allegations of voter fraud in Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina." The group is the nation's largest community-based organization representing low- and moderate-income people.

But what RSC does not mention is that the allegations against ACORN were just that: allegations. Three lawsuits brought against the organization for voter fraud in the wake of the 2004 election were all dismissed, while criminal investigations of voter fraud claims ended in Colorado, Wisconsin, Florida, and Ohio after authorities found no evidence of any pervasive fraud or wrongdoing by ACORN. In fact, a federal judge in South Florida ruled that some of the accusations made against the group were so baseless that they amounted to defamation, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

In order to shore up its case against ACORN, RSC trots out a report on the organization from the Employment Policies Institute. But it does not mention that EPI is a front group created by Berman and Company, a Washington public-affairs firm owned by Rick Berman, who lobbies for the restaurant and hotel industries, according to the Center for Media & Democracy's Sourcewatch project:

EPI, registered as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, has has been widely quoted in news stories regarding minimum wage issues, and although a few of those stories have correctly described it as a "think tank financed by business," most stories fail to provide any identification that would enable readers to identify the vested interests behind its pronouncements. Instead, it is usually described exactly the way it describes itself, as a "non-profit research organization dedicated to studying public policy issues surrounding employment growth" that "focuses on issues that affect entry-level employment." In reality, EPI's mission is to keep the minimum wage low so Berman's clients can continue to pay their workers as little as possible.

Given that ACORN is an outspoken advocate for a living wage, it's no wonder EPI and its RSC allies would seek to discredit the group.

Fortunately, RSC's talking points did not stop the House from passing this much-needed legislation. However, the bill now goes to the Senate -- which, as the Times-Picayune points, out "has failed to act on a raft of House-passed hurricane-recovery measures since January."

Problems still beset hurricane readiness systems

With what's expected to be an unusually active hurricane season just weeks away, concern is mounting about serious problems still afflicting the nation's readiness and response systems almost two years after Hurricane Katrina.

This week the new director of the National Hurricane Center charged that his superiors are wasting millions of dollars on unnecessary public-relations efforts while shortchanging storm forecasters, the Miami Herald reported:

Bill Proenza, who took the hurricane center post in January, said top officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are spending $4 million on a ''bogus'' 200-year NOAA anniversary celebration.

That celebration is part of a broader campaign to publicize NOAA and its leaders, Proenza and other critics said, while diminishing the identity of its best-known components, the National Weather Service and the hurricane center.

Meanwhile, Proenza said, NOAA has cut $700,000 from a crucial hurricane research program and allowed other important initiatives to go unfunded, but it wants to spend money to change the widely recognized center's name to the "NOAA Hurricane Center."

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Proenza and former hurricane center director Max Mayfield said, NOAA even ordered them to remove the National Weather Service logo from official tracking maps and retain only the NOAA logo. They refused.

Proenza told the paper that it's getting to the point that he "cannot tolerate" the situation.

FEMA Director R. David Paulison also raised concerns about NOAA's re-branding effort, urging the agency to "not make a rash decision," the paper reported. The fear is that if the National Weather Service loses its identity, its funding would be absorbed -- and possibly diluted -- by NOAA.

Proenza and Paulison made their comments during press interviews while attending the Florida Governor's Hurricane Conference taking place this week at the Broward County Convention Center.

Meanwhile, Paulison on Tuesday admitted during a House Homeland Security hearing -- titled "The 2007 Hurricane Season: Are We Prepared?" -- that FEMA still has not completed its updated federal disaster plan, drawing fire from some lawmakers, USA Today reported:

Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., called the delay "very disturbing" and said, "FEMA will have a lot of explaining to do if it is not ready when a hurricane makes landfall this season."

William Jenkins, director of homeland security issues with the Government Accountability Office, also testified to problems with FEMA's readiness for another major storm. He pointed to questions about the working relationships between the Federal Coordinating Officers, who make mission assignments to federal agencies for response and recovery in regions at risk for hurricanes, and Principal Federal Officials, who provide "situational awareness" to the Homeland Security secretary. As he summarized:

It is critically important that the authorities, roles, and responsibilities of these designated FCOs and PFOs be clear and clearly understood by all. There is still some question among state and local first responders about the need for both positions and how they will work together in disaster response.

In addition, Jenkins expressed worries about the status of various FEMA efforts to address situational assessments, emergency communications, evacuations, search and rescue, logistics, and mass care and sheltering:

In various meetings with us and in congressional testimonies, FEMA has described a number of initiatives to address identified deficiencies in each of these areas and progress is being made on these multi-year efforts. However, none of these initiatives appear to have been tested on a scale that reasonably simulates the conditions and demand they would face following a major or catastrophic disaster.

During the hearing, lawmakers also repeatedly voiced concerns about whether a National Guard stretched by war-zone deployments had enough resources to respond to natural disasters. Paulison told the committee, "We are going to prepare for whatever storm comes our way with what we have."

But some governors say what they have might not be enough in a big storm. Speaking during a telephone news conference held Monday, North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley warned that the Iraq war has depleted his state National Guard's fleet of vehicles, communications equipment and other gear, the Raleigh News & Observer reported. Easley said there was enough equipment to handle hurricanes up to Category 3, but the state could find itself without adequate resources to handle a bigger storm or what he called a "no-notice" disaster.

Other states that have also raised concerns about shortages of Guard equipment include Florida, Arkansas, Illinois and California, according to the Sarasota Herald Tribune. In addition, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius complained that shortages of equipment and well-trained personnel impeded the Guard's response to tornadoes that recently hit her state.

This does not bode well for those of us facing a potentially fierce hurricane season -- and especially not for those of us who are still struggling to recover from past storms.

No "Road Home" for Katrina evacuees

After Hurricane Katrina struck 20 months ago, it took nearly a year before federal and state lawmakers even created a program to help homeowners displaced by the storm. As we reported in February 2007 (pdf), 18 months after the storm Louisiana's infamous "Road Home" plan -- derisively called the "Road Block" program by locals -- had only given money to 97 out of 130,000 homeowners who had asked for assistance.

Thanks to a spending spree in the last month, that number has now gone up to 16,000 (still only 12% of the total) -- just in time for the program to run out of money, as the Washington Post reported this weekend:

The massive federally funded program for rebuilding Louisiana homes is short nearly $3 billion, administrators told a state legislative panel here today, leaving uncertain for now how the owners of roughly 100,000 flood-wrecked houses here will be compensated. [...]

More than 20 months after the Katrina catastrophe, tens of thousands of houses remain vacant, in part because of administrative delays in the aid program, the largest single source of direct federal help for homeowners. To date, only 16,000 of 130,000 applicants have received money.

What's the cause of this astounding failure?

Many point to the out-sourcing of the Road Home program to ICF Emergency Management Services, which received a $756 million, three-year contract to run it. ICF EMS is a subsidiary of ICF International, which has gotten 72% of its work in recent years from federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security. But none of these jobs have involved administering major programs for consumers, as the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported last December:

Typical contracts, according to the company's public filings, involved work such as conducting training exercises and drills each year to test emergency preparedness in regions with nuclear power plants.

Last year, when it was clear the program was failing, the Louisiana state house voted 97-1 to approve a resolution demanding Gov. Kathleen Blanco cancel the contract with ICF -- but state leaders ultimately decided against it because it could involve losing even more money.

Meanwhile, ICF has done well for itself. After landing the Road Home contract last year, they raked in $49 million from a public stock offering last October, which had benefits for ICF employees:

So far ... the contract has been very good for ICF. After the company went public, it distributed $2.7 million in one-time bonuses to 30 of its top managers.

If only the thousands of families still locked out of their homes in New Orleans were so lucky.

Race and recovery in New Orleans

I'm just back from my second trip to New Orleans in the last month, and even though we've been covering Katrina since October 2005, the devastation is still eye-opening. It's especially shocking that so little has been done to help those most in need, 20 months after Katrina smashed into the Gulf Coast.

This is the "second tragedy" of Katrina. The first was the devastating storm and failed government response that left over 1,500 dead and a city in ruins. But the second tragedy -- a "recovery" that has failed to benefit the majority of those affected by the storm -- is no less astounding, even if the TV cameras have turned away.

A new report from the Kaiser family foundation, based in a survey of 1,500 New Orleans residents, puts some numbers on the fallout of the ongoing tragedy:

81 percent of those in the house-to-house survey said their economic or physical well-being had deteriorated.

More than a third said they lost access to health care, while 17 percent said their health had declined and 16 percent said they had mental health troubles. Almost a quarter said their marriages had broken up, their relationships had failed, or they were drinking more since the August 2005 hurricane.

And the second tragedy of Katrina hasn't affected everyone equally. The Kaiser survey found that race continues to be a major factor in who gets left behind:

"Anywhere we looked in the survey, in the stories people told us and in the data, we found the racial divide was confirmed, underscored," foundation president Drew Altman said in an interview.

Across the city, 56 percent of blacks said their housing costs went substantially since the storm, while 42 percent of whites complained of similar problems.

Forty-six percent of blacks surveyed said they were unemployed or employed in jobs that didn't pay enough, the study found. Seventeen percent of whites said the same thing.

In the hard-hit Orleans Parish, where more than half of residents are black, twice as many African-Americans as whites reported their lives were still disrupted by the storms. More than half of the parish's blacks said they have been treated worse and given fewer opportunities than whites in the rebuilding process.

And that's just New Orleans.

There's no excuse for the level of hardship still faced by hundreds of thousands of people and families, 20 months after Katrina. There's a lot that can be done to turn things around -- you can read some proposals in our report from last February, A New Agenda for the Gulf Coast (pdf).

But more than anything, it requires that we make Katrina a national issue again. The scale and seriousness of the problem demand a national, federal commitment to ensuring that entire region of people -- disproportionately poor and working-class, children, the elderly, and African-American -- aren't denied a better future due to greed and negligence.

Serious weaknesses found in repaired New Orleans levees

With hurricane season less than a month away, experts from the United States and the Netherlands say flaws in New Orleans' repaired levee system could leave the region vulnerable to another disastrous breach like the one that occurred after Hurricane Katrina, which was the largest civil engineering disaster in U.S. history.

So warns a special report from National Geographic, which had Robert Bea, a University of California at Berkeley engineering professor and former chief engineer for Shell Oil Co., inspect the protective barriers. Bea found multiple weak spots in critical areas, according to the magazine:

The most serious flaws turned up in the rebuilt levees along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet ship channel, which broke in more than 20 places when Katrina's storm surge pounded it, leading to devastating flooding in the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish. Bea found several areas where rainstorms have already eroded the newly rebuilt levees, particularly where they consist of a core of sandy and muddy soils topped with a cap of Mississippi clay. "It's like icing on the top of angel food cake," Bea says. "These levees will not be here if you put a Katrina surge against them."

Bea also found that decade-old gaps remain in the floodwalls lining the Orleans Avenue Canal, and hurricane-damaged sections of the walls along the London Avenue and 17th Street Canals have not been repaired or replaced. Even more troubling, water appears to be seeping under the stout new floodwall erected along the Industrial Canal to protect the Lower Ninth Ward. The new wall sits atop steel sheet piles driven 20 feet into the ground, but water from holes in the canal bed, excavated before Katrina or scoured by the storm, may be seeping under the barrier through permeable layers of sand and silt. Bea, who actually tasted the seepage to make sure it was brackish -- a sign that it was coming from the canal -- says the wall could fail in the next hurricane.

Bea helped lead a team of Berkeley experts that investigated the Katrina levee failures, and he's currently serving as an expert witness in a class-action lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers. But he's not the only engineer who sees problems in the repaired structures. National Geographic also spoke with a Dutch engineer who recently inspected some of the city's new floodgates and pumps. The engineer, who asked to remain anonymous since he sometimes works with the corps, says that in the next big storm the structures may be "doomed to fail" as the gates lack any mechanism to remove debris that could keep them from closing in advance of a storm. The corps is currently depending on divers to clear obstructions.

Another problem plaguing the protective system are the pumps that the corps installed to carry rainwater out of the city; they vibrated excessively and had to be repaired. While the corps claims they're now working fine, other experts charge that they haven't been fully tested. Also casting a shadow of doubt over the pumps is the fact that the deal to provide them went to Moving Water Industries, a politically connected Florida firm that's currently the target of a Department of Justice lawsuit over corruption allegations. As we reported last week, both the corps itself and the Government Accountability Office began investigating whether there were any improprieties in the awarding of that contract after it was discovered that the corps lifted the specs for the job directly from MWI's catalog.

Another expert pointing to flaws in New Orleans' levees is Ivor van Heerden of Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center; he led a team of state experts that probed the levee failures and is another expert witness in the class-action lawsuit against the corps. Van Heerden agrees with Bea's evaluation of weak spots and also notes that a section of floodwall along the Duncan Canal in Jefferson Parish on the city's west side is in trouble, telling National Geographic:

"There is 1,900 feet of I-wall that actually dips -- sinking from its own weight," he says. Sheet pilings installed by the corps to shore up the weak wall may not be adequate, he says.

The New York Times reports that U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) has been informed of the apparent problems with the levees and floodwalls and plans to send a letter to the corps commander, Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, asking whether his agency's repair work was adequate.

Ensuring that the system protecting New Orleans from deadly flooding is especially critical now, with a more-intense-than-usual storm season anticipated. The hurricane prediction experts at Colorado State University last month said they expect a "very active" tropical storm season for 2007, with about nine hurricanes and 17 named storms. They estimate the probability of a major hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast at 49 percent, compared to last century's average of 30 percent.

Was the bid for New Orleans drainage pumps rigged?

When the Army Corps of Engineers solicited bids for new drainage pumps in New Orleans, it copied the specifications from the catalog of the politically well-connected manufacturer that eventually won the $32 million contract, according to a review of documents by the Associated Press. In fact, so slavishly did the Corps copy Moving Water Industries' specs that it even repeated typos, the AP reports:

...[A]n erroneous phrase in MWI catalogs — "the discharge tube and head assembly shall be abrasive resistance steel" — also appears in the Corps specifications. The phrase should say "abrasion resistant steel." An incorrect reference to the type of steel that would be required apparently was also lifted.

The Corps awarded the pump contract to MWI in January 2006. The installation of the 34 pumps was already underway last May when one of the agency's own engineers penned a memo warning of mechanical problems and criticizing testing procedures. The AP obtained the memo, and the Government Accountability Office is now investigating at the request of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). That investigation is expected to be completed by mid-May.

Last month, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) called on the Corps to investigate how MWI got the New Orleans contract. Though copying specs from a company's catalog does not necessarily violate federal regulations, the practice is discouraged because it could give the impression that the job was rigged for a particular company.

The Corps withheld about 20 percent of MWI's contract price, including a $5 million timely delivery incentive, until the equipment problems have been resolved, the AP reports. But at the same time, the agency paid MWI $4.5 million for six additional pumps for use in evaluating the faulty ones.

The AP's latest revelation does little to ease concerns about cronyism possibly tainting the MWI deal. Based in Deerfield Beach, Fla., the private company is owned by J. David Eller, a generous donor to mostly Republican political causes and a one-time business partner of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. During the presidency of George H.W. Bush, their firm, Bush-El, struck a deal to sell Nigeria MWI-brand irrigation pumps financed with a $74 million loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

That deal sparked an ongoing whistle-blower lawsuit against MWI and Eller under the federal False Claims Act, with a former MWI employee charging that the company paid $28 million in excessive, highly irregular commissions to a Nigerian sales representative and also made payments to Nigerian officials. The U.S. Department of Justice, which joined the suit in 2002, contends that Eller took trips to the Bahamas and Grand Cayman with cash-filled suitcases in an effort to hide assets.

The whistle-blower in the Nigeria deal, Robert Purcell, was also the person who informed the Corps contract officer in charge of the New Orleans pump bid about the copied specifications after MWI won the contract, according to the AP. Purcell now works with FPI Inc., a Florida company that also bid on the New Orleans project. The contract officer, Cindy Nicholas, denied knowing anything about the copied specs in a recorded phone call provided to the AP by FPI.

It's not only the Corps' contracting process for Gulf Coast reconstruction that's raised concerns about impropriety. In 2003, Bunnatine Greenhouse, then the Corps' top civilian contracting official, charged that the agency granted the Halliburton Co. -- which has close ties to Vice President Dick Cheney -- large contracts for work in Iraq and the Balkans without following rules to ensure competition and fair prices to the government. For example, Greenhouse said Army officials inappropriately allowed Halliburton representatives to attend a meeting during which they discussed the terms of a contract the company was to receive. She called for an investigation of what she described as threats to the "integrity of the federal contracting program."

But in late August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina spun into a Category 3 storm in the Gulf of Mexico, Greenhouse -- a Louisiana native who holds three master's degrees -- was demoted for what the Army called "poor job performance" despite years of stellar reviews in which supervisors called her ethics "above reproach" and praised her "unquestionable loyalty, integrity and dedication to mission." The news of her demotion hit the New York Times on Aug. 29, 2005 -- the same day Katrina hit New Orleans.

One wonders how differently Gulf Coast reconstruction might have proceeded had someone like Greenhouse been overseeing the contracting process.