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Real estate agent Sherry Masinter, 46, lived with her lawyer husband Milton, 73, in the Lakeview neighborhood until the 17th Street Canal levee broke and flooded their house with 8 ft. of water. Today mold grows up the walls. The couple paid for flood insurance faithfully for 20 years and were reimbursed, but their neighbors are still battling with their insurance company over arcane formulas. Milton argues--as did independent experts from the National Science Foundation and the American Society of Civil Engineers recently--that poor levee design by the Army Corps of Engineers caused the flood, not Katrina. That puts the burden on Washington to help, he says. The breached levee, shored up with sandbags, is still leaking onto city streets. "It's very frustrating," says Sherry, "to the point where we've talked of going to Washington for a peaceful protest just to say, 'You've forgotten us.'"
Repair and cleanup are linked, to some degree, with planning what New Orleans should look like five years from now. The Louisiana Recovery Authority, appointed by Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, met in November with hundreds of New Orleans residents to develop priorities, brainstorm ideas with planners and businessmen, and present a unified voice. The Authority vice chair Walter Isaacson petitioned Congress last week for help in establishing a "recovery corporation" as a vehicle for the city's rebuilding neighborhoods. Donald Powell, the new hurricane czar appointed by George W. Bush, said his job is to listen and gather facts to help the President "understand the vision of the local people." The one-time banker, who admits he has a little boning up to do on levees, says he will spend the next few weeks shuttling in and out of the hurricane area, developing a blueprint for federal reconstruction help.
Washington approved $62.3 billion to help hurricane victims after the trifecta of Katrina, Rita and Wilma. With an additional $8.6 billion in tax breaks and programs for the region, the total tab of nearly $71 billion is far beyond the $43.9 billion dedicated to emergency spending after the 9/11 attacks. But congressional Republicans are picking up strong signals from the White House that the Administration is not going to move forward with any grand coastal plan. "There's not a sense of urgency anymore," says a senior House Republican aide.
Louisiana's recent request for $250 billion, perilously short on details, got a contemptuous reception from Republicans ("Nonstarter," said a Senate aide), editorial writers (who dubbed it the "Louisiana looters' bill") and even a few Democrats ("They're thieves," said a House aide involved with budgeting for Louisiana relief). Michael Olivier, Louisiana's secretary of economic development, points out that Katrina devastated a far larger area--23,000 acres--than 9/11 did and destroyed nearly 284,000 homes. With 71,000 businesses shut down by Katrina and a further 10,000 by Rita, and with local governments short on tax revenues, he says, "We're looking at potentially the largest business insolvency since the Depression, and a government insolvency."