[StBernard] Gulf Hits Snags in Rebuilding Public Works

[Westley Annis]

March 31, 2007
Gulf Hits Snags in Rebuilding Public Works 
By LESLIE EATON
MERAUX, La., March 30 - Even before Hurricane Katrina ruined it, the St.
Bernard Parish Fire Station No. 6 was not much to look at, just a
cinderblock and sheet-metal cube whose contents included a fire truck, a
kitchen and a paint-by-numbers rendering of the Last Supper.

Nineteen months after the storm sent nine feet of water through it, the fire
station remains unusable. One wall is missing; the ceiling has fallen in; a
uniform still on its hanger lies crumpled amid the dried mud and tumbled
furniture. 

None of St. Bernard Parish's 10 fire houses have been rebuilt, even though
local officials estimate that 26,000 people have returned to the area, just
east of New Orleans. In fact, across southern Louisiana and Mississippi,
many school buildings remain closed, public water systems leak, roads
crumble and libraries molder. Local governments cannot afford to fix them,
and billions of dollars in recovery assistance promised by the federal
government have only started to trickle to the region. 

Local and state government officials have blamed a federal law for the
failure to invest in these public works. They associate the problem with the
Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988, the
federal law that finances the rebuilding of local government infrastructure.
It imposes requirements for receiving money that many towns and parishes
here say they cannot meet. 

The Stafford law, intended to prevent fraud, requires local governments to
put up 10 percent of the cost of building projects and to advance money for
repairs and rebuilding in the hope of being reimbursed later. 

But state and local officials say they have no money to put up for the
match, which the federal government has refused to waive for Hurricane
Katrina recovery, even though it did so for New York City after Sept. 11 and
for Florida after Hurricane Andrew.

There is plenty of finger-pointing between Washington and governments here
over the slow pace of rebuilding, and Louisiana's tattered reputation for
financial accountability has played a role in Washington's refusal to bend
the rules.

But local officials also complain of skeins of red tape that complicate
efforts to meet the law, and describe a system so geared to ensuring that
federal taxpayers do not pay for "improvements" in local infrastructure that
it is hard to achieve goals, like making aging sewer systems functional or
merging schools to adapt to changed population patterns.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's stated goal is to return the area
to the way it was before the storm. Mark C. Smith, the public information
officer for the Louisiana agency that distributes federal infrastructure
rebuilding aid to local governments, uses this analogy to explain the
situation: "If you had a 1981 Chevrolet Chevette with a leaky radiator, FEMA
will buy you a 1981 Chevrolet Chevette and poke a hole in the radiator."

The state agency has concluded, Mr. Smith said, "that the Stafford Act is
grossly and horrendously unable to deal with a disaster of this magnitude."

Similar sentiments have been voiced by officials including Mayor C. Ray
Nagin of New Orleans and Donald E. Powell, President Bush's coordinator for
Gulf Coast rebuilding.

"I'm not sure the Stafford Act anticipated a catastrophic event such as
Katrina," Mr. Powell said in a telephone interview. He said he would like to
see the law allow for more flexibility and faster decision-making: "Being
able to adjust to the situation at hand, like you would in the private
sector," he explained.

R. David Paulison, the agency's director, has made FEMA better prepared to
deal with disasters and more financially and legally accountable for the
money it has spent, Aaron Walker, the agency press secretary, wrote in an
e-mail message.

The federal government has estimated that it will ultimately give
Louisiana's hardest-hit parishes and local governments $4.25 billion to
cover their emergency operating costs and to repair damaged infrastructure.
FEMA said that it had paid the state $2.83 billion to pass on to local
governments, but that the state had distributed only $1.28 billion as of
March 23.

The state has said it has not distributed all the money in part because it
does its own screening to make sure projects are eligible. Almost all of the
money that has been distributed has been for emergency expenses like
overtime pay, debris removal and generators. So far, the biggest complaint
in Louisiana was about the requirement that local governments pay 10 percent
of the costs of their reconstruction programs. The cash is not there in
areas like devastated St. Bernard Parish, where every government building
was flooded and the tax base remains damaged. 

"I'm not sure how we would pay anything," said David E. Peralta, the chief
administrative officer of the parish. "I don't have any money."

Mr. Peralta and other local officials are hoping that the 10 percent
requirement will be waived, as it was for New York and Florida. Indeed, an
ambitious new rebuilding plan just announced by Mayor Nagin in New Orleans
was counting on the waiver to make available about $324 million for public
projects there.

The Bush administration said it gave Louisiana hundreds of millions of
dollars in grants to cover the local matches and so has refused to waive
that requirement outright. But the federal grant money was funneled through
the Department of Housing and Urban Development and came with significant
strings, which state officials said could make it unusable. 

Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, has been trying to get
Congress to waive the match. The pending spending bill for Iraq includes a
measure for that, but President Bush has opposed the waiver (and has
threatened to veto the bill because it includes a deadline for withdrawing
troops from Iraq). 

In addition, there have been disputes over what constitutes damage, which
Washington can pay for under the law, and what are improvements, which it
cannot. 

The New Orleans water and sewer system is working but needs federal dollars
for major permanent repairs to bring it back to where it was before the
storm, said Marcia A. St. Martin, executive director of the Sewerage and
Water Board.

But federal officials have contended that many of the system's problems are
a result of poor maintenance and have balked at financing many repairs. FEMA
recently hired an outside consultant to help it figure out which of the
board's problems can be attributed to the hurricane.

"While we must continue to act as a compassionate agency, FEMA has the
responsibility to be good stewards of the taxpayer's dollars," Mr. Walker,
the FEMA press secretary, wrote in an e-mail message.

Ms. St. Martin said the problem was not with FEMA but with the Stafford Act:
"FEMA is bound by regulations that did not envision the loss of a total
community." 

Some local officials have said that problems may only increase as they move
from performing straight-forward repairs to tackling knottier rebuilding
issues.

"The problems now are more complex," said Doris Voitier, the superintendent
of St. Bernard's schools. She has been widely praised for quickly reopening
two of the district's 15 schools after the storm, and a third will be ready
soon.

But even that has been a struggle. The cost of repairs was far more than
FEMA had predicted, and now Ms. Voitier is facing decisions about moving
some schools to safer locations as well as merging some to address
population shifts. While she is hopeful about recouping the money she has
already spent to open schools, she said, "This next phase, I don't feel as
good about it."

Relocating and merging firehouses are also under consideration in St.
Bernard Parish, said Thomas Stone, the fire chief. The International
Association of Fire Fighters, a labor union, is trying to lobby for money so
the fire stations can be rebuilt as stronger and safer structures, not
simply replaced, said Brien Ruiz, a captain in the fire department and
president of the union local.

Chief Stone is concerned that otherwise there will not be enough money to do
the job properly.

"FEMA's goal is to take us back to Day 1," Chief Stone said. "My goal is to
rebuild the fire department, something I loved that has been destroyed"
along with his own home and his community.