[StBernard] Times Picayune Editorial Calls for Stafford Act Reform

[Westley Annis]

>From time to time, the LRA shares commentaries about issues surrounding the recovery. The Times-Picayune published this editorial Wednesday, September 5, 2007, ecouraging Stafford Act reform. 




Times Picayune Editorial Calls for Stafford Act Reform

A different kind of waste


The impasse between FEMA and St. Bernard Parish officials over how to handle the parish's storm-damaged sewage treatment system has been a costly one, in terms of time and dollars.

Two years after the storm, the parish still doesn't have a sewage treatment system - a public service that's vital for recovery. The parish relies instead on trucks to pump out raw sewage and haul it away - at a cost to the federal government of the $41.4 million trough mid-August.

That's nearly as much as the $46 million it would cost to build new system with a consolidated treatment plant, protected by a levee. 

St. Bernard officials reason that a new system would be cheaper to operate, better for the environment and easier to protect from future storms than the obsolete system with its seven sewage treatment plants. The old system had been slated for replacement even before the storm, and parish officials thought that repairing it at a cost of $16 million, as FEMA was urging, made no sense. 

But the Robert T. Stafford Act, which governs how federal disaster money can be spent, is sometimes at odds with common sense. It's designed to bring damaged facilities back to their pre-storm conditions. While that might seem like a sound way to prevent wasteful spending, in this case, it has actually resulted in the very ill it was designed to prevent. 

St. Bernard's situation is one more argument for overhauling a law that has turned out to be too rigid in dealing with a disaster of Katrina's scale. Sen. Mary Landrieu and Rep. Charlie Melancon have said that they'll push for changes that will give FEMA more flexibility in responding to disasters, and that needs to happen. 

FEMA officials blame the high hauling costs on St. Bernard: if the parish had simply taken the $16 million that was on the table, the old system would be fixed and the trucking costs wouldn't have gotten so high. Moreover, the agency says it never promised to pay for the entire cost of a new system. But St. Bernard officials shouldn't be faulted for seeking a better solution, especially when the agency encouraged them to do so.

FEMA suggested parish officials reclassify their plan as an "alternative project," but that carried a 25 percent penalty, reducing the amount of money to $12 million. FEMA next suggested reclassifying the plan as an improvement, but that would have capped the amount of disaster money at $16 million - still far short of the cost. 

Fortunately, a solution has finally emerged. FEMA has revised its repair estimate upward to $23.5 million and will make that money available if St. Bernard reclassifies that project as an "improvement." That money, plus another $26.3 million from the Louisiana Recovery Authority, will enable St. Bernard to build its new system.

While that's a good resolution, it's taken a long time, a lot of wrangling and a lot of wasted dollars to reach it. This is not the only time that red tape has strangled recovery.

Jim Stark, director of the FEMA office in New Orleans, says that the agency is "watching everyone's wallets here." But FEMA is watching those wallets through the distorted lens of the Stafford Act. It's time for Congress to adjust the prescription. 

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated South Louisiana, claiming 1,464 lives, destroying more than 200,000 homes and 18,000 businesses. The Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) is the planning and coordinating body that was created in the aftermath of these storms by Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to lead one of the most extensive rebuilding efforts in the world. The LRA is a 33-member body which is coordinating across jurisdictions, supporting community recovery and resurgence, ensuring integrity and effectiveness, and planning for the recovery and rebuilding of Louisiana. 

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