via $3.9B in hurricane aid still unspent – USATODAY.com.
By Brad Heath, USA TODAY
Hurricane Katrina survivors
WASHINGTON — A massive effort to fix public works destroyed more than three years ago by the Gulf Coast hurricanes remains largely stalled, leaving more than $3.9 billion in federal aid unspent and key repairs far from complete.
The scale of that job is enormous. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has promised $5.8 billion to repair everything from flooded libraries and schools to sewer systems and roads that were ruined when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita obliterated huge sections of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005.
Nearly 3½ years after those storms hit, new FEMA accounting reports show two-thirds of the money to pay for permanent rebuilding work still has not been spent, the latest bottleneck in a recovery long beset by criticism that it has been too slow and inefficient. And despite a handful of high-profile successes, officials who had vowed to speed up the pace of repairs concede it is still going far more slowly than it should.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has ordered the agency to take a “fresh look” at those roadblocks. Its first report is due Tuesday.
The local officials are claiming that issues with regs and “red-tape” are hindering efforts to complete repair projects.
FEMA has screwed up the Katrina recovery with biblical proportions. Janet Napolitano needs to un-screw this and get the money flowing. The delay in releasing funds is like rubbing salt in the wound. I’m glad she is reporting to the President today, but the President needs to look at which agency is better able to handle the reconstruction. FEMA’s work is done. It’s time to hand over the reconstruction to someone else. Transfer the funds over to the Army Corps of Engineers.
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