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Feds waver over levee upgrades

A White House adviser discussed the New Orleans system during a fact finding tour of the Gulf Coast.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published November 29, 2005

BATON ROUGE, La. - Three months after Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,000 people in the New Orleans area, the White House's top adviser on hurricane relief said he hasn't determined whether the federal government should pay to improve the city's levee system.

Donald Powell on Tuesday declined to say how long it would take before a decision is made on improving the levees beyond their strength prior to Katrina, a Category 3 storm that tore through levees at numerous points, killing 1,086. Powell said he is gathering information from local and state officials and would eventually recommend to the Bush Administration whether the levees should be improved.

"Hopefully that decision will be made sooner rather than later," Powell said.

Powell met with Gov. Kathleen Blanco at the Louisiana Capitol as part of a "fact finding" tour of the Gulf Coast.

Blanco and other Louisiana officials, plus business leaders and homeowners, have said the levee system must be improved if the New Orleans metropolitan area is to be repopulated, because people are reluctant to return until the government commits to protect the region from future storms.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has committed to rebuilding for Category 3 storm protection.

Blanco said she discussed with Powell whether the levees can be made stronger than that, "so that folks feel comfortable going home and ultimately feel safe in their own environment."

"We're looking at what expectations can reasonably be accomplished beyond the Category 3 protection," Blanco said.

Blanco and the Louisiana Legislature have been criticized for failing to pass a bill in the recently ended legislative session that would have done away with the local boards that oversee the levees - parish taxing bodies that critics say are manned by political appointees with little knowledge of engineering or hurricane protection.

Blanco signed into law on Tuesday a bill that gives the state some control over those boards.

But she did not push for passage of another bill, by state Sen. Walter Boasso, that would have dissolved the boards and replaced them with a single levee oversight board for southeast Louisiana. Boasso and others have blamed the deadly flooding on a lack of coordination and hurricane protection planning among those boards.

Boasso, a Republican from Chalmette which was virtually destroyed by the storm, said he would introduce a similar measure in an upcoming session.

[Last modified November 29, 2005, 14:57:02]