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Hurricane Katrina

President promises bigger, better levees for New Orleans

WASHINGTON - President Bush pledged on Thursday to rebuild New Orleans' shattered levee system taller and stronger than before Hurricane Katrina struck, requesting an additional $1.5-billion to buttress the system that failed and left the city flooded.

"The federal government is committed to building the best levee system known in the world," said Donald Powell, the federal official leading the reconstruction effort.

Officials didn't say whether the levees would be built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, using broader language to promise that the city would be safe and that the new levees would exceed anything New Orleans had ever seen.

Katrina, a Category 4 storm, caused the city's levees to fail at numerous points after it hit on Aug. 29, killing about 1,300 people in the gulf region. Louisiana officials have said bringing the levees to Category 5 level is crucial for persuading people to move back.

"This action today says come home to New Orleans," Mayor Ray Nagin said after meeting with Bush. "It's time for you to come back to the Big Easy."

Powell said the president already had requested $1.6-billion to repair breeches in the levees, correct design and construction flaws and bring the levee system to a height authorized before the storm.

The additional $1.5-billion the president is requesting would pay to armor the levee system with concrete and stone, close three interior canals and provide state-of-the art pumping systems so the water would flow out of the canals into Lake Pontchartrain, Powell said. This additional work will take two years, he said.

"I'm convinced that what we're doing here today - if there is another Katrina that hits New Orleans that we would not see the catastrophic results that we saw during Katrina," Powell said. "There will be some flooding, but it will be manageable type flooding."

Behind-the-scenes talks in Congress on a hurricane relief measure continued, though House and Senate negotiators remained apart on how far to go above Bush's official $17.1-billion request. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., is seeking a more generous $35-billion measure with flexibility to give aid directly to people who lost their homes in the storms. But House negotiators have said $24-billion is as high as they can go.

The hurricane relief funds were to be added to a must-pass $453-billion measure funding the Pentagon budget and the war in Iraq for the current fiscal year.

Nagin said he was pleased with the White House announcement.

"These levees will be as high as 17 feet in some areas. We've never had that," he said. "These levees will be fortified with rock and concrete. We've never had that before." He also said there would be pumping stations with "backup systems that we only dreamed about."

Nagin acknowledged that the most heavily damaged areas of the city - Lakeview and the Lower 9th Ward - were not ready for returning residents, but he said work is being done to make them ready. He suggested officials may need to find residents housing elsewhere in the city in the meantime.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has provided rental assistance to more than 650,000 families and is working to bridge that into longer-term assistance programs, said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

An estimated 55-million cubic yards of debris have been removed in New Orleans, which is a critical precondition to rebuilding, he said. More than $390-million in community disaster loan assistance has been provided as well as $205-million in unemployment insurance.

"In total, the federal government has now provided approximately $5.2-billion in direct assistance to victims of Katrina and Rita," Chertoff said. "So that's a lot of material assistance, but, of course, one of the greatest forms of assistance we can provide people is hope, hope that they can get back to the Gulf Coast and hope that they can get back on with their lives."

Bush's announcement came as senators questioned whether local, state or federal officials were responsible for making sure New Orleans levees were in good shape before Katrina hit.

Also on Capitol Hill, the Senate was working on a package of tax breaks and other assistance that would fulfill Bush's call for a special business zone in the Gulf Coast. Lawmakers hurried to finish the bill before taking a holiday break. The House last week passed its own package of aid worth $7-billion for businesses hurt by Hurricane Katrina.

[Last modified December 16, 2005, 00:55:10]