[NYTr] Katrina Casualties: Reconstruction 2 Years after Hurricane

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Corporate Watch - Aug 27, 2007
http://corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14647

Katrina Casualties: 

Gulf Coast Reconstruction Two Years after the Hurricane

by Eliza Strickland and Azibuike Akaba
Special to CorpWatch

INTRODUCTION

This CorpWatch report, by Eliza Strickland and Azibuike Akaba, tells
the story of corporate malfeasance and government incompetence two
years after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. This is our second
report – Big, Easy Money by Rita J. King was the first – and it digs
into a slew of new scandals.

We have broken the report up into three parts: the struggle by ordinary
residents to return home, the major effort to fix the broken Gulf Coast
infrastructure, and finally – what the future looks like for a regional
revival.

Our first part opens with the story of people who simply cannot afford
to return home because Entergy, the giant electricity company based in
New Orleans, has jacked up prices; we then visit the people who are
waiting for the insurance companies to pay them for the damage their
homes suffered. We also visit the lucky few who were promised money to
build new homes by the Road Home project, only to discover ICF
International, the contractor running the program, has screwed up. The
story of Gulf Coast evacuees after Hurricane Katrina would not be
complete without looking at Fluor and Shaw, two of the companies who
run the often contaminated trailer parks to which many are still
confined.

The second part of this report is about the companies who are supposed
to be fixing the region and protecting it from future hurricane damage:
we look at the failure of Moving Water Industries to install working
pumps at the levees, the companies that have profited by dumping the
Katrina debris in and around the Vietnamese-American community of
Village de l’Est and the refinery owners. We also take a look at the
electricity and timber companies who have taken advantage of the
emergency aid to expand, rather than limit, the impact of their
environmentally destructive businesses.

Our final section looks at the prospects for the future: unexpectedly
there has been a boom in the casinos of Biloxi, Mississippi, yet the
local shrimping community has failed to recover. There has also been an
influx of workers from Latin America but it is hardly because of an
economic revival, rather an effort by local businesses to take
advantage of the relaxation of labor laws. The same is true of a
vaunted expansion in small business contracting, which turns out to be
a mirage. Last, but not least, Azibuike Akaba examines the evidence:
how much of New Orleans should be rebuilt, given the likelihood of
future hurricanes in light of growing climate change?

Our report is about the problems that have yet to be fixed. While
progress has been made in the states of Alabama, Louisiana and
Mississippi, two years after Hurricane Katrina struck, much remains to
be done, and this is intended as a guide to what has gone wrong, both
as a lesson for future disasters as well as a call to support those who
are yet to recover.

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