Contractor faces new fraud claims

A Slidell contractor is behind bars for the second time in six months on allegations he defrauded and stole from Hurricane Katrina victims, Slidell police said Tuesday.

James J. Moore, 47, 175 Meadowmoss Drive, was arrested Monday while he was working on another house. He was booked on two warrants alleging theft over $500, police spokesman Capt. Kevin Foltz said.

The latest arrest came after an Arrowhead Drive resident whose home was damaged by Katrina told police Moore took two payments totaling $15,000 in October to remove the home and its foundation from the property, Foltz said. The homeowner was unable to contact Moore after he removed the home but left the foundation, Foltz said.

Police arrested Moore, who was out on bond after being booked on three counts of theft over $500 in December, after one of the homeowners noticed him working on another home in Slidell, Foltz said.

Moore first came to the attention of authorities in November, after a homeowner in the Palms Springs neighborhood told police Moore had taken about $1,000 in roofing materials the homeowner had purchased, Foltz said. The homeowner had hired Moore to fix the roof of the house, Foltz said.

A few weeks after the first complaint, Moore contacted the owner of Water Tight Roofing and asked that the company purchase $1,800 worth of materials for the Palm Springs job, Foltz said. Moore reimbursed the company with a check but put a "stop payment" on it after the materials were delivered, he said.

In December, the Palm Springs homeowner told police that although Moore had been paid $15,000 for the repairs, he had only completed about $6,000 of the work, Foltz said.

Moore was booked Dec. 18 on three counts of theft over $500 and released on a $2,500 bond, Foltz said.

Slidell police also are investigating another complaint from a fourth person who alleged Moore defrauded him on $250,000 worth of work, Foltz said.

EJ, St. Charles levees' strength in question

Study shatters faith in levee strength

Substantial work planned in East Jeff

Despite withstanding Hurricane Katrina and being poised to become the area's first levee to reach the vaunted 100-year storm elevation, the East Jefferson lakefront levee might not be adequate and may need to be totally rebuilt or substantially enlarged.

Stunning new data spit out by a complex geotechnical computer model has concluded that lake levees in East Jefferson and St. Charles Parish could be at risk for catastrophic failure.

Though Army Corps of Engineers officials said some experts doubt the accuracy of the new analysis, the agency intends to identify and implement solutions -- which could range from entirely rebuilding the levees to constructing a huge rock jetty in front of them.

"Our new method of analysis has given us (data) that we don't intend to ignore," said Lt. Col. Murray Starkel, deputy commander of the corps' New Orleans District.

Because the corps is under the gun to provide an improved hurricane protection system by 2011, officials said they can't wait for the results of additional studies that might ultimately debunk this new finding of the "Spencer's method" analysis.

"There will come a point at which we go forward with (contracts), even if they produce an overly conservative design," said geotechnical engineer John Grieshaber, technical support chief for the corps' Hurricane Protection Office.

"We will award contracts to meet that 2011 date, and if we find out later that we can do with a less conservative design, we can modify a contract in the field," he said.

Design standards updated

The computer-generated data, which blindsided even those engineers overseeing planned improvements to the region's hurricane protection system, are the result of applying more conservative design standards adopted since Katrina.

Key to that corps effort to ratchet up reliability, complex computer software was specially adapted over the past year that enabled the Spencer's analysis to identify any type of failure that could possibly occur in tricky south Louisiana soils.

As recently as January, engineers overseeing planned improvements to the East Jefferson lakefront predicted that it would be the first to attain the new elevations needed to help provide a stepped-up 100-year level of storm surge protection by 2011.

But the very next month, the Spencer's software began unspooling the news that it had identified a failure potential not detected by previous computer analyses in the Lake Pontchartrain levees of East Jefferson and St. Charles Parish.

"No, we absolutely did not expect this result," Rich Varuso, geotechnical chief for the district's engineering division, said of the geometry-based calculations that resulted.

Improving stability

In response to the Spencer findings, a team of consulting engineers already are analyzing methods of providing additional stability in the two areas that have been red-flagged.

In both cases, the deficiency stems from the size of geosynthetic materials -- heavy-duty fabrics, often made of polyester or polypropylene -- that were buried beneath the levees and berms to help stop levees from moving and failing.

Because the materials were used primarily in East Jefferson and St. Charles Parish, corps officials said the dilemma appears limited to the two parishes.

Spencer's analysis concluded that the geosynthetic material currently in place is about 20 feet too short to prevent the kind of "rotational failure" that the stuff is designed to prevent.

The previous analysis, called Method of Planes, or MOP, did not identify such a failure potential, Varuso said.

Varuso and Starkel say no earthen hurricane protection levee has ever suffered a rotational failure, which generally occurs when levee movement creates a crack near the crown and total collapse follows.

Experts disagree

Varuso said geotechnical engineers who have reviewed Spencer's geometry-based calculations at the lakefront disagree on whether they are valid findings or a fluke created by reconfigured software.

"Some experienced engineers in this field say there's no way that this (kind of failure) can happen under these circumstances, that physics won't allow it .¤.¤. and other experienced engineers feel that it could happen," he said.

Varuso said the new findings already have been passed along to other corps districts and some academicians for their opinions, and additional in-depth analyses and testing are being planned. Those findings will then be peer-reviewed by experts outside the agency.

But for now, Varuso and others said the corps can't wait for those results to endorse or debunk the findings.

"We're going to consider that it's legitimate, valid, until our own studies show otherwise unless they show otherwise," Varuso said.

Corps decision-makers said they will take no chances: If the calculations turn out to have been wrong, Starkel said, the corps's path of prudence will result in an overdesigned protection system for the two parishes.

"Is this really an issue we need to be concerned with, or is it an anomaly?" asked Starkel. "We're going to err on the side of caution and proceed with our evaluation of designs to address it. .¤.¤. We're being uber-conservative."

Although levees and floodwalls throughout the region are being reassessed using Spencer's method, it is the geosynthetic fabrics located mainly in East Jefferson and St. Charles that threw up the red flag.

"I don't think it's going to be a major factor anywhere else, but we'll have to see when the (complete analysis) is finished," Starkel said.

Each of the options being evaluated would alter the face of the lakefront in varying degrees, just as each will have varying effects on the environment and the neighborhoods that nestle up to the levees.

"We well understand the impact that expanding the footprint of the levees will have on humans and the environment," Starkel said. "Our goal has always been to design more robust levees in the same footprint if at all possible."

Starkel said all the alternatives will be publicly aired in a variety of venues once the geotechnical team finishes its analysis, possibly in June.

The options also will be included in Independent Environmental Reports, due out later this year, that will identify the corps' preferred method of addressing the stability issue.

Options to fortify the levees in East Jefferson and St. Charles include degrading the existing levees to bury and anchor wider lengths of the heavy-duty geosynthetic fabric, then rebuilding the levees. During hurricane season, no more than 300 feet of levee would be degraded at any one time.

Another option is ignoring the use of geosynthetic fabric and instead enlarging the levees and berm.

In East Jefferson only, additional options include building a large rock breakwater on the wave berm or even replacing the earthen levees with a floodwall.

Length of construction is particularly dicey against the backdrop of providing a higher level of protection by 2011.

"I would suggest to you that is a sacred date, and there will be protection by then," Grieshaber said.

Starkel said it's too soon to estimate additional costs, but said the corps hopes to mine any extra money needed from the contingency and escalation dollars built into the 100-year budget.

Ironically, the use of geosynthetic fabric was a concept pioneered in the New Orleans district, Varuso said, as a way of strengthening levees in highly developed, urban areas where right of way is at a premium.

"If we follow that (Spencer's) analysis, we're talking about drastic changes in EJ," Grieshaber concluded. "Maybe we'll end up getting information that allows us to tweak things so that the solution won't be as drastic as those (now) being considered.

"But at the end of the day, there will have to be some type of change out there, and we're not just going to add more (dirt) to the top of the levee," he said. "That won't do it."

Parish to start FEMA trailer lawsuits

After 16 months of administrative cajoling, Jefferson Parish officials said Tuesday that they will begin filing lawsuits this week against any persistent denizens of FEMA trailers.

Inspectors found 600 illegal trailers lingering in unincorporated areas during the weekend: 421 in West Jefferson and 179 in East Jefferson. That's down from a peak of more than 17,000 in the summer of 2006.

Parish attorneys will go to court Thursday with the first 30 lawsuits against property owners with FEMA-issued trailers on their land, Parish President Aaron Broussard's administration said. The process will continue until all trailers have been targeted.
The threat of lawsuits is the latest and most aggressive effort to date in the public campaign to return Jefferson's neighborhoods to their appearances before Hurricane Katrina.

"It's been long enough," said Kennith Lassalle, president of the Civic League of East Jefferson. "There may be a few people with extenuating circumstances, but not as many as there are trailers."

Soon after the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane, the Parish Council suspended the law banning travel trailers in single-family zoning districts. By January 2007, parish officials were pressing to remove them, and code-enforcement inspectors started combing neighborhoods to post warning signs on trailer doors. As residents continued to rebuild their storm-damaged houses, the Broussard administration granted several extensions for the trailers' removal, then drew a line in the sand: March 1 was the deadline for the parish to begin considering lawsuits.

Kenner has taken a similar approach, with a deadline of May 31. After that, property owners could be subject to lawsuits, city officials say. According to the latest estimates, about 400 trailers remain in Kenner, down from a post-Katrina high of about 4,000.

Gretna this month counted 40 trailers, all but eight deactivated and awaiting FEMA pickup. Though its deadline for removing trailers was Jan. 1, residents could secure an extension if they could prove they were still repairing their houses. At last week's City Council meeting, Gretna officials said they will start issuing citations for remaining trailers in upcoming weeks.

Westwego has only a handful of trailers, and officials are pressing FEMA to remove them. The city has not renewed permits for residents with trailers.

A single trailer awaiting FEMA collection remains in Harahan, a city once home to about 200, Mayor Paul Johnston said.
In unincorporated areas, parish officials said any property owner who has asked FEMA to remove a trailer, but is still waiting for it to be hauled away, may avoid a lawsuit by submitting a signed and notarized affidavit to the parish attorney's office. Information about the process is available on the parish's Web site: www.jeffparish.net.

Lassalle, the Civic League president, said FEMA is partly to blame for trailers still in Jefferson Parish.

"At two of the trailers in my neighborhood, there's been no one living in them for eight or nine months, but FEMA just hasn't picked them up," said Lassalle, who lives in the Suburban Terrace neighborhood in Old Jefferson.
Parish officials said FEMA is trying to provide rental assistance and other help for trailer residents. FEMA's rental-resources phone number is (888) 294-2822. Its Web site is www.fema.gov.

Help also is available from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development at www.hud.gov and (866) 373-9509.

Agency Is Under Pressure to Develop Disaster Housing

GULFPORT, Miss. — After the federal government announced in February that it would no longer use travel trailers to house the victims of future disasters, there was an initial sense of relief along the hurricane-scarred Gulf Coast.

The flimsy little white boxes are unpleasant to live in and tainted with toxic formaldehyde fumes. And they cost the federal government billions of dollars.

But that relief quickly turned to exasperation when it became clear that the government did not have an immediate backup plan. Without the trailers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has no reliable way to rush immediate shelter to thousands of victims of an earthquake, or a wildfire, or another catastrophic hurricane.

Though FEMA is considering several new ideas, including a so-called panelized home partially built at a factory, the agency’s effort to develop a trailer replacement has not impressed many housing experts.

“FEMA seems like a babe in the woods on this stuff,” said John Henneberger, co-director of the Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service, which is working on trailer alternatives. “They seem to be clueless.”

The view in Washington is not much different. “It just sounds like they still don’t know what they’re talking about, to be frank,” said Ronald D. Utt, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “To say, O.K., we didn’t get it right with trailers so we’ll move on to something more exotic like prefab housing is a bizarre suggestion.”

There are several proposals that FEMA may try in future disasters, including houses made of shipping containers and one that can be shipped flat and unfolded upon delivery. Here in Gulfport, the state has designed and built what are known as the Mississippi Cottages — skinny but sturdy little houses that can be seen lined up by the hundreds in a staging area here.

But while the cottages are the only alternative that has been fully tested and appear popular with those who live in them, they have proved hard to place because of local government resistance. And they were produced through an effort that FEMA may have a hard time replicating.

FEMA is under increasing pressure from Congress to develop disaster housing. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, the Louisiana Democrat who leads a subcommittee on disaster recovery, has begun an investigation into the agency’s policies, and, at a hearing this month, castigated agency officials for failing to develop a strategic plan. Congress had set a deadline for the plan of July 1, 2007; the agency now says it hopes to have one by June 1.

Her goal, Ms. Landrieu said in an e-mail message, is to “make sure the next time a disaster strikes, housing — a basic human need — will be safe for all our families.”

FEMA officials say they are pushing hard to move the last 30,000 families out of temporary housing, most of which is made up of trailers. (There were almost 119,000 trailers in use at the peak.) As the trailers are emptied, they will probably be sold for scrap, said David Garratt, acting assistant administrator for disaster assistance at FEMA.

As for the pace of the hunt for a replacement, “we recognize, to some extent, this is an urgent need,” Mr. Garratt said. “But we don’t want to treat disaster victims as guinea pigs.”

In the meantime, FEMA is planning to order formaldehyde-free mobile homes and a little-used mini-mobile home, called a “park model,” to house disaster victims. But it is far harder to find sites for the bigger units; last fall, for example, the agency had more than 57,000 trailers in use along the Gulf Coast, but fewer than 7,000 mobile homes, and only 1,600 park units.

After the California wildfires last fall, FEMA was able to install only 50 mobile homes; it found them hard to transport on winding roads and hard to install on steep sites, said Jack Schuback, who runs the agency’s joint housing solutions group.

Many experts have long urged FEMA to work closely with federal housing officials to find existing apartments for disaster victims, rather than focus on trailers. The agency insists that it does so whenever possible, although its efforts along those lines in New Orleans and Mississippi have been roundly criticized. But after a disaster like Hurricane Katrina, there was no existing housing nearby.

Relocating families might mean sending them far from their jobs and the houses they hope to rebuild.

One of FEMA’s criteria in evaluating trailer alternatives is that they have a smaller footprint than mobile homes, Mr. Schuback said.

The agency is also looking for housing that can accommodate families and people with disabilities, that can be delivered quickly, that can be installed in different environments, and that will not be too costly. The travel trailers cost as little as $11,000 apiece, but installing and maintaining them averaged $30,000, and sometimes far more, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Using a lengthy checklist, FEMA has evaluated about 66 proposals, Mr. Schuback said, and visited 37 sites. But only half a dozen have been deemed promising enough to try during a disaster.

“I want to emphasize that we have not yet found the golden unit that will solve all disaster housing,” he said. “The process has ruled out far more units than it has yielded.”

The agency is being cagey about which proposals made the cut, but it did say that it is evaluating two that are being tried by states under a $400 million pilot project that Congress required FEMA to undertake in June 2006.

Texas is supposed to try the panelized home. It has signed a contract with an international company called Heston, but none of the houses have been built.

The only units FEMA says it is planning to test are the Mississippi Cottages, which have tin roofs, small porches and are colored like Easter eggs — rose-hip pink, malted mint, cloudless blue. The cottages are on wheels, but the larger models can be put on permanent foundations. All are equipped with appliances, beds, a table and chairs, ceiling fans, even pots and pans, and cost an average of $32,000 apiece to build.

With its built-in closets and spacious kitchen cupboards, their cottage feels like a mansion, said Vicki Ladner Meshell and her husband, Rickey, whose apartment in Long Beach was washed away by Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge.

“We love it — except when all four of us are trying to get ready at once,” Ms. Meshell said of the little aqua-colored cottage, which her family eventually hopes to buy. The cottage is rent-free, although they pay $210 a month for the trailer site, plus utilities.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency has installed more than 2,000 of them throughout southern Mississippi, and plans to put in 3,500.

But local governments in Mississippi have resisted the cottages. They fear people who get cottages will simply live in them and not rebuild their houses, said Mike Womack, executive director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.

“They’re too nice,” he said. “I’ve heard this over and over again.”

Big Plans Sputter in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS — In March 2007, city officials finally unveiled their plan to redevelop New Orleans and begin to move out of the post-Hurricane Katrina morass. It was billed as the plan to end all plans, with Paris-like streetscape renderings and promises of parks, playgrounds and “cranes on the skyline” within months.

But a year after a celebratory City Hall kickoff, there have been no cranes and no Parisian boulevards. A modest paved walking path behind a derelict old market building is held up as a marquee accomplishment of the yet-to-be-realized plan.

There has been nothing to signal a transformation in the sea of blight and abandonment that still defines much of the city. Weary and bewildered residents, forced to bring back the hard-hit city on their own, have searched the plan’s 17 “target recovery zones” for any sign that the city’s promises should not be consigned to the municipal filing cabinet, along with their predecessors. On their one-year anniversary, the designated “zones” have hardly budged.

“To my knowledge, I don’t think they’ve done anything to any of them,” said Cynthia Nolan, standing near a still-padlocked, derelict library in the once-flooded Broadmoor section, which is in the plan.

“I haven’t seen anything they’ve done to even initiate anything,” said Ms. Nolan, a manager in a state motor vehicles office who has painstakingly raised her house here nearly four feet. “It’s too long. A year later, and they still haven’t initiated anything they decided to do?”

The library still bears the cross-hatch markings made by emergency teams in the days immediately after Hurricane Katrina, to indicate whether any bodies were inside (there were none).

The city official in charge of the recovery effort, Edward J. Blakely, said the public’s frustration was understandable, but he suggested that bureaucratic hurdles had made moving faster impossible. Mr. Blakely said crucial federal money had only recently become available, the process of designing reconstruction projects within the 17 zones was time-consuming, and ethics constraints on free spending were acute, given a local history of corruption.

“It took us 11 years to do downtown Oakland,” said Mr. Blakely, an academic from California who specializes in helping cities recover from disasters. “This is a process of urban redevelopment. You cannot do this overnight, no city, anyplace in the world.”

Mr. Blakely has been given broad authority — a staff of more than 200 and jurisdiction over eight agencies — in a municipal hierarchy where the mayor, C. Ray Nagin, has adopted a hands-off role. Criticized last year for frequent trips to Australia, where he holds a university post, Mr. Blakely said he had not been there for some months.

The growing frustration points up what has been a recurring theme in New Orleans’s sketchy, on-again, off-again recovery from Hurricane Katrina: grandiose official promises, apparently made to lift the public’s morale, that soon prove unrealistic.

“They come up with these plans that look great and sound great,” said Sheila White, a Mid-City resident. “They give people hope. Then, they fall into the background. Promises are made, and they are not kept.”

Donna Brown, president of a neighborhood group in the Gentilly section, said she had seen no movement from the Nagin administration.

“I was told there would be groundbreaking Sept. 1, but I haven’t seen anything,” Ms. Brown said. “I’m not sure what’s going on. My neighbors are quite frustrated. I’m sure we’re all pretty much aggravated and frustrated about not seeing results.”

Many of the hardest-hit neighborhoods remain stuck where they have been for months, with a few houses on a block occupied and the rest in varying stages of abandonment or repair. In Broadmoor, one block might appear carefully restored by residents, while another will seem derelict. Vacant grassy lots newly pepper the city, ambiguous signs of progress: blighted houses recently sat on them, but construction has often not followed demolition.

The grim housing projects have started to come down, part of a federal replacement plan. But an acute shortage of low-cost housing spurred hundreds to wait hours in line for rental assistance vouchers in mid-March, the biggest crowd officials said they had ever seen. Financing for dozens of developments in New Orleans now appears uncertain, thanks to the national downturn.

Meanwhile, the repopulation of the city after the storm that emptied it has slowed notably. The Census Bureau’s latest estimate, 239,000, represents barely over half the former population — and well under what local officials and New Orleans demographers have been claiming for months. Unemployment is lower than the national average, at 4.1 percent, thanks largely to construction, but high-end jobs are few, more expensive homes sit unsold for months, and the biggest economic development project in sight, a medical complex including a new Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, is years away. The French Quarter, hub of the vital tourism business, is crowded on weekends but empty during the week.

Mayor Nagin remains an elusive figure, occasionally surfacing to take strong issue with local news media portrayals of him, but otherwise delegating much responsibility for the recovery to Mr. Blakely. In one recent venture into the public light, Mr. Nagin complained bitterly when The Times-Picayune published a photograph of him playfully brandishing an M-4 rifle at the police chief during a news conference; the newspaper then published a front-page apology.

Civic leaders are relatively unguarded in their criticism. “The question is, is he relevant anymore?” asked Rob Couhig, a lawyer who ran against Mr. Nagin and then served as an unpaid adviser to him.

“What does he do that the city couldn’t do without him?” asked Mr. Couhig, who is the secretary of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, a city agency.

“Obviously, Mayor Nagin continues to serve as mayor of this city, making him the leader of the recovery efforts,” a spokesman responded by e-mail, adding: “Just two weeks ago he led a delegation to Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress regarding our most pressing recovery priorities.”

In the city’s renewal plan, most of the 17 redevelopment areas still bear tentative designations like “preliminary design” or “planning” on a municipal Web site that officials say is up to date. In some areas, no development projects are indicated at all, and on the few that indicate “construction,” actual results seem small-scale — new paving on a basketball court and a new corrugated metal roof over it, in an otherwise forlorn playground, next to an empty, boarded-up school, in a neighborhood, Hoffman Triangle, full of abandoned houses and teenagers hanging out at midday. Another project under “construction” nearby involves replacing “damaged ceiling tiles” at a police station.

Mr. Blakely conceded that progress so far was “still light stuff. I think people were expecting they’d wake up one morning and it would be nirvana. But little things are happening, cleanups, fixups, and so on.” On a driving tour, he pointed to new grass in the median of St. Claude Avenue, and street improvements. Buildings on either side, though, were dilapidated or appeared unused.

Three weeks ago Mr. Blakely announced more projects, including playgrounds, ball fields and swimming pools, as part of the recovery plan.

There have been some uniquely New Orleans hang-ups as well, said the recovery director; “lot of tensions in the staff,” revolving around race. “Black people have a hard time taking instruction from white people,” said Mr. Blakely, who is black. There is resentment “if a white person asks them to do something. It’s really bad. I’ve never encountered anything like this.”

His staff is under pressure from residents — “the people are on them every day, about when are things going to be done” — and the tension was evident in glum faces last week at a staff meeting presided over by Mr. Blakely in a downtown building.

In the neighborhoods, the verdict is still out on Mr. Blakely and his plan.

Leonard Montegut, asked for his assessment of the recovery director, said: “Right now, I can’t think of anything. I think time will tell.”

Mr. Montegut was mowing the grass in front of the apartment building he owns in the Hoffman Triangle, next to the playground that has been one of the few beneficiaries so far.

Stacy Head, a city councilwoman, said: “I’m trying to remain hopeful. I’m ready for some action. Their approaches are smart. But we’re still waiting.”

Contaminated homes denied funds

It was one thing for Leatrice Roberts to find out that the government had sold her a townhome built on top of a waste dump. But it was mindboggling to learn, at age 74, that the Road Home can't buy her out because the land is contaminated.

"You talk to this one at Road Home, you talk to that one, nobody can tell you if she'll get her money," said Roberts' daughter Patricia, who now lives in Lakeview with her disabled mother and serves as her caretaker.

The state's $10.3 billion Road Home program pays homeowners up to $150,000 to rebuild their homes or to buy them out and transfer the land to a New Orleans redevelopment authority. Financing for the program comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which currently runs HANO -- the same agency that decades ago built the Press Park complex where the Robertses' storm-damaged townhome is located.

In the past two weeks, state officials informed homeowners such as Leatrice Roberts who lived atop the old Agriculture Street landfill before Hurricane Katrina hit that their Road Home applications had been placed on hold indefinitely because they live on a Superfund cleanup site. The EPA in 1994 added the 9th Ward enclave to its Superfund list, but said the area could be made safe with mitigation steps such as the replacement of topsoil.

On Thursday, state spokeswoman Christina Stephens said state agencies were working with local leaders and the EPA to come up with a policy for using HUD financing to buy the properties on the Superfund site.

HUD said its money can't be used to purchase contaminated land, but that it would work with the state to come up with a solution.

Federal subsidies

Homeowners in the neighborhood argue that they are entitled to compensation when it was HANO and the city of New Orleans, backed by federal subsidies, that built the homes on an old city dump, placed public housing tenants there and sold the homes to poor residents in a rent-to-own initiative. The neighborhood included a subdivision development called Gordon Plaza.

HUD spokesman Brian Sullivan said the federal housing agency sympathizes, but doesn't consider itself a party to the dispute.

"We appreciate the fact that it must be a maddening situation for these homeowners," he said.

Late Thursday, Stephens said the state decided to put applications from former residents of the landfill neighborhood back into the Road Home pipeline. Blending elements of two Road Home options, the property owners would have their grants calculated based on a regular rebuilding grant, but they also would be allowed to use the money to relocate. She said the state was still working out details of the policy, including who would assume ownership of the properties.

"We can't keep these people in a holding pattern forever," Stephens said.

The land's hidden legacy

The Robertses believe they were the second family to move into the HANO Press Park complex when it opened in 1970. When HANO showed the widowed Leatrice Roberts the property, she recalls that nobody told her it was on top of the old 95-acre landfill, a city dump from 1909 to 1958 that briefly reopened after Hurricane Betsy in 1965.

Everyone in the neighborhood knew Roberts' Montegut Street townhome by the heavy door with "Roberts" in a gold-painted iron design in the middle. After Hurricane Katrina flooded the townhome and destroyed the roof, someone took that door.

Leatrice Roberts now uses a wheelchair because of heart problems, diabetes, high blood pressure and a blood clot in her lungs. She's been waiting for Road Home to buy her out since her first appointment in November 2006, and using her Social Security checks to pay $1,500 in monthly rent.

The property deed of Roberts, for many years a subsidized renter at Press Park, shows she purchased her townhome from HANO on Nov. 4, 1991, three years before the EPA found dangerous levels of lead in the ground and declared the area a Superfund site. A few years after that, Roberts and her other daughter, Gail Wells, were diagnosed with cancer, they said. Roberts lost a kidney and Wells had ovarian cancer, but both say they are now cancer-free.

During the same year that the site was added to the Superfund list, school officials shut down Moton Elementary School, across Abundance Street from the row of townhomes, citing fears of the health effects of buried waste. But local and federal officials at the time turned aside residents' pleas for a buyout of their homes.

Post-storm contamination

After Hurricane Katrina, when the EPA tested the ground in New Orleans and gave the city a clean bill of health, there was one glaring exception: In the old Ag Street landfill area, yards had 50 times the normal level of the cancer-causing petroleum byproduct benzo(a)pyrene.

Nevertheless, FEMA trailers were supplied for properties in the area. Road Home officially initially said the program would provide rebuilding grants, but not buyouts, in the area. And HANO told homeowners they could move back into their homes, even though a judge had called the neighborhood unfit for people.

Roberts is among hundreds of former Press Park and Gordon Plaza residents waiting for HANO and the city to pay a class-action judgment, in a suit sparked by pre-Katrina contamination issues. It took 13 years to win the lawsuit in Civil District Court, where Judge Nadine Ramsey declared the neighborhood "unreasonably dangerous" and "uninhabitable." She ordered HANO, the city and their insurers to pay fair-market value, plus amounts ranging from $4,000 to $50,000 for emotional distress, depending on how long a resident lived at the site before contamination was found in 1993.

On Jan. 30, the state's 4th Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld Ramsey's ruling, although it cut the emotional distress awards in half. On Thursday, HANO appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court and other defendants are expected to also press appeals, said plaintiffs' attorney Suzette Peychaud Bagneris.

Bagneris said she has asked the Road Home for more than a year to offer buyouts to the Ag Street landfill homeowners, just as the program has done for those affected by the Murphy Oil spill that occurred during Hurricane Katrina in St. Bernard Parish.

"Our requests fell upon deaf ears," Bagneris said.

Stephens said the Murphy Oil spill is not limited by federal rules governing Superfund sites. The Murphy Oil spill has its own section in Road Home policies. Until the state's decision Thursday, there had been no policy for Superfund sites.

New Orleans Grows; Florida Cools

New Orleans is slowly beginning to rebound from the severe population losses inflicted by Hurricane Katrina, according to new census data, but growth in a number of previous hot spots slowed in the 12-month period that ended July 1, 2007. Broward County in Florida, which includes Fort Lauderdale, lost population for the first time.

“We don’t have as many families moving in, employment has leveled off and started to decline, and housing costs are out of line with reality,” said Bill Leonard, senior planner with Broward’s planning services division.

Other Florida counties were similarly affected. Palm Beach recorded zero growth since 2006, and Miami-Dade registered the lowest growth rate in years.

“Previous hot spots, in Florida, the Mountain West and exurbs, cooled off dramatically,” said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. “At the same time, areas that supplied them with migrants — coastal California, cities in the Northeast and Midwest and inner suburbs — held on to a larger number of them.”

He added that because of the weakness in the economy, young families and retirees who might otherwise have relocated “are hanging tight in more stable parts of the country waiting to see what comes next.”

That could explain greater gains or reduced losses, compared with 2005-6, in places like the counties of San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange, San Francisco and Santa Clara in California and in inner suburbs and urban core counties like Middlesex, N.J.; Cook, Ill.; Fairfax, Va.; Hennepin, Minn.; and Philadelphia.

Except for Kendall, near Chicago, the nation’s 10 fastest-growing counties and parishes were in the West and South. More than a third of the 100 fastest growing were in Georgia or Texas.

The top 10 list was led by St. Bernard and Orleans Parishes in Louisiana, which grew by 43 percent (almost 6,000 people) and 14 percent (nearly 29,000), respectively. St. Bernard Parish’s population last July was estimated at nearly 20,000, compared with 65,000 in mid-2005 before Hurricane Katrina struck. Orleans Parish’s was 239,000, compared with 454,000 in 2005. (A spokesman for Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans said that demographers working for the city had estimated the population of Orleans Parish at closer to 300,000.)

Maricopa County in Arizona, which includes Phoenix, swelled by 102,000 since 2006, making it the biggest gainer numerically. But Maricopa and Harris County, Tex., which includes Houston, gained far fewer people moving from elsewhere in the country than they had the year before.

Since 2000, nearly twice as many counties in the United States sustained population declines as in the 1990s. Mark Mather, deputy director of domestic programs for the Population Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan research group, said that 85 percent of them were nonmetropolitan counties, “mostly areas that are highly dependent on manufacturing, farming or mining.”

Since 1950, the populations of more than 100 rural counties in the Midwest and Texas have shrunk by half or more. “If current trends continue, these counties would be empty by 2050,” Mr. Mather said. “The weak economy since 2000 may be pushing people back to metropolitan areas to find jobs with decent wages.”

In the New York City area, growth slowed, with the biggest numerical and proportional losses in Nassau County and the biggest gains in Staten Island and Manhattan (which grew by more than 8,000, accounting for more than half the state’s gains). New York City officials routinely challenge the census data, arguing that it undercounts minorities and immigrants.

In many counties that otherwise would not have grown or would have suffered greater losses, an influx of foreigners and immigrant births compensated for the departure of native-born residents or for a relatively low rate of natural increase in births over deaths. “This is especially true,” Mr. Mather said, “for the core counties of big cities such as Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and New York.”

HUD: Survey Validates N.O. Demolition

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A majority of public housing residents dispersed by Hurricane Katrina do not want to return to the old brick buildings they lived in before the storm, according to a Department of Housing and Urban Development survey.

The results were significant because housing officials have argued that the poor people who lived in public housing were not beholden to life in the old complexes because they were plagued by crime and malfunctioning apartments.

HUD said the survey, released Thursday, validated its plan to demolish four sprawling complexes and replace them with mixed-income, mixed-use neighborhoods.

Critics and many residents, however, have complained that the demolition plan runs counter to the wishes of residents and will wind up shrinking the amount of cheap housing and drive poor black people out of the city.

Donald Babers, a HUD official appointed to head the Housing Authority of New Orleans, said the survey results highlight what the agency has been ''saying for the past two years.''

''Most families do want to return, but they want to return to a better home and a better environment and don't want to return to the concentrations of deteriorating, obsolete public housing that they left,'' Babers said.

The survey got in touch with 2,109 of New Orleans' 5,100 public housing families. About half of those surveyed had already moved back to New Orleans by the time the survey was done between October 2007 and February.

The other half, those who had not moved back to New Orleans, fell into two main groups: 34 percent said they wanted housing vouchers when they got back to New Orleans and 37 percent said they did not want to return to New Orleans. Only about 13 percent of the residents said they wanted to return to public housing in New Orleans. About 70 percent of the displaced residents want to come back to New Orleans, the survey found.

The survey was conducted by the University of Texas at Arlington and Survey Communications Inc. of Baton Rouge. HUD was asked to do the survey by U.S. House members concerned that New Orleans' poor were being left out of the city's rebuilding.

Sheila Crowley, the president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said she was concerned about how many of New Orleans' public housing residents were not surveyed.

''That's a lot of people whose preferences we do not know about,'' she said. ''I am worried about where the rest of the residents are.''

Housing advocates say the hurricane-hit region is in the midst of a housing crisis and that it will become even more acute as more people are forced out of their government trailers in the coming months.

Mayor Rips Plan to Empty FEMA Trailers

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A plan to move people living in trailers to apartments and hotels because of concerns about formaldehyde fumes will not work and will lead to a ''second great displacement'' of New Orleans residents, the city's mayor said.

There simply isn't enough other housing available in the hurricane-distressed region, Mayor Ray Nagin said in a letter to President Bush released Tuesday.

''Because of the scope of damage to New Orleans' housing stock, much of which is still not recovered, there is insufficient housing here to place all New Orleans citizens needing to be relocated from trailers,'' Nagin wrote.

R. David Paulison, the administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said earlier this month that the agency hopes to get everyone out and into hotels, motels, apartments and other temporary housing by the summer, when the heat and stuffy air could worsen dangerous levels of formaldehyde fumes found in the trailers.

James McIntyre, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Wednesday that the mayor's letter was addressed to the president and that his agency had not received an official copy. He said FEMA would work with Nagin's office to address his concerns ''within our legal authorities.''

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month said that formaldehyde fumes from 519 trailers and mobile homes tested in Mississippi and Louisiana were, on average, about five times what people are exposed to in most modern homes.

Formaldehyde is a preservative commonly used in construction materials; it can lead to breathing problems and is also believed to cause cancer.

FEMA, which has provided trailers and rental assistance to hundreds of thousands of victims since the 2005 storms, has been offering lists of rental options to those living in trailers; months ago, the agency announced plans to close group sites in the state by June 1.

Nagin wrote that while he agrees the situation is urgent, moving families to apartments or hotels isn't an appropriate solution. The plan, he said, ''will lead only to a second great displacement, as current trailer residents will be moved from New Orleans to apartments and hotels elsewhere in the Gulf Coast region.''

Programs meant to bring back housing haven't gained traction yet, Nagin said.

There are 8,515 travel trailers in the city, most in front of storm-damaged houses, he said, citing FEMA figures. Another 2,366 house former residents outside of the city, he said, estimating that based on the city's average home occupancy rate, that 25,000 New Orleanians currently live in trailers and could be relocated.

Nagin said FEMA must do a better job of providing health information to those in trailers, telling the president he wants free checkups for current and former trailer residents; free treatment of any medical conditions ''generated or exacerbated'' by exposure to formaldehyde; and ''guaranteed access to comprehensive, state-of-the-art medical care for any future formaldehyde-related medical conditions.''

He said he also wants the government to make available ''gap financing'' to help homeowners living in trailers make outstanding repairs to their houses

Report: FEMA Spent Millions Fraudulently

The Federal Emergency Management Agency misspent millions of dollars it received from selling used travel trailers, government investigators have found.

Instead of buying more trailers - as allowed under the law - FEMA used more than $13 million toward fully loaded sport utility vehicles, travel expenses and purchase card accounts, according to a draft report by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general obtained by The Associated Press. The report is to be released Friday.

During its three-month review last summer, the inspector general found that FEMA used some of the proceeds from trailer sales for tree-removal services, agency decals and banners and global positioning systems. FEMA spokesman James McIntyre said the agency discovered these problems on its own and has taken steps to fix them.

After Hurricane Katrina, FEMA purchased 200,000 travel trailers and mobile homes. When displaced hurricane victims leave these housing units, FEMA may sell the units to the general public. The law states that FEMA must use proceeds from these sales to buy more trailers or return the money to the U.S. Treasury.

"Once again, FEMA has proven to be a poor steward of taxpayer money. In order to regain the public's trust, FEMA must ensure that this type of wasteful spending never occurs again," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the House committee that oversees the Homeland Security Department.

In its comments on the report, FEMA said it spent all the money received from the sales to help disaster victims, but the agency agrees with investigators that there needs to be better oversight and control in the future.

"The funds received from the sale of used travel trailers and mobile homes were used specifically for what they were originally obligated for - that is, the proceeds were used for disaster relief and emergency assistance," according to the agency's comments to the draft report. In its comments, FEMA said it will establish a system to track the sale proceeds so that the proper amount of money is returned to the U.S. Treasury.

Since the 2005 hurricanes, Congress and the government have investigated FEMA's spending practices and determined the agency was defrauded, purchased trailers that pose potential health risks and misspent taxpayer dollars. In 2006, a congressional investigation found that purchase cards were used improperly and the Homeland Security Department - FEMA's parent agency - wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on items like iPods, beer-making equipment and designer jackets.

FEMA trailers deadline looming

Only three weeks remain for people living in FEMA trailers to get out for good under Jefferson Parish's continuing crackdown on the emergency housing units.

March 1 is the no-exceptions date when residents in about 1,500 remaining trailers will no longer be able to ask inspectors for more time. All cases will instead switch from inspectors to parish attorneys and be decided by parish hearing officers or in the courts.

Zoning laws against using the trailers as permanent housing in residential areas will return to full force, said D.J. Mumphrey, an executive assistant to Parish President Aaron Broussard who supervises the crackdown. He said residents' arguments that they still need the units as they rebuild from the 2005 hurricanes will be closely scrutinized.

It's going to be under a microscope," Mumphrey said, suggesting the parish will turn to judges in the 24th Judicial District Court or other venues to force residents out of their trailers. "It's our intent to go to the courts with this."

Mumphrey estimated that about 1,500 trailers remain in front of houses in the unincorporated parts of Jefferson that fall under the trailer removal campaign. Including cities and one remaining trailer group site operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a total of 2,168 units still dotted the parish at the end of January.

The big white boxes that symbolized the early phases of Hurricane Katrina recovery peaked in Jefferson Parish in 2006, when FEMA counted more than 19,000 of them in the parish.

Arguing for the need to restore normalcy in neighborhoods, the parish last year launched its effort to remove them, reestablishing the codes that prohibit them and sending teams of inspectors to post violation notices on trailer doors.

Inspectors granted extensions to residents who demonstrated their houses remained unlivable with storm damage, while other cases went to hearing officers who listened to residents' cases and allowed extensions or imposed fines.

The remaining cases involve disagreements between residents and the parish that inspectors and code officials cannot resolve, so parish attorneys will now take over the effort, said Louis Savoye, code enforcement director.

"There's a vast majority that probably, in our eyes, aren't justified," Savoye said. "In the owners' eyes, they are."

We feel like these decisions are too critical for us bureaucrats to make," he said.
Because FEMA must honor local laws, Savoye said the parish might refer some cases to the federal agency, giving federal officials notice that trailers are in violation of codes and must be removed.

"We have been as cooperative and as helpful as we can to the vast majority of the citizens," Savoye said. "You have to be compassionate, but if you sit around, people will take advantage of you. You have to be compassionate, but aggressive."

Trailer dwellers who still need housing help as they recover from Katrina can seek rental assistance through FEMA, parish officials said.

Gina Cortez, a spokeswoman for the agency, said case workers can help people locate apartments and qualify for rental aid in a program that has been operated jointly by FEMA and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development since December.

That program is also slated to phase out. Beginning in March, people receiving disaster rental help will have to pay $50 toward the cost of their rent, a number that will rise by $50 each month until residents are covering their entire housing bills or the assistance program ends entirely in March 2009.

The program, however, also refers people to social services and job training, Cortez said. "What we want is to work with them step by step to help them get back on their feet," she said.
Cortez said FEMA is cooperating with Jefferson to move residents from trailers and into the rental assistance program.

Partly under pressure from the parish, the agency has closed all but one of the 13 trailer enclaves that it once operated in Jefferson for storm victims who did not have another place to put a trailer. The remaining site, near Louis Armstrong International Airport, is scheduled to close in April.

Savoye said a handful of trailers remain installed outside businesses, but they occupy a low priority in the parish's trailer removal push because officials have not received any complaints about trailers in commercial areas.

The Jefferson trailer drawdown is a piece of a broader, post-Katrina code enforcement campaign in Jefferson that has also targeted rental storage units, blighted buildings, overgrown lots and abandoned swimming pools.

Katrina Nursing Home Case Costly for La.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- Louisiana taxpayers paid more than $360,000 for the failed prosecution of the owners of a nursing home where 35 people died during Hurricane Katrina, according to documents obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

The money spent by former state Attorney General Charles Foti include nearly $82,000 for lessons in jury selection and advice on running the trial, the documents show.

Sal and Mabel Mangano owned St. Rita's Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish, which was flooded by the hurricane that hit Aug. 29, 2005. Prosecutors said they should have evacuated the home, and they charged the couple with 35 counts of negligent homicide and 24 counts of cruelty to the elderly or infirm.

A jury took less than four hours to find the couple not guilty after the 2 1/2-week trial.
''This is a colossal waste of taxpayers' money on a case that should never have come to trial,'' said James Cobb, one of the lawyers who represented the Manganos.
Foti, now in private practice with a New Orleans law firm, did not immediately return a call for comment Friday.

Foti's office drew heavy criticism for prosecuting the Manganos and, in a separate case, prosecuting a doctor and two nurses for the post-hurricane deaths of nine patients at a New Orleans hospital. An accounting of the expenses from that case is not yet available.

Foti has repeatedly denied accusations that he used the trials to grandstand for his re-election bid. He lost last fall's Republican primary, and Democrat Buddy Caldwell became the new attorney general in a runoff election.

The initial expense figures in the Mangano case, provided by Caldwell's office, include $81,533 to Courtroom Sciences Inc., the company that instructed the assistant district attorneys who conducted the trial on jury selection, opening statements and trial tactics.

Other expenses include $58,401 for hurricane expert Brian Jarvinen, $72,018.82 to psychiatry professor Robert Stall and $52,607 to Dr. Stanford Finkel, a gerontologist.
It was not clear from the documents how Jarvinen, Stall and Finkel aided the prosecution.

In the hospital case, Foti led investigations that resulted in the arrests of cancer specialist Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry, who worked at the flooded Memorial Medical Center after the storm.

A grand jury last year refused to indict Pou. Landry and Budo testified before the panel under immunity and were not indicted.

Edwards Nixes Campaign Stops for Speech in New Orleans

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards postponed campaign events in Alabama and North Dakota to make a major policy address on poverty Wednesday in New Orleans, where he launched his presidential bid 13 months ago.

Campaign officials said Edwards wants to highlight the fact that President Bush did not focus on New Orleans, still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, during his State of the Union address. North Dakota and Alabama are scheduled to vote Feb. 5.

In a news release, the Edwards campaign called poverty ''the great moral issue of our time.'' In recent days, it said, ''national discussion of important issues like ending poverty has given way to sniping and personal attacks between the two front-runner candidates. Ending poverty and fighting for the middle class is the cause of John Edwards' life -- and he will urge the nation to refocus on this important issue.''

Mudcat Saunders, who was campaigning for Edwards in rural Georgia, a Feb. 5 state, said Edwards wanted to refocus his campaign on poverty.

Advisers said Edwards was continuing his campaign to the 22 states holding nominating contests on Feb. 5, despite losses in the first four contests, in hopes of picking up more delegates. On Saturday, he finished a distant third in his native South Carolina, whose primary he won in 2004.

Some people close to the campaign said Edwards also was disappointed that poverty got little mention in Democratic reactions to President Bush's address, and he sees the New Orleans speech as a chance to refocus attention on the problem.

The insiders said Edwards continues to raise money at a respectable pace, although not at the level of rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

The Edwards campaign said he will attend Thursday's Democratic debate in Los Angeles. After speaking in New Orleans on Wednesday, the news release said, Edwards ''will volunteer on the Habitat for Humanity project at the Musicians' Village'' and then fly to Atlanta to address a Georgia Democratic Party dinner.

Georgia also votes on Feb. 5.

Edwards campaigned Tuesday in Jefferson City, Mo. He told a small crowd that he wants universal health care, a quick end to the Iraq war and economic policies geared toward helping the working and middle classes.

Homes outside Levees proposed for buyouts by Corps

Storm surge from Hurricane Katrina pushed through marsh along the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain at its juncture with the Tchefuncte River, reaching a record high 7.9 feet in Madisonville, where it damaged 40 percent of the historic waterfront town's homes.

But it still came as a surprise to Madisonville Mayor Peter Gitz to learn that the Army Corps of Engineers may recommend a voluntary buyout of properties south of Louisiana 22, which bisects the town, as part of the corps' comprehensive plan to protect south Louisiana from catastrophic hurricanes.

Gitz and others are learning what flood protection from a "Category 5" hurricane, the classification for the most intense storms, could mean for the New Orleans area. While the corps is still working on its Category 5 plan, a "progress report" obtained by The Times-Picayune offers a preliminary look at the agency's three-pronged approach to protecting the region: flood control, coastal restoration and "buyout" zones.

Yes, buyouts.

Part of Madisonville -- along with hundreds of acres in other wetland or low-lying areas outside of proposed levee systems -- appears so vulnerable to storm surge that a government buyout of residences and businesses is listed as one potential option.

The areas pictured also include the southernmost parts of Slidell, Mandeville and Lacombe on the north shore; Delacroix and Reggio in St. Bernard Parish; Ruddock in St. John the Baptist Parish; Lafitte and Barataria in Jefferson Parish; and a number of communities on both sides of the river in Plaquemines Parish. The report doesn't say how many buildings are in the areas proposed for buyouts.

Gitz isn't buying it. The 72-year-old mayor views Katrina as an extremely unusual event with little chance of repeating.

"I was 12 when the 1947 hurricane hit us, and it didn't cause such high water," he said. "Audrey, Betsy, Camille and all the others, we never had water over elevation 6."

The draft document, which details work the agency already should have completed, has not yet been released to the public. The corps missed a Dec. 31 deadline to make recommendations to Congress, angering the state's congressional delegation, as well as state officials and advocates for coastal restoration and flood protection.

The report includes a variety of options for levees and coastal restoration projects, all labeled as "examples" rather than concrete proposals. But the buyout proposal -- similar to a controversial plan the corps pitched last year in Mississippi -- represents new territory for the agency.

Hundreds of acres of mostly wetland areas or low ground outside of proposed levee systems are labeled for buyout based on two reasons:

-- Computer models indicate that 400-year or 1,000-year hurricanes would throw surge at vulnerable areas with enough force to knock down buildings or move them off their foundations.

-- The models show the surge would be so high that the buildings would be inundated.

The maps also recommend even larger areas, still outside proposed levees, to be targeted for raising of buildings to heights of as much as 14 feet. The corps report doesn't specify who should pay for the buyouts or building elevations.

Last year, the corps proposed a voluntary buyout, using federal money, for 17,000 residential properties across the Mississippi Coast. The proposal was quickly reduced to as few as 3,000 houses over five years after property owners and local elected officials raised objections.

The buyout and elevation strategies "provide the most definitive risk reduction by removing assets at risk," said Col. Al Lee, commander of the corps' New Orleans District office.

But corps project manager Al Naomi said the corps still must work with local stakeholders "to get a sense of what's implementable and what isn't."

Corps delays process

The corps was directed to deliver a comprehensive protection plan to Congress by Dec. 31. In a Dec. 20 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Army Assistant Secretary for Public Works John Paul Woodley Jr. said the corps could not make the deadline but would send a progress report in about two months.

With the clock ticking on Louisiana's eroding coast, the delay raised the ire of Louisiana's U.S. senators and state officials. Most of the leading researchers studying coastal erosion have said that Louisiana must take drastic action within the next 10 years to have any hope of saving key sections of coastline, vital for hurricane protection.

"It is extremely disappointing that the corps is again ignoring the intent of Congress by delaying their report," said U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. "Bureaucratic foot-dragging leaves in lingering jeopardy both our coast and the safety of the millions of Louisianians living there."

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., echoed that sentiment.

"The administration has had years to prepare this report," he said. "Unfortunately, missing another key deadline will reinforce the fear many, including me, have -- that they haven't adopted the right sense of urgency regarding coastal protection, and that they're too focused on cost versus best engineering."

The delays stem largely from a decision by the corps to design a new, complex process for selecting which projects should be part of the plan, after being ordered by Congress not to use its traditional method of weighing the financial benefits of projects against the cost.

Corps officials say the new selection process, which they call a "matrix," is necessary to assure that the ability of individual projects to reduce storm surge risk is supported by science and engineering, that their construction and maintenance are affordable, and that they meet the political and cultural demands of the state's residents.

For the past two years, state officials have repeatedly pointed out that many of the projects have been on the drawing board for years, and that remaining scientific questions can be answered as the individual projects are undergoing design and construction.

"We don't have time to wait for their schedule," said Sidney Coffee, who recently stepped down as director of the Governor's Office of Coastal Activities and chairwoman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

Officials are frustrated

Several parish officials also are concerned about continuing to wait for a plan, and at the lack of input they have had in its direction.

Slidell Mayor Ben Morris is one of those who has yet to be contacted about proposals for buyouts or for a U-shaped levee around the city.

"It may make some sense, but I would like to see what they're talking about," Morris said of the buyout proposal. "If they want to buy out half the city, that's one thing. But if they're only interested in small areas, that's different."

Morris said he's much more worried about the time spent looking at such alternatives, instead of moving forward with projects to restore wetlands and barrier islands.

"They will already have built the Ben Morris Memorial Phone Booth by the time those are built," he said.

Morris said he is equally frustrated by the slow response to past requests from Slidell officials to help pay for a levee to protect the city's southern boundary and the lengthy study under way to determine how to protect his city from much larger hurricanes.

"I could have put a levee up there for a half-million dollars that would have done a great job during Katrina for at least some of the surge," he said. "Why reinvent the wheel when you can get a cheap fix? Then, if a permanent solution comes up 10 or 11 years from now, do that permanent solution."

St. Tammany Parish spokeswoman Suzanne Parsons Stymiest said Parish President Kevin Davis has met several times with corps officials to discuss the long-term alternatives, including gate proposals and levees in various locations. But the buyout alternative had not been discussed.

"Any plan that would come forward from the federal government, or from anyone, would have to be extremely respectful," she said. "These are people's homes we're talking about, and any decision would have to take their feelings into account."

Neither does Plaquemines Parish have time to wait for the report to be completed, said new parish coastal restoration director P.J. Hahn.

"We think we should be taking our offshore oil and gas revenue and bonding it out and leveraging that for more money to rebuild now," Hahn said. "The focus needs to stay on Plaquemines Parish because anything we do down here is going to have a huge impact on New Orleans and Jefferson Parish."

Storm speeds erosion

Corps officials say it will take several months for the agency to complete a required technical report, needed to support the final recommendations and expected to run some 4,000 pages.

Once complete, the report must undergo both a corps peer review process and an outside review by a panel of scientists and engineers with the National Academy of Sciences, which could take at least six weeks.

The corps also hasn't completed an environmental impact statement that must accompany the report and must undergo public review, including public hearings.

Woodley said he will forward the completed documents to Congress within 120 days of the completion of that process.

"Although I am painfully aware that each day of delay is disquieting to all of us that are dedicated to the Gulf Coast recovery efforts, we all realize that our decisions will ultimately be tested over time," he said in his letter to Pelosi.

Corps officials drafting the reports say the complicated process of determining how best to protect Louisiana's coastal communities probably should take at least five years, so missing a two-year deadline is not surprising.

Indeed, the dramatic damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to the state's coastline -- about 217 square miles of wetlands turned into open water -- has caused those planning levee and restoration projects to rethink whether they will work. In some cases, levees that were believed to be buffered by wetlands that would avoid erosion for a generation are now facing open water.

"The loss attributed to these storms exceeds the wetland losses that h