Texas to Screen Evacuees It Buses

Texans who board evacuation buses during hurricanes or other emergencies must now submit to criminal background checks, the state’s emergency management director said.

The policy is an effort to keep sex offenders and fugitives from boarding evacuation buses with children, the elderly and the disabled, Jack Colley, the chief of the state’s Division of Emergency Management, told The Houston Chronicle, which posted the article on its Web site Saturday.

Mr. Colley said that sex offenders or other criminals would be evacuated on different buses. “We’re not going to leave anyone,” he said.

The intent, he said, is to make sure that vulnerable residents are not victimized.

Mr. Colley also said that state officials would be able to segregate evacuees, even in the chaos of an emergency. “We’ll have procedures,” he said, “and we’re not going to advertise what they are.”

Under the plan, anyone who boards must provide a name. Officials can ask for photo identification, but it is not needed to board, Mr. Colley said.

Officials will check names against sex offender registries and other criminal databases, Mr. Colley said.

After Hurricane Katrina, about 1,700 parolees did not check in with the authorities in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

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Nagin chides protesters, thanks alot Ray!

Mayor Ray Nagin called the planned demolition of aging public housing in New Orleans a "no win-win" situation and chided protesters who he said have never lived in the developments.

"Someone is going to be upset," Nagin said Saturday about the planned demolition of 4,500 units of public housing to make way for mixed-income neighborhoods.

Nagin called the demolition protesters an "interesting group" and questioned whether any of them had ever lived in public housing.

Nagin was speaking at a press conference in Hollygrove on to mark the construction of a $4 million, 30-unit housing development for the elderly.

The protesters, Nagin said, are "getting their 15 minutes on the camera."

Nagin said he was disappointed that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development didn't start rehabbing the Lafitte development in the Treme two years ago.

"I think we could have done a lot more," Nagin said, of the rehabilitation of old public housing units.

Levees.org reposts controversial video

Levees.org on Friday reposted to YouTube a satirical video filmed by high school students that is critical of the relationship between the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Army Corps of Engineers, after the group was promised free representation by two local law firms in the event it is sued.


"We have something to say today to the president of the American Society of Civil Engineers," said Levees.org President Sandy Rosenthal during a news conference in a restored Lakeview home a few blocks from the 17th Street Canal. "We reject your threats and we will not stop publicizing our video."

In a letter to ASCE general Counsel Thomas Smith III, one of the attorneys for Levees.org warned that any lawsuit against the organization might trigger Louisiana's "Anti-SLAPP" statute, which allows courts to weed out lawsuits designed to chill public participation on matters of public significance.

SLAPP stands for "Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation."

"While this may not be a criticism the ASCE enjoys, it is nonetheless a fully protected exercise of free speech on the part of Levees.org," wrote Samantha Everett, an attorney with Cooley Godward Kronish.

The announcement came three weeks after Rosenthal announced that she had taken the video off YouTube because of the threat of a cease-and-desist lawsuit from the ASCE. At the time, she said she was taking that action only because her organization could not afford the legal costs if the ASCE were to file a lawsuit.

The video was produced by her son, Sanford, who is a student at Isidore Newman School. The ASCE had sent a copy of their cease-and-desist letter to the school's principal, too.

The Levees.org announcement comes only a few days after ASCE officials announced that they were creating an independent task force to review the way the organization participates in national disaster investigations like the corps-sponsored review of the levee and wall failures during Hurricane Katrina.

The ASCE also has begun an internal ethics investigation in response to a 42-page complaint filed by University of California-Berkeley Engineering Professor Raymond Seed, in which he said senior ASCE and corps staffers conspired to obstruct him and other independent investigators looking into the Katrina disaster.

In the Levees.org video, narrators say, "The Army Corps of Engineers asked the American Society of Civil Engineers to hand-pick some members to find the truth," referring to the ASCE's External Review Panel, which was reviewing the investigation findings.

"Then they paid them nearly a million dollars and awarded them medals of honor. Way to go, guys!"

The ASCE accepted close to $1 million from the corps to compensate the external review committee members for their time and expenses during the two-year investigation.

Rosenthal said the Seed letter and ASCE investigations add to the reasons why an independent "August 29 Investigation" proposed by U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., should be created by Congress.

The video can be viewed by going to www.YouTube.com and searching for "Controversial Levee Video." It also is available through a link at NOLA.com, which agreed to sponsor the video on YouTube after Rosenthal initially asked YouTube to take it down in November.

HANO halts demolition plans at three public housing sites

The Housing Authority of New Orleans agreed in court today not to demolish the C.J. Peete, Lafitte or St. Bernard public housing developments unless the New Orleans City Council approves permits for the work.

The agreement allows HANO to proceed with demolition work, approved in November 2003 by the City Council, at the B.W. Cooper housing development.


Officials with the housing authority and attorneys for demolition opponents, who sued HANO Thursday to stop tear-downs at C.J. Peete, Lafitte and St. Bernard, reached the accommodation after meeting privately with Civil District Court Judge Herbert Cade, who said he would sign an order later today approving the deal.

Plaintiffs argued that the City Council had to approve demolition work at the three housing complexes. HANO had not secured that approval for the three demolition projects.

Attorney Tracie Washington, representing the plaintiffs, said HANO's willingness to halt demolition work pending a City Council review is a first: "We have never (before) been able to get a court to order a stop to demolition."

The City Council is expected to address the demolition matter next week.

The agreement says that any party to the agreement, if dissatisfied, can return to court to seek a modification.

2 Arrested in N.O. Housing Demolition

In normal times, redevelopment of public housing to make way for mixed-income neighborhoods might have gone largely unopposed. But passions are high in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, where residents are desperate for cheap housing.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to demolish about 4,500 public housing units at four of the city's largest complexes and replace them with mixed-income neighborhoods.

Protesters temporarily halted crews from demolishing decrepit buildings at the B.W. Cooper housing site on Thursday.

At least two protesters apparently occupied one of the buildings scheduled to be bulldozed, draping two handmade banners from the side Thursday. One read, ''Reopen now,'' and the other, ''No demolition.''

A man and a woman were arrested hours later on municipal trespassing charges.

Protesters have marched on Mayor Ray Nagin's home and disrupted City Council proceedings with chants. On Thursday, they kept up the pressure with a march at the HUD offices in Washington.

Civil rights lawyers also filed an 11th-hour suit in state court after a federal court suit failed to derail the demolition plan.

The protesters have won the blessing of one presidential contender, John Edwards.

''There is a housing crisis in New Orleans today -- the result of government policies that have failed the people of the Gulf,'' the Democrat said in a statement this week. ''Rents have doubled, families are being evicted from FEMA trailers and now the current administration is trying to make a bad situation worse.''

Opponents are suspicious of HUD because the redevelopment plans -- following a model used around the country to break up concentrations of poverty -- call for a reduction in subsidized housing and allow commercial development on the sites.

Tessua Faulk, a 31-year-old teacher, said she doesn't trust the plans because demolition at New Orleans' St. Thomas development, where she grew up, left some of her old neighbors homeless.

''They were too slick about the whole process, the so-called 'rebuilding,''' Faulk said as she watched the protesters chant ''Housing is a human right!'' and stare down demolition crews at B.W. Cooper. ''It needs to be a two-way street: Residents need to be involved from the beginning, every step of the way,'' she said.

The St. Thomas redevelopment has been a major source of distrust of housing plans in New Orleans. After it was torn down, a Wal-Mart superstore was built and most of the former residents wound up in other neighborhoods.

Many more demolitions are slated to begin after Saturday.

About 5,100 public housing units were occupied before the storm.

Meanwhile, air-quality tests on government-issued trailers housing thousands of hurricane victims were to begin by next week, nearly two months after the Federal Emergency Management Agency postponed them.

On Nov. 2, CDC scientists were scheduled to start testing FEMA trailers in Mississippi for levels of formaldehyde, a common preservative and embalming fluid found in building materials for manufactured homes.

FEMA postponed the tests, however, saying the agency needed more time to prepare.

Harvey Johnson, FEMA's deputy administrator, disclosed the agency's latest plans for the tests during a hearing Wednesday in Washington before the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Senators pressed Johnson to explain the delays in testing 500 occupied trailers in Mississippi and Louisiana, where tens of thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

''It's taken a long time in part because we have not had this problem before,'' Johnson said. ''This is the first time we've had people be in travel trailers for this length of time -- up to two years -- in which case some of these symptoms and the impacts on health have become more apparent.''

Officials from FEMA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were expected to outline the new testing plans Thursday at news conferences in New Orleans and Washington.

Many trailer occupants are blaming ailments on formaldehyde, which can cause respiratory problems and has been classified as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.