Katrina Aftermath Erodes Bayou Culture

GRAND BAYOU, La. -- When Ruby Ancar talks about her fishing village on the bayou, she says a divine hand has protected her Atakapa-Ishak kinfolk for generations.

But Grand Bayou is forsaken these days, 30 months after Hurricane Katrina washed over it and dragged one of Louisiana's last authentic outposts of bayou culture into a world defined by insurers, money lenders, building code enforcers and government auditors.

''We're facing a greater hurricane now than we did with Katrina, with the bureaucracy,'' Ancar, 60, said, gesticulating passionately and flashing a toothy grin as she glided down the bayou in a boat. ''The government -- that's our hurricane right now that we're in.''

Before Katrina, Grand Bayou and its 25-odd families of Atakapa-Ishak American Indians lived in a parallel world, in concert with moon cycles and migrations of shrimp. This living museum, where there are no roads and everyone travels by boat, is facing extinction.

Post-storm government aid has been nearly nonexistent, villagers said, leaving the entire village unable to return to their homes.

''We were hanging onto that little village out there, but I think the hurricane took the last wind out of us,'' said Louis Thompson, known as ''PU.''

Thompson commanded the communal boat, a banana-yellow water taxi tied up since the storm. ''It was a school boat, medical boat, grocery boat, just about everything else boat,'' he said.

Grand Bayou's state of despair resembles that of the Lower 9th Ward, 40 miles away in New Orleans. Both are lifeless. Both are poor. Both were colorful enclaves of traditional Louisiana culture.

They are exhibits in a pattern emerging since Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005: The widening gap between rich and poor in rebuilding.

''The similarities have to do a lot with economic challenges. If these people were middle or upper income in general they would have the resources to go back and build their houses,'' said Shirley Laska, a University of New Orleans sociologist.

The gap between rich and poor is plainly evident on the horizon of wind-blown marsh-grass at Grand Bayou.

A mile away, the community of weekend sport fishermen and retirees at Happy Jack is bouncing back.

A recent survey showed that of Happy Jack's approximately 83 waterfront homes only about 11 showed no sign of being rebuilt. Shaded docks, automatic boat lifts, jet skis and personal water craft abound.

''This place is built probably better than before the storm,'' said Willie Bullock, who retired from the Navy and moved to Happy Jack with his wife. ''I love it here. This is where I was meant to be.''

Down the gravel road, Brad Schmit, a 35-year-old sun-bronzed fishing guide, was void of complaints, too. ''Business is good,'' Schmit said, ''about the same as before the storm.''

Things are so normal, it's hard to tell Katrina made landfall just 15 miles south of Schmit's busy fishing camp where stressed-out city folk come to get away. The offices, shower room, patio and boat deck are rebuilt, smell new; guides and customers lounge and talk of fish, nature and the gleaming fiberglass boats; brand new pickup trucks await to take everyone back to comfortable, high-tech homes in the city.

Happy Jack is growing. Excavators have prepared ground for 60 more lots that will be up for sale by the summer.

''In the last two days we've had two different parties from the Florida area telling us, 'This is where we like to fish,''' Diana Alfortish, a real estate broker for the developer, said recently.

The significance is not lost at Grand Bayou: An uncomfortable circle of outsiders and development is drawing tighter.

On a recent short-sleeves winter day, during a break in the shrimp harvest, Dwight Reyes Sr. stepped off his boat, where he's lived with his wife since Katrina wrecked their home, and surveyed the neat-and-clean silhouette of Happy Jack.

''Weekend warriors, that's all that is,'' Reyes sneered.

He turned his back, and paced back-and-forth through the dock yard, scattering roosters and ducks camped out in beached skiffs, heaps of rope and nets, rusting boat parts and assorted junk.

''They're people with all kinds of money and all kinds of help,'' he said, attempting to explain why Grand Bayou looks like a ghost town sinking into the marsh.

He stopped, and grinned. He'd found the right aphorism. ''They've got a smile from ear to ear, we've got a frown.''

His wife, Theresa, bent-over and grim-faced, stewed seafood on a stove on the boat deck in a washed-out smock and said nothing.

''I've got fed up with trying,'' Reyes said, and sneered at the state-managed, federally funded flagship of the hurricane recovery, the Road Home program.

''Everywhere you go they turn you down. I just got off the phone a while ago with (Road Home) telling me I need papers for this. I'm tired of faxing paper in.''

Turning reminiscent, he looked at the bayou and said he used to like to trawl its placid, moon-burnished waters for shrimp on hot, critter-noisy nights.

''Doing this here at night, it makes you sick,'' he spat out. ''You don't see a light in none of the houses. You don't see nobody outside hollering at you, asking if you're doing any good.''

Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, is familiar with Grand Bayou's problems.
''When I took office a year ago, nothing had been done on Grand Bayou,'' he said. ''To me, they were forgotten.''

He said Road Home wasn't equipped for people living on the margins of society, in funky wooden properties on the water with no road to reach them.

''It's hard to get their hands around the value of their property,'' Nungesser said.
Recovery officials say they haven't forgotten Grand Bayou

''We have been out in that community really hard,'' said Gentry Bran, spokeswoman for ICF International, the company that oversees Road Home under a $756 million contract. ''I would challenge the concept they're not getting assistance from the Road Home.''

A sample, though, of five Road Home applicants interviewed by the AP suggests money has been slow to reach Grand Bayou's 25 families. Two applicants had received grants while three others hadn't. Road Home would not disclose how much money each applicant got nor give an idea about how much money in all has gotten to Grand Bayou.

Back on the bayou, time has stopped.

Dock and home are broken and twisted. The ''Hallelujah Hotel,'' where visiting ministers stayed during revival services, is a pile of debris on the waterfront. Farther down the bayou, the

Pentecostal Light Tabernacle Church is closed, its pastor gone.

''PU,'' the school boat driver, lives in a trailer in town, as do many others. Children of working age have left. They're in Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia.

Memories are all that remains, like boating across the bayou to Grandma's house for

Thanksgiving dinner and kitchen chatter in French patois.

Grand Bayou now counts on charity.

The Mennonite Disaster Service, a volunteer network of the Anabaptist church, has rebuilt Ancar's home and plans to build five new homes and renovate another one.

''The location of their homes, the shrimping and fishing, and their lives are bound together, woven together. We want to honor their way of life and location choice, just like anyone else in the parish,'' said Paul Unruh, a Mennonite social worker.

Unruh said building costs will be high because of post-storm requirements, such as raising homes 10 feet and tougher building standards.

Ancar thinks she can pioneer the return.

''We're going to be campers on my floor until the homes are rebuilt,'' she said. ''It doesn't take long to build a house.''

But the march back home is proving difficult for Ancar, who has not yet moved into her rebuilt home from her FEMA trailer in town.

The problem? Her budget is so tight she'll find it hard to pay a new $20 hurricane-related monthly surcharge the power company is tacking onto bills.

Blanco defends Road Home firm's raise

Former Gov. Kathleen Blanco on Friday defended her decision in December to increase the Road Home contractor's maximum pay by 25 percent, even as Louisiana officials threaten the stiffest fines yet against the company for failure to prove it met a key performance standard.


The Office of Community Development has put the contractor, ICF International, on notice that it will be fined $800,000 if it can't provide more convincing proof by May 8 that it resolved homeowner disputes as it claimed to have done in July, August and December of 2007.

The pending fine, if assessed, would bring total fines against the company to $925,000. The fines would have reduced the amount ICF could earn from its promised maximum pay of $756 million, but just before the year ended, its pay limit, set by contract, was increased to $912 million. Its possible income from running the homeowner portion of the Road Home went up 25 percent, from $633 million to $789 million.

Key legislators and the Louisiana Recovery Authority's housing chairman, Walter Leger, said they didn't know about the raise until The Times-Picayune inquired about it Wednesday.

But on Friday, Blanco and her former commissioner of administration defended the pay raise, saying other state offices were involved in negotiations with ICF.

Repeated review

"It was my understanding and belief that any contract change would be publicly noticed," Blanco said in an e-mail message sent from France, where she's giving a speech to a flood-response conference. "I encourage Steve Theriot, the legislative auditor, whose office was consulted during negotiations, to continue to audit ICF and to hold them accountable for every dollar of their contract."

Theriot said he would begin dissecting the amendment costs immediately.

Jerry Luke LeBlanc, who acted as Blanco's representative in signing the contract amendment, said former LRA Executive Director Andy Kopplin and key legislative staff also were involved in calculating the amount of the increase and gave their approval.

"When I was brought the final contract (amendment) everyone was in agreement that this is the final amount," said LeBlanc, who left state government when Blanco left office in January. "LRA, OCD (Office of Community Development) and auditor folks, who took a look at a component of it -- they all analyzed the data. Before I would sign it, I wanted multiple elements to look at it."

Kopplin, who recently completed an unsuccessful campaign to fill an open congressional seat, was on vacation and couldn't be reached for comment Friday.

A quest for offsets

Kopplin's successor, Paul Rainwater, said the LRA's staff was notified at the time, but had no oversight of the contract and "urged the (the administration) to offset contract increases to the extent possible with reductions in other portions of ICF's contract, to aggressively manage ICF's labor costs to achieve savings or to increase the contract amount incrementally."

That wasn't done and now Rainwater, an appointee of Gov. Bobby Jindal who wasn't with the LRA at the time, is left to find ways to keep the costs from reaching the new $912 million cap.

"It is outrageous that ICF couldn't do the job for more than $750 million and that they were given a pay raise after their history of disappointing service," Jindal said.

Even Leger, still an LRA member and a self-described Blanco "fan," is baffled by the increase, given that many political observers believe difficulties managing the Road Home, Blanco's signature recovery program, played a lead role in ending her political career.

"It's just kind of surprising that this company that's partially responsible for her not seeking re-election gets treated this way," said Leger, whom Blanco picked to handle LRA housing issues.

Figures don't agree

In the amendment itself, the parties justify more money for ICF by saying it will pay out far more Road Home grants than originally expected. The document says the number increased from 100,000 to about 160,000. However, the program launched expecting to pay more than 114,000 grants and estimates for total grants have now dropped to as low as 128,000.

LeBlanc said the state had to pay the Road Home contractor more money "because ICF was going to have to either stop processing cases or it would trickle down to a snail's pace" because they "would run out of money to pay their subcontractors."

But when the amendment was signed in December, ICF, a publicly traded company, was wrapping up a profitable quarter in which revenue shot up 64 percent over that of the same period in 2006, mainly because of payments for running the Road Home program.

LeBlanc said staff for a key legislative audit committee asked OCD and LRA to come to a hearing a week after the amendment was signed to answer questions about the pay increase, but then never raised the matter at the meeting. He said Blanco administration officials didn't bring it up in that forum because they can only respond to committee questions.

While all that was happening, state officials were publicly expressing concern about homeowners' myriad complaints that Road Home staffers provided poor customer service, often failing to return phone calls, explain grant delays or resolve disputes. Rainwater says he remains worried about those issues.

He said that was the reason a new contract to handle FEMA elevation payments was not given to ICF and why he's asked Louisiana State University to conduct a customer service review.

"We are sending a letter to each employee of ICF concerning some of the ways they've talked to some of our people and treated some citizens," Rainwater said. "I expect people who have already gone through a lot to be treated with dignity."

HUD Secretary Draws Strong Criticism at Hearing

WASHINGTON — Several Democratic senators sharply criticized the secretary of housing and urban development on Wednesday, warning that accusations of wrongdoing threatened to undermine his leadership.

The Justice Department and the housing department’s inspector general are investigating whether the secretary, Alphonso R. Jackson, improperly steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in government contracts to friends in New Orleans and the Virgin Islands.

On Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers also raised concerns about accusations that Mr. Jackson threatened to withdraw federal aid from the director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority after he refused to turn over a $2 million property to a politically connected developer.

The lawmakers pointed to an e-mail exchange in January 2007 between two senior HUD officials who discussed making the Philadelphia housing chief, Carl R. Greene, unhappy by taking away his federal aid.

Mr. Jackson, who appeared before the Senate banking committee on Wednesday, said he could not discuss the e-mail messages because they were linked to a lawsuit filed against HUD by Mr. Greene. Last year Mr. Jackson denied complaints of favoritism, telling senators, “I do not interfere with any contract that is given in HUD, period.”

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the banking committee, told Mr. Jackson on Wednesday that he remained “deeply troubled” by the reports of impropriety.

Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said controversy had been “swirling around your stewardship of this department for far too long.”

“This kind of stuff undermines public confidence in our officials,” Mr. Casey said of the e-mail messages, which were first published by The Washington Post.

In the messages dated Jan. 12, 2007, Orlando J. Cabrera and Kim Kendrick, two assistant secretaries at HUD, discussed Mr. Greene.

“Would you like me to make his life less happy? If so, how?” wrote Mr. Cabrera, who has since left the department.

Ms. Kendrick responded with a smiley face.
“Take away all of his federal dollars?” she asked.
Mr. Cabrera wrote back: “Let me look into that possibility.”

In February, Jerry Brown, a HUD spokesman, denied that Mr. Jackson had attacked Mr. Greene for refusing to turn over a parcel of land to Kenny Gamble, the soul songwriter and producer. Mr. Brown said Philadelphia stood to lose millions of dollars in financing because the city had failed to meet the requirements of a decade-old housing plan.

“There was no retaliation,” Mr. Brown said. “These two things had nothing whatsoever to do with each other.”

Mr. Greene denied that his department had failed to meet a federal requirement that 5 percent of its public housing be made accessible for the disabled. He described HUD’s decision to withhold aid as “a vendetta because I would not participate in a corrupt scheme.”

Concerns about favoritism in the distribution of HUD contracts first arose in April 2006 after a speech by Mr. Jackson. The secretary had said he canceled a contract for a company after its president told him that he did not like President Bush. Mr. Jackson later said he had made the story up.

Federal officials are investigating whether Mr. Jackson steered work at the Virgin Islands housing authority and rebuilding work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to friends. HUD officials have declined to comment on those matters because they are under investigation.

At the hearing on Wednesday, Mr. Jackson said the judge overseeing the lawsuit filed by Mr. Greene had asked the parties not to discuss that case. “I just do not feel at ease discussing this, given the judge’s request,” he said.

Two Republican senators, Mel Martinez of Florida and Wayne Allard of Colorado, said they understood Mr. Jackson’s reluctance to discuss the matter.

Mr. Martinez, a former HUD secretary who brought Mr. Jackson to the department as his deputy, described his successor as a diligent and honest man caught between his desire to respect the judge and the senators.

“You’re in an untenable position here,” Mr. Martinez said. “I know you’re a good man, and I know you’re trying hard to do a good job.”

Some senators dismissed the notion that the judge had barred Mr. Jackson from speaking.
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said his staff had researched the matter and found that there was no such order. Mr. Specter, who tried to mediate the dispute between HUD and the Philadelphia housing authority, said he would ask Mr. Jackson about the issue in a hearing on Thursday.

Documents Feed Debate on FEMA Trailers

Federal officials issued trailers to Hurricane Katrina victims even though some workplace safety tests detected high levels of formaldehyde at government staging areas for the structures just weeks after the storm, a lawyer for hundreds of occupants said Wednesday.

Documents from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration raise new questions about how much federal officials knew about the units, which were sent to tens of thousands of displaced residents, said attorney Anthony Buzbee. But they don't say whether the tests in the weeks after the August 2005 storm were conducted inside or outside the trailers.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which issued the trailers, has been moving residents out for several months because of health complaints.

Recent tests on hundreds of FEMA trailers and mobile homes in Louisiana and Mississippi found formaldehyde levels about five times what people are exposed to in most modern homes, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced last month.

At its peak, more than 143,000 trailers were in use by Katrina victims across the Gulf Coast. About 34,000 are still occupied.

Buzbee said he reviewed a 10-page summary of test results from air sampling at FEMA staging facilities in Mississippi that found formaldehyde levels exceeding maximums set for federal workplace safety. Buzbee said the documents show some tests were performed as early as Oct. 11, 2005, and as late as Jan. 17, 2006.

''This is astonishing,'' Buzbee said Wednesday in an interview. ''How could they feign ignorance that this was an issue even before they sent these trailers to residents?''

It was unclear whether the tests were performed by OSHA or FEMA. Clyde Payne, OSHA area director, said he couldn't comment on the test results obtained by Buzbee.

FEMA spokesman James McIntyre wouldn't immediately comment on Buzbee's allegations, but he said formaldehyde tests at work sites are required under federal law.

''These are just safety tests for personnel,'' he said. ''They were never designed for the occupants.''

Formaldehyde, a preservative commonly used in construction materials, can cause respiratory problems and is believed to cause cancer.

FEMA lawyers had discouraged officials from investigating residents' health complaints because of liability concerns, according to documents released by a congressional panel in July 2007.

Buzbee wrote about the test results in a letter Wednesday to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and several members of Congress.

Adam Sharp, a spokesman for Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said the information provided by Buzbee will be fodder for a congressional panel's review of FEMA's response to formaldehyde concerns.

''One of the essential questions this investigation will answer is, 'What was the timeline?''' Sharp said. ''How much of a lag existed between when FEMA became aware of the (formaldehyde) dangers ... and when did they first start notifying trailer occupants about the dangers?''

In testimony before a congressional panel last week, a CDC official said problems with formaldehyde in trailers date back to the 1980s.

Howard Frumkin, director of the CDC's National Center For Environmental Health, said the problem seemed to ''recede'' until FEMA used tens of thousands of travel trailers to shelter victims of the 2005 storm.

''FEMA has never denied that trailers have formaldehyde,'' McIntyre said. ''We haven't tried to hide anything.''

Slidell council overrides veto, allows trailer replacements

A second attempt by Mayor Ben Morris to prevent a handful of Slidell residents from replacing mobile homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina failed Tuesday when the City Council pulled together just enough votes to override his veto.

The council voted 6-3, exactly the two-thirds vote needed to override the mayor's veto, enacting an ordinance to allow about five residents who live in District A, which includes the area in and around Olde Towne, to replace their storm-damaged mobile homes. The owners have either left Slidell or have been living in FEMA trailers since shortly after the storm more than 2 1/2 years ago.

Council members Warren Crockett, Kim Harbison and Bill Borchert sided with the mayor.

The city's zoning code prohibits new mobile or manufactured homes in Slidell, but the council allowed such homes already in District A to remain when it adopted the code. The code prohibits new mobile homes even if the old ones are destroyed by an act of God.

An initial attempt to pass the ordinance in April 2006 was unsuccessful.

The council reconsidered the ordinance in September and passed the measure, only to see Morris veto it the next month. The council's attempt to override the veto fell one vote short.

In the interim, two new members were elected to the council, so Councilman Lionel Hicks reintroduced the measure Feb. 12, hoping it would pass again with enough votes to override a potential second veto. Hicks, who represents District A, has been leading the charge to allow the residents to replace their mobile homes.

The measure passed that night by a 6-3 vote, and Morris again vetoed it, leading to Tuesday's override.

'A long, hard fight'

Hicks said he hoped Tuesday's vote would be the final hurdle for the residents trying to rebuild.

Hicks said after the vote that he is glad the council can move past the issue and concentrate on the other problems facing District A.

"It's been a long, hard fight, and I want to thank my colleagues on the council who stuck by me," he said. "And shame on those who didn't."

Only one resident spoke against the council's override attempt. Pat Hamrick said she didn't think it wise to pass an ordinance that would encourage people to place new trailers in a flood zone.

"Placing trailers in that area will in all probability have us facing this problem again in a few years," she said.

Crockett said he couldn't vote for the override because he never could determine exactly who needed new trailers, and he didn't see many people come before the council to defend such an exception to the zoning code.

Borchert said he has met with a local faith-based group that has agreed to build new homes for some residents, including those in District A. As such, he said he couldn't support allowing new trailers in the area.

Prior to the vote, Hicks pleaded with his fellow council members to let the residents replace their mobile homes.

"These people need to get back to some degree of normalcy. Everybody does," he said. "I just believe, and I ask this council to consider, to please vote to override this veto."

Measure deemed racist

Morris, who has been outspoken on the trailer issue, did not comment Tuesday with regard to the override attempt. However, he outlined his reasons for the veto last month in a letter to the council.

He called the ordinance racist, reiterated his concerns that mobile homes aren't safe during severe storms and noted that residents have refused to accept his help in finding more secure homes.

Morris said the ordinance is racist because its "negative implications affect a predominantly African-American neighborhood and nowhere else in our city."

Hicks, the council's sole black member, said Morris didn't have a good reason for vetoing the measure and that the mayor has no idea what it's like to be poor. He also took issue with the mayor's description of the ordinance as racist, saying it looked to him as if Morris was the one being racist.

Some of the people affected by the mobile home ban are senior citizens on fixed incomes who cannot afford regular houses, Hicks has said. He also noted that some would not qualify at their ages for 30-year mortgages.

Though the council's action will allow a few residents in District A to place new mobile homes on their properties, the trailers still would be prohibited for other residents in District A and elsewhere in the city. Any resident who wants to replace a mobile home must request a permit from the city, which will attempt to verify that a trailer existed on the property before the storm.

The replacement mobile homes must be occupied by the owner. Rental properties would be prohibited, and the new mobile homes will be limited to single-family use. Residents also would have to adhere to rules regarding lot size, off-street parking and skirting around the base of the homes, in addition to other city regulations.