Grand Casino, Biloxi, MS, five months after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Mississippi.
On August 29, 2005, the eye of Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Waveland, Mississippi, and the western side of the storm grazed New Orleans. Five months after the storm, I visited the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
According to a National Hurricane Center report on Katrina, “in many locations, most of the buildings along the coast were completely destroyed, leaving few structures within which to identify still-water marks.” The center’s researchers estimate that the hurricane produced a storm surge as high as 27 feet in some locations.
It was dumbfounding to drive along the coast in Biloxi and find the Grand Casino on the north side of Highway 90. Before Katrina, the casino was on a barge, docked off the beach, south of the highway. The storm surge lifted the casino barge out of the water, over the beach and over the highway. If you stand at the western end of the barge and look east, you can see the yellow and blue neon sign, a half mile down the road, where the barge originally sat. The same thing happened to two other casino barges—the President Casino in Biloxi, which landed on top of a Holiday Inn, and the Gulfport Grand Casino….
The national media have covered the near-total destruction of Bay St. Louis and Waveland. Driving along Beach Boulevard in the two towns, I saw a few people who had returned and were living in trailers on their plots of land, but practically everything was deserted. All that remained were the merest remnants of homes and the things that had been inside them….
In each place I visited along the western half of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, the look of the destruction was a little different, but it was consistently total. And surprisingly, the destruction in the coastal areas of Pascagoula, at the eastern end of the state, is comparable. I remembered George W. Bush’s promise to rebuild another “fantastic house” for Trent Lott on the Pascagoula beachfront. I did not know that 95% of the city’s residential areas went underwater or that 65% of the city’s homes remain uninhabitable. Northrop Grumman Ship Systems’ facility in Pascagoula, which before Katrina employed 19,800 people, was all but obliterated.
Hurricane Katrina wiped out the entire Gulf Coast of Mississippi. The scale of the destruction is difficult to comprehend. All along the coast—mile after mile—just about anything that was there is now gone.
But this is only part of the story. According to the National Hurricane Center, the surge “penetrated at least six miles inland in many portions of coastal Mississippi and up to 12 miles inland along bays and rivers. The surge crossed Interstate 10 in many locations.” Interstate 10 runs east-west, four miles or more north of coastal Highway 90.
Gayle Tart’s brother Sam and his son John died in Pass Christian during the hurricane, on John’s second birthday. Tart explained that father and son had drowned inside their own home.
“Water never came down there [before Katrina]. That’s across the track. [With Katrina] that water came in and that water went out, and the velocity was unbelievable,” Tart said. “The first boundary was the beach and the next boundary was the highway. The day after the storm, you saw neither—no beach and no highway.”
Small rental and workforce housing progress has fallen dramatically short of State predictions, and so Mississippi has asked HUD for additional funds to temporarily subsidize lower-income residents in market rate rentals….
Mississippi has allocated just over half its funds on housing, and has lowered its commitment to housing by over $800 million in the past 2 years. Louisiana has allocated over 85 percent to housing programs and increased its commitment over the same period.
Mississippi has spent just under half its funds, while Louisiana has spent almost 68 percent of its funds, widening its lead over Mississippi.
Mississippi diverted $600 million from its housing program to a port expansion, while Louisiana intends to reinvest $600 million in unused Road Home funds for housing assistance for low-income residents.
Mississippi took longer to spend less later for low-income residents than for wealthier residents.
A family photo rests on the foundation slab of a home obliterated by Hurricane Katrina in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
I emphasize Mississippi in this blog post because I know that nearly all of the fourth anniversary coverage of the ongoing Katrina aftermath, will focus myopically on New Orleans. The situation in New Orleans is still dire. The housing crisis is dire. But there will not be an adequate recovery until the interconnectedness of regions and issues becomes a fundamental insight that drives policy.
While poor and minority survivors and activists will agree (if anyone asks them) that they face multiple, interconnected disasters in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, this basic local insight goes largely unrecognized. Government failure is certainly most responsible for a “recovery” that has been arbitrary, resource-driven, and slow rather than holistic, need-driven, or effective. But no one, progressives as a group included, has adequately depicted, let alone offset, that failure. Narrowly focused aid has often segregated otherwise related issues, making one or another worse and masking the lack of an overall plan. Residents of the region feel tremendous gratitude to the tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of volunteers whose countless hours of labor, along with their financial contributions, are primarily responsible for what rebuilding has occurred. However, this individual good will is no substitute for the kind of comprehensive, coordinated, and sustained response that is needed from government at all levels.
Unfortunately, no thoughtful and coordinated response will occur without a compelling grassroots push for community visibility, multi-issue awareness, and broad social justice for Gulf Coast survivors. Our region today remains in a cultural, environmental, economic, and human rights crisis no less severe than its more frequently discussed housing crunch and extending far beyond the parishes of its famed city, New Orleans. The media, policymakers, academicians, and private funding groups repeatedly fail to recognize regional connectivity or to challenge the basic invisibility of the Gulf Coast’s multiply wounded communities and ecosystems—together, its very soul. [P]iecemeal analyses and responses … are moving social justice and equitable recovery nowhere fast.
a hybrid model to partner directly with communities in planning, overseeing and administering recovery projects to assist the survivors of these disasters, provide communities with tools to build resilience against the impact of future disasters and revitalize the region economically. The bill would create a minimum of 100,000 prevailing wage jobs and training opportunities for local and displaced workers on projects reinvesting in infrastructure and restoring the coastal environment utilizing emerging green building techniques and technologies. This program would empower residents to realize their right to return with dignity and create stronger, safer, and more equitable communities.
[Editor's note: two of my friends are among those arrested in these actions to stop the these dangerous mountain top removal operations. ---BG]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MAY 23, 2009
CONTACT: Sludge Watch Collective 304-854-7372
COAL RIVER VALLEY, W.Va.– This morning, eleven activists in two civil disobedience actions were removed by state police. As part of the continuing campaign to end mountaintop removal, six people locked themselves to mining equipment on a Patriot Coal-owned mountaintop removal mine on Kayford Mountain and another group floated a 20-by-60-foot banner on the surface of Massey Energy’s Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment near Pettus, W.Va. The activists are part of a coalition that includes Mountain Justice, Climate Ground Zero and concerned individuals.
At noon today, more protestors are expected to converge at the gate to the Brushy Fork dam with hundreds of pairs of shoes to represent the number of immediate deaths should the dam fail.
“The toxic lake at Brushy Fork dam sits atop a honeycomb of abandoned underground mines, ” said Chuck Nelson, from Raleigh County, W.Va. “Massey wants to blast within 100 feet of that dam. The company’s own filings with the state Department of Environmental Protection project a minimum death toll of 998 should the seven-billion-gallon dam break. EPA should override the DEP and revoke this blasting permit for the safety of the community.” Nelson did not participate in the civil disobedience actions this morning, but is expected to speak at the Brushy Fork gate this afternoon.
The floating banner unfurled this morning atop Brushy Fork read, “West Virginia Says No More Toxic Sludge.”
“If the dam fails, 7.2 billion gallons of toxic coal slurry will flood to 38 feet deep, 26 miles down the Marsh Fork of the Coal River, from Pettus, past Whitesville,” Mike Roselle of Climate Ground Zero said. “These coal companies, the land companies and their corrupt politicians are destroying the headwater streams that supply drinking water to millions of Americans downstream.”
In the Kayford action, independent photojournalist and Rock Creek, W.Va. resident Antrim Caskey was removed from the direct action site by police. She previously had been cited three times for trespassing while embedded with Climate Ground Zero.
“About 12,000-acres of Kayford Mountain has been destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining,” said Maria Gunnoe, Boone County resident and winner of the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize. “Not another family should be forced to move because a coal company is going to blow up the mountain above them, then bury and poison their streams.” Gunnoe did not participate in the civil disobedience actions.
The people who locked down on Kayford Mountain unveiled a banner reading, “Never Again.”
“The regulatory agencies that are supposed to be the people’s watchdogs are acting instead as the industry’s guard dogs,” said Willie Dodson of Mountain Justice, one of the Kayford protesters. “Neither Governor Manchin, the DEP, President Obama, nor the EPA are enforcing the law, so we have no choice but to come out here and do it ourselves.”
On Feb 3, five people chained themselves to mining equipment and eight others were cited for trespassing while attempting to deliver a letter to Massey Energy insisting that the company cease all mountaintop removal operations on Coal River Mountain. Since then, four related actions have occurred in the Coal River Valley.
“We are forced to take action today because we have exhausted our legislative and litigatory options,” activist Charles Suggs of Raleigh County said. “We have walked the halls and pounded the doors of our state and national capitols, asked the DEP to complete studies, met with the EPA, filed lawsuits, and what happens? Our West Virginia legislature passes bills to let the destruction continue, and opposes bills that would stop poisoning our water and bring permanent, sustainable economic development to the state.”
NOTE: Massey’s filing with the WVDEP that indicate sludge depth and distance ae available upon request.
Video, still images and breaking news will be posted continually to www.mountainjustice.org.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on May 24, 2009 at 3:22 am
The KatrinaRitaVille Express national FEMA Trailer Tour is headed to Denver, Saint Paul and down the Mississippi River this August and September. Please get involved. Stay posted.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on July 9, 2008 at 1:16 pm
In his letter to Gov. Haley Barbour, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson said that although he’s concerned about using the housing money for the port project, congressional language associated with the use of block grant funds “allows me little discretion.”
“I’m sure that you share my concern that there may still be significant unmet needs for affordable housing, and I strongly encourage you to prioritize Gulf Coast housing as you move forward,” Jackson wrote….
The plan has drawn harsh criticism from several groups working on recovery efforts in the region who say housing is too scarce not to devote all possible resources to it.
Kimberly Miller, a policy analyst for Oxfam America, said the state’s long-term recovery committees that work with displaced families have 15,000 cases on their waiting lists, and a similar number of people are in temporary housing.
The state’s plan “doesn’t make any financial sense when you look at the number of people who haven’t gotten back into homes,” Miller said.
Two-and-a-half years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast, less than a fourth of the 10,833 public rebuilding projects are completed.
Many haven’t even broken ground.
And local officials are finding it harder to work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Long Beach Mayor Billy Skellie spent much of Tuesday in a meeting with FEMA accountants arguing over whether the federal government will help pay overtime costs incurred by his fire and police departments in the days and weeks after the storm.
“They are wanting to deobligate about half of that,” he said.
In regular language, Skellie explained FEMA is hedging on paying the city’s costs of more than $350,000 because the agency’s contract accountants are not satisfied with the time sheets kept by first responders immediately after Katrina hit.
“We were just trying to survive. I mean, my God,” Skellie said. “It’s these people who worked around the clock pulling bodies out. … They don’t want to pay for any of that because a person’s name doesn’t appear on a time sheet.”…
Since the storm, about $1.3 billion has been paid out to cover the costs of rebuilding to local governments, school systems and eligible nonprofits.
But as Mississippi approaches its third hurricane season since Katrina, many of the projects have not made it out of the planning stages. In all, 22 percent of Mississippi’s 10,833 public projects have been completed.
House Democrats accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday of covering up the long-term health hazards – possibly including cancer – linked to formaldehyde in hurricane trailers.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said at a committee hearing Tuesday it is “unacceptable” FEMA did not begin testing formaldehyde levels in travel trailers and mobile homes until last month.
“Even more troubling is the recent discovery that FEMA directed the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to not investigate, or communicate, the health effects associated with prolonged exposure to formaldehyde,” said Thompson, of Mississippi’s 2nd District.
More than 43,000 trailers and mobile homes still are on the Gulf Coast housing victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Some have been occupied for more than two years.
The House Committee on Science and Technology this week released e-mails from Christopher DeRosa, a CDC scientist analyzing test results on unoccupied trailers in 2006. The e-mails said FEMA repeatedly requested “we specify safe levels of exposure.”
“We should be very cautious about the use of the word ’safe’ in reference to formaldehyde,” De Rosa wrote. “Since it is a carcinogen, it is a matter of science policy that there is no ’safe’ level of exposure.”
New satellite imaging has revealed that hurricanes Katrina and Rita produced the largest single forestry disaster on record in the nation — an essentially unreported ecological catastrophe that killed or severely damaged about 320 million trees in Mississippi and Louisiana.
The die-off, caused initially by wind and later by weeks-long pooling of stagnant water, was so massive that researchers say it will add significantly to the global greenhouse gas buildup — ultimately putting as much carbon from dying vegetation into the air as the rest of the nation’s forest takes out in a year of photosynthesis.
In addition, the downing of so many trees has opened vast and sometimes fragile tracts to several aggressive and fast-growing exotic species that are already squeezing out far more environmentally productive native species.
Efforts to limit the damage have been handicapped by the ineffectiveness of a $504 million federal program to help Gulf Coast landowners replant and fight the invasive species. Congress appropriated the money in 2005 and added to it in 2007, but officials acknowledge that the program got off to a slow start and that only about $70 million has been promised or dispensed so far. Local advocates said onerous bureaucratic hurdles and low compensation rates are major reasons.
“This is the worst environmental disaster in the United States since the Exxon Valdez accident . . . and the greatest forest destruction in modern times,” said James Cummins, executive director of the conservation group Wildlife Mississippi and a board member of the Mississippi Forestry Commission. “It needs a really broad and aggressive response, and so far that just hasn’t happened.”
The U.S. Forest Service and Farm Service Agency have made estimates of the forest damage from the two 2005 hurricanes, but they have generally focused on economic losses — $2 billion, or 5.5 billion board feet, worth of timber.
The new assessment of tree damage comes from a study being published today in the journal Science, written primarily by researchers at Tulane University who studied images from two NASA satellites.
Most of the lost trees in the Gulf region stood 70 to 100 feet tall, and others will not grow back for decades, if ever, experts said.
Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in August 2005 with winds that reached 125 mph, damaged 5 million acres of forests, 80% of them in Mississippi, according to the U.S. Forest Service. By comparison, the 1980 eruption in Washington of Mt. St. Helens wiped out 150,000 acres of forest.
“In some areas of southeast Louisiana and southeast Mississippi, it was 100% damage,” said Wayne Hagan, founder of Timberland Management Services of Louisiana in Clinton. “I had one landowner on 2,000 acres who had basically $4 million worth of trees on his place. One hundred percent of the trees were blown over and broken down. That’s basically what the hurricane did.”
Cypress swamps are clear-cut and entire trees are ground up to make cypress garden mulch. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Lowe’s are driving destruction of the Gulf’s best natural storm protection by selling cypress mulch all over the country. It’s time they stopped.
Folks I've got them hungry blues
And nothin' in this to lose
People tellin' me to choose
Between dyin' and lyin' and
keep on cryin'
Tired of them hungry blues
Listen ain't you heard the news
There's another thing to choose
A brand new world
clean and fine
Where nobody's hungry
And there's no color line
A thing like that's worth
anybody dyin'
I ain't got a thing to lose
But them doggone hungry blues
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