USA > Histoire > 2006 > Louisiana / Mississippi > Rebuilding (I)

Lee Celano for The New York Times

Photos show the Bartholomews' home after Hurricane Katrina.
More than 87,100 families whose houses were damaged live in lightweight trailers.

Trailers, Vital After Hurricane, Now Pose Own Risks on Gulf        NYT        16.3.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/national/nationalspecial/16trailers.html?hp&ex=
1142571600&en=d0f0bab8f007d825&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Lee Celano for The New York Times

Marie and Mitchell Bartholomew had to abandon a trailer during a recent storm because it was rocking violently.
"It rattles, it rolls," said Mr. Bartholomew. "It is like telling you to get out."

Trailers, Vital After Hurricane, Now Pose Own Risks on Gulf        NYT        16.3.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/national/nationalspecial/16trailers.html?hp&ex=
1142571600&en=d0f0bab8f007d825&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Mrs. Cappiello's husband, Jimmy,
said he saw sheet metal, trash, wood planks and even the carport from a nearby house flying during a recent storm.

Lee Celano for The New York Times

Trailers, Vital After Hurricane, Now Pose Own Risks on Gulf        NYT        16.3.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/16/national/nationalspecial/16trailers.html?hp&ex=
1142571600&en=d0f0bab8f007d825&ei=5094&partner=homepage

New Orleans levees repaired

Wed May 31, 2006 9:07 PM ET
Reuters
By Jeffrey Jones

VIOLET, Louisiana (Reuters) - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has met its goal of fixing battered levees around New Orleans as the new hurricane season starts, but residents still face flood risks, senior officials said on Wednesday.

Standing on a clay and dirt levee in St. Bernard Parish, which was inundated by floodwater after Hurricane Katrina, Maj. Gen. Ronald Johnson said the Corps repaired 169 miles of the 350 mile system by its June 1 target.

"I think New Orleans can be confident in its hurricane protection system because it is better and it is stronger," Johnson said after a helicopter tour.

"We've spiraled in new information as we've learned some things, working with the technical experts to tell us what it is we need to do to build this system using the best materials, science, engineering and construction practices."

But it is not certain it will protect against all storms, officials said. Katrina came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane.

"There will always be a risk," said Maj. Gen. Don Riley, the Corps' director of civil works. "Another Katrina, on a different track, at a different speed, moving slower with more rainfall could do damage."

A series of levee breaches during the August 29 storm flooded 80 percent of New Orleans and left parishes like St. Bernard and lower Plaquemines with virtually no structure undamaged.

These areas still bear the scars, including gutted homes and residents living in government-supplied trailers as well as many damaged businesses that have yet to reopen.

BIG IMPROVEMENTS

Residents and some independent engineers sharply criticized the Corps for faulty design and poor maintenance of levees.

In its first phase of improvements, the Corps spent more than $800 million to repair levees to pre-Katrina strength or better. Billions of dollars of major improvements are also planned over the next six years, although Washington has yet to approve all the money.

"I've always been critical of the Corps, but I have to tell you the Corps has done an excellent job," said St. Bernard Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez.

"I would only hope that one thing doesn't happen -- that you don't restore this levee to the pre-Katrina condition because it's the best levee that's ever been in St. Bernard Parish"

The parish borders New Orleans to the East. Katrina's storm surge swamped towns like Chalmette and Meraux and killed 130 people. The hurricane killed 1,500 in Louisiana.

New Orleans-area residents were rattled this week by reports that a 400 foot (122 meter) stretch of levee near the town of Buras in southern Louisiana slumped. The Corps said the problem was one of weight and insufficient support at ground level, and that it had been fixed.

Temporary floodgates and pumps at mouths of two canals on the north side of New Orleans are also behind schedule, but officials said short-term fixes are in place if needed.

The state of the levees is an overriding worry as the 2006 hurricane season begins and the ravaged New Orleans region struggles to recover.

"One of the big concerns is that there could be a storm that surpasses Katrina in strength," said Sue Sturgis, author of a hurricane preparedness report by non-profit group Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch.

Moreover, big improvements in the defenses will require far more land, she said. "They can't build Category 4 or 5 protection on the footprint that exists."

(Additional reporting by Peter Henderson)

    New Orleans levees repaired, R, 31.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-06-01T010541Z_01_N31265778_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-LEVEES.xml

New Orleans mourns Katrina's dead with jazz funeral

Mon May 29, 2006 9:34 PM ET
Reuters
By Jeffrey Jones

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Yvonne Wise recalled many customers of her clothes alteration business as she marched past smashed homes and rusting, overturned cars of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward to the joyous sounds of a brass band.

Moments before, in New Orleans jazz funeral tradition, the Treme Brass Band's renditions were somber as Wise and dozens of others stood where a levee gave way nine months earlier to the day, sending a torrent through the streets of the Lower Ninth.

There, residents of the neighborhood read the names of more than 1,000 Louisianians killed by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Wise, 58, recognized some of them.

"It went to the heart, you know? To lose that amount of people, and there are still people unaccounted for," she said as the parade wound around the predominantly black and poor community that remains largely a debris field. "I lost a son, not in Katrina but after Katrina. I think he just basically died of heartbreak."

The Memorial Day service and jazz funeral parade was to pay tribute to the more than 1,500 people killed in the disaster, along with U.S. military personnel killed over the years in battle. It was organized by the Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association, formed by residents who aim to make sure their community gets rebuilt.

Jazz funerals end on a lively note with the band belting out signature tunes like "When the Saints go Marching In" and "Down by the Riverside." Monday's version was no exception.

'HISTORY'

"That's history, that's home, that's what we do," said Patricia Jones, president of the neighborhood group. The 31-year-old accountant also recognized some of the names read.

Several pastors were on hand to offer encouragement, and to lead a prayer for the newly repaired concrete floodwall three days before the start of the 2006 hurricane season.

Offering optimism is no small feat with destruction, empty homes and now, yards full of weeds, just steps away. Only a small area of the Lower Ninth has running water restored.

"What we should learn from all this is that we need to transcend or rise above what we can see with our own eyes, from our own perspective," the Rev. Oliver Duvernay of Central Missionary Baptist Church told Reuters. "We need to get up a little higher."

Post-Katrina New Orleans is a city of stark contrast. Some neighborhoods are slowly recovering, their streets lined with government-supplied trailers that are temporary homes for families who are renovating.

But not the Lower Ninth. City officials and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have warned residents here and in New Orleans East their communities face the greatest risk of flooding again in the event of another hurricane this season.

Attendees at the service were told it was not a time to point fingers over the disaster that struck the neighborhood where black families have owned homes for generations.

But residents could not hide their frustration with governments and the Corps, which have been accused by independent engineers of not adequately maintaining flood protection systems.

Across town, about 200 people gathered near the spot where the 17th Street canal breached, sending salty waters of Lake Pontchartrain through the Lakeview neighborhood. Mourners dropped 1,577 carnations into the canal's muddy water, one for each person who died in the storm last year.

A bagpipe played against the thump of a pile driver pounding supports for flood gates at the opening of the canal onto the lake. The gates are designed to stop a storm surge from swamping the canal.

(Additional reporting by Peter Henderson)

    New Orleans mourns Katrina's dead with jazz funeral, R, 29.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-05-29T233542Z_01_N29284113_RTRUKOC_0_US-HURRICANES-MEMORIAL.xml

In Big Uneasy, Exit Planning Is Obsession

May 27, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, May 26 — It begins as a conversation, perhaps over dinner, at the end of the day: Where are you going this year? Then, on to the specifics. Which relative? Which hotel? How many suitcases?

As a symptom of the general uneasiness here, this year's hurricane evacuation talk ranks among the most acute. Within it are the immediate and long-term threats: the unnamed storm everyone may soon have to flee, and the grim likelihood that the next big one could be the knockout punch for this struggling city.

"Everybody I talk to asks, 'What and where is your escape pod?' " said Joseph Maselli Jr., a lawyer downtown. "The talk at lunchtime and in elevators is not, 'What route,' but, 'How soon are you going to leave, what's your plan, where are you going to go?' "

Never has a coming hurricane season generated as much anxiety, many here say. The official start to the season is Thursday but the unofficial worrying has long since begun.

On top of the ever-present reminders of last year's catastrophe — ruined neighborhoods, piles of debris, empty streets — the new threat is proving to be too much for some. Everyone here, it seems, knows someone who is picking up and leaving New Orleans for good.

Many who swear they will not abandon the city have at least set up an alternative home-place somewhere else. Mr. Maselli said he knew "dozens" of people who had already secured a getaway spot — an apartment or a modest second home.

"It's the fear of a second big shoe dropping this quickly," he said. "Everyone says, 'Please, God, don't hit us this year.' "

Mr. Maselli and his wife have been fixing up a family home in Natchez, Miss., up the river, as their hurricane getaway.

The fear may be particularly acute among those relatively unaffected by Hurricane Katrina — people living in the Uptown neighborhood, for instance. Will it be their turn next? Might the Mississippi River levees fail this time?

"Everyone I talk to is filled with a great deal of anxiety," said Anne Milling, who started Women of the Storm, a group that seeks to bring attention to continuing problems from Hurricane Katrina.

"I think it's going to be difficult this year," Mrs. Milling said. "Most all of our friends have made plans. It's remarkable to me: people who have never even thought about it have made plans. I think that now people are looking at a lot of things differently."

At a social gathering this week, "it was discussed tremendously," Mrs. Milling said. "I couldn't get over it. That was the conversation: 'Where are we going to go?' "

Such discussions often end with a vow not to return to the same place as last year, because it was not enough like New Orleans.

A recently completed survey by the University of New Orleans on attitudes after Hurricane Katrina detected unprecedented levels of anxiety about what lies ahead for this city, particularly compared with a similar sampling three years ago.

"I can't tell you how many people are devising an exit strategy," said the director of the survey, Susan Howell, a political scientist. "They don't see a future. Life is too stressful."

Strikingly, Dr. Howell said, the random survey of 470 people in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes, conducted in March and April, was carried out among "people in the best conditions," those with relatively intact dwellings.

Though much of the political talk has focused on how to get people to return to the city, Dr. Howell said she noted a challenge that is perhaps equally serious, and that had gone largely unnoticed: "the steady drip out," particularly of middle-class people who see an economy years away from recovery.

The daily strain of life among the ruins is proving too much for many people.

Jay and Lin Kayser, a doctor and a teacher, respectively, live on one of the few unflooded blocks near Lake Pontchartrain — an island of relative normality. "Between my street and Freret Street," several miles to the south, Dr. Kayser said, "all of that was decimated. And that's our world." He and his wife are leaving New Orleans, after decades here.

"The thought of me being 57, waiting for it to be normal again — it's an emotional thing," Dr. Kayser said. "I just don't want to worry about hurricanes and flooding when I'm 70. I just decided I didn't have it in me to stay."

Another doctor who is departing for good, a resident of unflooded Uptown, spoke of doing volunteer cleanup work in one of the hard-hit areas.

"It was heartbreaking," said the doctor, Sam Money. "It was one of these things where, we live in a nice little cocoon, but so much of the city was devastated."

Still, for everyone leaving, or thinking of doing so, thousands more are preparing to hunker down, or at least get ready for another temporary exile.

At the hurricane-preparation stands of stores like Lowe's, and at sporting goods stores selling canoes, boats and boots, clerks report a steady though unpanicked business, so far.

When the first storms strike the Gulf of Mexico this year, Vera Triplett, a resident of the city's hard-hit Gentilly section, plans to be ready. "Our philosophy is, if we need to go, we go," Ms. Triplett said.

Her plans for evacuating are far more precise, "thought out," than they have ever been, said Ms. Triplett, vice president of her neighborhood's civic association. But planning has not dispelled worry.

"There is an underlying fear and anxiety," she said, "because most of the people around here are die-hard New Orleanians."

Some people plan to leave for the entire hurricane season — an approach that harks back to the 19th century, when yellow fever killed thousands here and many abandoned New Orleans for the months when it was likely to be dangerous.

Ann Strub and her husband, Dick, have bought a house in North Carolina. They are leaving New Orleans on Thursday, and they will not return until hurricane season ends.

"We've got lists of everything were going to take," Mrs. Strub said. "Mainly lots of papers."

A resident of Esplanade Avenue, the grand old Creole boulevard, she came through Hurricane Katrina relatively unscathed, but now, like many others here, she is prepared for the worst.

"If it floods in the French Quarter, we're done for," Mrs. Strub said.

"Our whole world is different," she continued. "We live differently. It's very scary."

    In Big Uneasy, Exit Planning Is Obsession, NYT, 27.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/27/us/27psyche.html?hp&ex=1148788800&en=db273c3cb80f7d93&ei=5094&partner=homepage


 

    Levees Rebuilt Just in Time, but Doubts Remain        NYT        25.5.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/us/25flood.html?hp&ex=1148616000&en=9fbfe1275d526c4e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Levees Rebuilt Just in Time, but Doubts Remain

May 25, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

NEW ORLEANS, May 22 — In a breathless finale that has been called one of this generation's greatest adventures in civil engineering, the Army Corps of Engineers has all but completed its repairs to this city's ruined levee system.

With just days to go before the beginning of the hurricane season, the corps' $800 million effort has even improved the system in many ways, engineering experts say, with tougher concrete flood walls, brawny new canal gates and more than 150 miles of new or repaired levees.

But even though all sides agree that the corps has largely achieved its goal, independent engineers say it is the goal that is the real problem. New Orleans is still very much at risk, they say, because the level of protection the corps has reached is still not as strong as the city needs.

Many experts view this hurricane season, which begins on June 1, with trepidation, and hope that the system is not put to a test like Hurricane Katrina before further improvements can be made.

"Some of these things were poorly designed and were almost pre-ordained to fail," said Wayne Clough, the head of a National Research Council team that formed at the request of the Department of Defense in order to assess the corps' investigation of the disaster. Parts that did not fail in Hurricane Katrina, he said, could still have been weakened by the stress of last year's storms. "Just because they've been restored to their condition pre-Katrina doesn't mean they are perfectly safe," he said.

Raymond Seed, a professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, who is one of the corps' most consistent critics, said he did not doubt that the system was, to use the mantra of the corps, "better and stronger" in many ways. But, he asked, "Better enough?"

Professor Seed and other experts who have studied the crazy quilt of levees, flood walls, pumps and gates that have been in the process of being built for more than 40 years now say that they were never adequate to protect hundreds of thousands of people in an urban setting and that the levees themselves are now known to be fundamentally flawed.

Corps officials say that repairing the damage of the last storm while preparing for new ones is a challenge that their organization is up to. But Maj. Gen. Don T. Riley, the director of civil works for the corps, said he could not guarantee that the system would not fail again.

"You don't know what kind of storm you'll get," he said in a recent interview, emphasizing the need for good evacuation planning.

Gen. Robert Crear, the head of the Mississippi Valley Division of the corps, said, "We know Katrina was not the worst possible case." What happens from here onward, General Crear said, "is a continuous program to improve" the system over time.

The corps' race to complete the $800 million in projects that it took on after last year's storms has been a 24/7 marathon rich with tension, apprehension, slipping deadlines and quick-and-dirty workarounds. The sheer scope of the work can only be fully appreciated from the air.

Where levees were breached and battered away by Hurricane Katrina's surge and waves, millions of cubic yards of new soil have been put into place along more than half the 350-mile levee system, from the shores of Lake Pontchartrain to the swamps at the southern tip of Louisiana.

Sturdy new gates stand at the mouths of the city's three major drainage canals. Storm-damaged pumps are being renewed, along with New Orleanians' capacity to hope.

In the city's ruined Lower Ninth Ward, 4,000 feet of new levee stands, the old weak I-shaped flood wall replaced with stronger walls that resemble an inverted T. For long stretches of the renewed system, the ground behind the flood walls is now armored with a white span of concrete intended to keep any water that makes it over the top from scouring away the earth.

To the east of the city, at the line of defense facing Lake Borgne, a long fat ribbon of freshly compacted earth, is a levee that will end up being 20 feet high and 11 miles long. Along its seemingly endless stretch of brown soil are yellowish sections, where local soil has been supplemented with tough Mississippi clay.

Along Lake Pontchartrain, at the mouths of the drainage canals that cut deep into New Orleans, enormous new floodgates are nearing completion, intended to keep the storm surge from putting the strain on the faulty flood walls that breached in three places and caused much of the flooding in the central city. That ambitious project has slipped behind schedule. Pumps to drain the canal waters when the gates are closed are late at the 17th Street Canal, and the gates are behind schedule at the London Avenue Canal.

But Col. Lewis F. Setliff III, the commander of the task force that has been rebuilding the system, said he was confident that the projects would be completed within weeks and that until then, an unseasonably early storm surge could be blocked, if necessary, with sheet pilings driven across the canals. Portable diesel-powered pumps would draw water over to the lake side.

It is far from a perfect solution. More powerful, permanent pumping stations are still years away and would have to be approved by Congress. Until then, the level of water in the canals must be kept low, and pumping capacity from the neighborhood pumping stations will have to be reduced — a prospect that greatly raises the risk of street flooding, but avoids catastrophic breaching.

Getting this far required tough talk with the contractors who carry out the corps' plans and 12-hour days at the Federal Reserve Bank Building downtown where Colonel Setliff's task force set up shop.

At the beginning of the work on the western end of the levee, in St. Bernard Parish, the contractor, Granite Construction, fell well behind schedule. The corps had what some workers called a "come-to-Jesus" meeting with Granite about the schedule, and even shook the company by publishing a request for new bids. By some estimates, Granite increased its pace by an estimated 40-fold, and is completing its part of the levee system on schedule.

Some problems remain. The rebuilt eastern wall of the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal, which breached and destroyed the Lower Ninth Ward, is now higher than a long stretch of the old wall on the western side of the canal that did not fail during Hurricane Katrina.

In case of a storm with high waters, the western side would overflow first, sending floodwaters into the city.

The corps has asked Congress to approve financing for new gates that could be closed to block surges in that large canal, also known as the Industrial Canal. But that additional level of protection is years away.

Although the corps will continue to raise and toughen the flood walls after the June 1 deadline, it has begun to study the larger question of how to improve the overall protection level. An interim report will come out next month, but the study will not be completed until December 2007. And any new initiatives would have to be approved by Congress.

It was in 1965, after Hurricane Betsy flooded New Orleans, that Congress first approved the city's hurricane protection system, authorizing a system based on what the corps would call "the most severe storm that is considered reasonably characteristic of a region." The corps built the system to protect against a hurricane with wind speeds of what is now considered a Category 2 storm, or up to 110 miles an hour. In many ways, though, that standard fell far short of the region's most severe storms like Hurricane Camille in 1969 or the storm that devastated Galveston, Tex., in 1900.

Over the years, experts and federal agencies have urged the corps to build to higher standards, but corps officials did not change course. Corps officials say that they build what Congress authorizes them to build and that shifting large projects is difficult once they are under way.

"The impression that we get is that the corps, once it's locked on a track, will not take input from outside groups," said Ivor van Heerden, a founder of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center.

Now, Mr. van Heerden said, "It seems like Louisiana is now having to pay for not getting it right the first time."

He said the system at this point could only fully protect against a Category 2 storm.

The degree of vulnerability was underscored on Monday, when an independent team of researchers led by engineering professors at the University of California, Berkeley, and supported by the National Science Foundation released a report that found the hurricane protection system riddled with errors in design, construction and maintenance — a pattern of inattention to safety that caused the system to crumble in a hurricane that should have, for the most part, caused little more than wind damage and a day or so of street flooding.

"The overall New Orleans flood protection system," Professor Seed said in a briefing last weekend, "must be considered suspect."

    Levees Rebuilt Just in Time, but Doubts Remain, NYT, 25.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/us/25flood.html?hp&ex=1148616000&en=9fbfe1275d526c4e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

A storm of trouble

Posted 5/24/2006 12:15 AM ET
USA Today
By Marilyn Adams

MIAMI — As coastal residents nervously await the start of a new hurricane season in June, they're confronting another fright: the exorbitant price and short supply of insurance for wind damage.

Huge losses from Hurricane Katrina and other hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 have sent the homeowners insurance industry into a panicked retreat from the USA's coastline. In Florida, which was hit by eight major hurricanes in two years, insurers are refusing to renew hundreds of thousands of homeowners policies to reduce exposure to claims.

Residents, many of whom are still patching up last year's hurricane damage, now face breathtaking insurance rate increases.

In Key West, homeowner Teri Johnston's wind storm premium has more than doubled from last year. The cost this year to insure her 1,500-square-foot home against fire, wind and flood: $14,742.

Ida Franklin, 89, has lived in her little North Miami house for 39 years. She's paying $5,100 a year in premiums for homeowners insurance, up $1,000 from last year. Her insurance company paid $10,000 to settle a 2005 hurricane claim. But she had to spend $10,000 of her own money to fix damage that her bare-bones policy didn't cover. Just as worrisome: a critical shortage of contractors and roofing materials. Seven months after Hurricane Wilma ripped off Franklin's roof shingles, work finally began this week.

Franklin, a widow, shares the house and expenses with her daughter and son-in-law, Ellen and Clifford Wurtz. "If my kids hadn't moved in with me, I couldn't afford to stay here," she says.

As rates go higher and coverage is terminated, homeowners with mortgages have no choice but to find coverage at whatever price. Lenders require it.

Several states along the East and Gulf coasts, including Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Massachusetts, offer state-run insurance programs for coastal homeowners who can't get private insurance. Florida's program has grown so big, it's poised to become the largest insurer of homes in the state. But public programs are no bargain; most offer bare-bones coverage at a high price.

Many coastal residents are trading higher deductibles for premiums slightly lower than they'd otherwise be. Homeowners who have paid for their homes don't have to carry wind storm insurance, and some owners are opting to take the risk and do without.

A coastal wave

The insurance upheaval is not limited to Florida or other Southeastern states typically rattled by hurricanes. Alarmed by forecasts of more major hurricanes in coming years, insurance companies are canceling policies and refusing to issue new ones as far north as New York and Massachusetts and as far west as Texas.

Edward Liddy, CEO of Allstate, the USA's second-largest property insurer, says the scope of losses from Hurricane Katrina and other hurricanes last year — nearly $58 billion — surprised the insurance industry.

"That told the entire industry that we need to do something differently," he says. Allstate paid $5 billion in claims for 2005 hurricane damage.

Liddy's company recently announced it won't write new policies in metropolitan New York City and won't renew nearly 30,000 policies in that region.

It has been nearly 70 years since a major hurricane struck the New York area. Today, the insured value of coastal real estate in that area is almost as high as that along the entire Florida coast. Allstate is most exposed among the insurers, with a 25% market share in the New York metropolitan area.

Retired New York City police officer Owen Reiter of Staten Island couldn't believe it when he recently got a letter from Allstate.

It said his homeowners policy, in force for 21 years, would not be renewed because of last year's hurricanes in the Southeast. In the letter, Allstate said it believes hurricanes "are possible all along the East Coast in coming years."

When Reiter called another insurance company, he was told his premium would be $975 a year, 80% more than he was paying Allstate. He's still shopping for coverage. "It's unfair," he says.

What's alarming insurance companies such as Allstate is not just the record insurance claims paid, but also the prospect of more frequent and more violent storms. The steamy tropical air and ocean waters that breed hurricanes off the coast of Africa are more conducive to hurricane formation than usual, the National Hurricane Center says. Government hurricane scientists here Monday predicted 2006 will be a "very active" hurricane season, with eight to 10 hurricanes forming in the Atlantic.

The scientists also have said hurricanes could pound the Atlantic and Gulf coasts with more frequency and intensity for a decade or more to come.

Scientists say the water in areas of the Atlantic Ocean where hurricanes form is running 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal. Also, crisscrossing winds that normally help prevent tropical disturbances from organizing into spiraling hurricanes are absent.

Meanwhile, more Americans now live along the coast than ever before, and the value of their homes has skyrocketed.

Not-so-sunny outlook

No place has been hit harder by the insurance industry's retreat than Florida, which has 2,100 miles of coastline and nearly 18 million residents. This is not Florida's first homeowners insurance crisis. That came after Hurricane Andrew demolished or damaged more than 100,000 homes near Miami in August 1992. Eleven small insurers failed.

But, since 2004, insurers have paid $30 billion in Florida hurricane claims, wiping out years of profits here.

State Farm, the state's largest private property insurer, has requested a 70% average rate increase statewide, and a 95% rate increase for mobile homes. It won't renew 39,000 wind storm insurance policies, and is canceling all its condominium building policies, about 1,500 statewide.

"We're taking these steps so we can stay in Florida," says State Farm spokesman Chris Neal.

Meanwhile, Allstate, in addition to the New York pullback, announced it will not renew 120,000 Florida policies when they come up for renewal later this year. That's on top of 95,000 Florida policies Allstate decided not to renew last year. In Louisiana, many insurers are declining to write new policies in coastal areas south of Interstate 10.

Robert Hunter, insurance director for the Consumer Federation of America and a former insurance regulator, calls the insurers' pullback in Florida and elsewhere "bizarre."

"Insurance companies are supposed to bring stability to a situation, not instability," he says.

He thinks Florida should join other hurricane-prone states such as Louisiana and Texas to form a regional wind storm insurance program to spread the risk.

The scramble by Allstate, State Farm, Nationwide and other companies doesn't mean big insurers are losing money. Despite hurricane-related losses in several states, the property-casualty insurance industry posted a record $43 billion in profits in 2005. But the same year, homeowners insurers paid out $7.3 billion more in claims than they collected in premiums, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Liddy, of Allstate, says the pullback in homeowners coverage is justified.

"If you look at the East Coast from Maine to Florida, there's a lot of exposure there," he says.

Insurance companies' hurricane losses have reverberated through the reinsurance market, where insurance companies go to insure themselves against huge, unanticipated losses. If insurers can buy reinsurance now, it's at least twice as expensive as a year ago, the Insurance Information Institute says. That's helping drive homeowners' rate increases.

High, higher ...

After years of extraordinary insurance rate increases, Johnston, the Key West homeowner, can't bear the thought of another.

"People think we live in million-dollar mansions," says Johnston, president of a homeowners group pushing for lower rates. "I'm living in a little concrete block house."

Johnston, who still has a mortgage, says her wind policy alone costs $11,856, more than double last year's premium. It's almost four times what she paid in 2004. Her deductible is $18,000, meaning she couldn't file a claim unless wind damage were to exceed that. She has never filed a wind damage claim.

Her wind storm policy is issued by Citizens Property Insurance, Florida's state-run insurer of last resort and the only company writing wind insurance in the Florida Keys.

Because of the retreat by private companies, Citizens is about to become the largest property insurer statewide, surpassing State Farm. Citizens is on the verge of inheriting as many as 300,000 policies from Poe Financial, a Tampa insurer forced this month to liquidate under the weight of last year's claims. If all those go to Citizens, it will swell to 1.1 million policies.

"If Citizens did not exist, there would be chaos here," says its chairman, Bruce Douglas, a Jacksonville businessman.

Citizens has requested a 45% average statewide rate increase for wind storm policies in coastal areas. In some parts of South Florida near Miami and Fort Lauderdale, rates could jump more than 60%. Fearing an unraveling of homeowners' insurance safety net, Gov. Jeb Bush last week signed sweeping insurance reform legislation. The new law allocates $1.2 billion for Citizens and for preparedness programs. Citizens was left with a $1.7 billion deficit after last year's claims.

The new law sets up matching grants to help lure new insurers to Florida. It requires the entire state to meet stronger building codes.

It also provides funds to help homeowners harden their houses against hurricanes with metal shutters over windows, tie-downs for roofs, stronger garage doors and other defenses.

Florida Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, the state's former insurance regulator, advocates a federal catastrophe insurance plan financed by homeowners insurance premiums everywhere.

It would establish a fund to help pay for losses resulting from natural disasters whose damage exceeds a state's financial ability to recover, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards and ice storms.

"This is a national problem," says Gallagher, a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor. "We need national answers."

    A storm of trouble, NYT, 24.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/insurance/2006-05-23-hurricane-insurance-usat_x.htm

Judge Steps In for Poor Inmates Without Justice Since Hurricane

May 23, 2006
The New York Times
By LESLIE EATON

NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Katrina took his house, his courtroom and, Judge Arthur L. Hunter Jr. says, his faith in the way his city treats poor people facing criminal charges.

Nine months after the storm, more than a thousand jailed defendants have had no access to lawyers, the judge says, because the public defender system is desperately short of money and staffing, without a computer system or files or even a list of clients.

And so Judge Hunter, 46, a former New Orleans police officer, is moving to let some of the defendants without lawyers out of jail. He has suspended prosecutions in most cases involving public defenders. And, alone among a dozen criminal court judges, he has granted a petition to free a prisoner facing serious charges without counsel, and is considering others.

It is, he said in an interview, his duty under the Constitution. "Something needs to be done, it's that simple," he said. "I'm the lightning rod, yes."

The district attorney's office opposes letting defendants back out on the street, saying the court should find them lawyers. But Judge Hunter said he has had little luck finding private firms willing to take on most indigents' cases, and there appears to be no money to pay their expenses.

The public defenders' office, run not by City Hall but by a parish board, is basically broke. Louisiana, alone among the states, relies mainly on local court fees — mostly surcharges on traffic tickets — to finance its public defenders, according to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.

It is a financing system that Judge Hunter and Calvin Johnson, the chief judge of the criminal court in New Orleans, have recently found to be unconstitutional because it forces poor people to pay for the system. The Louisiana attorney general's office says it plans to appeal those decisions.

In Orleans Parish, the traffic and the tickets both evaporated after Hurricane Katrina. Most of the office's 42 part-time public defenders were laid off. And they were, by many accounts, inadequate to begin with; a new study sponsored by the federal Justice Department says that the office probably needs 70 full-time lawyers, a computer system for case management, support staff and a reliable source of financing.

The study calls for scrapping the current system, which an appeals court decision recently described as "overburdened, underfunded and perhaps unconstitutional." The public defenders' office in New Orleans is slated to receive a $2.8 million federal grant on May 31 — but the study says it needs more than $10 million to get up and running and operate for a year.

The criminal justice system in New Orleans was notoriously troubled long before the storms, and if anything, it is now worse. Officials hope to resume jury trials soon for the first time since Hurricane Katrina, but still do not know if they will have enough courtrooms, jurors or witnesses to proceed.

On a recent Friday morning, in a borrowed courtroom in the Federal Building downtown, Judge Hunter listened to testimony from Ronald Dunn, 43, who was arrested on Aug. 19, 10 days before Hurricane Katrina hit, on a charge of possessing crack cocaine. Like the vast majority of the defendants in criminal court here, he cannot afford to hire a lawyer, and so would normally be represented by a public defender.

Handcuffed, shackled and wearing jailhouse orange, Mr. Dunn told the court that as the water rose, he spent four frightening days without food in the House of Detention, and was then moved from prison to prison, losing touch with his family.

In the nine months since the hurricane, he said, he has never even spoken to a lawyer. "I don't have a lawyer," Mr. Dunn said. "I never been to court." Without a lawyer a defendant cannot even plead guilty.

Pamela R. Metzger, the director of the Criminal Court Clinic at Tulane Law School, has petitioned the court to release Mr. Dunn and more than a dozen other poor prisoners in similar circumstances. Releasing them would not hamper the prosecution, she argued, and would give them an opportunity to try to gather evidence in their own defense. And, she said later, "to be free from imprisonment and punishment without due process of law."

But David S. Pipes, an assistant district attorney, argued against releasing Mr. Dunn, whom he described as a five-time felon. (Court documents show that Mr. Dunn has been arrested 10 times since 1990 and has pleaded guilty to previous drug and theft charges.)

More broadly, Mr. Pipes said: "The proper solution for someone who does not have an attorney is to get them an attorney. Releasing them does not cure anything and does not protect their rights."

Of course, everyone in the courtroom could describe a life turned upside down by Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Pipes is working out of an office in an old nightclub because the district attorney's office flooded. Professor Metzger is commuting to New Orleans from Atlanta.

And Judge Hunter is driving back and forth to Tampa, Fla., where his family fled, or Baton Rouge, where he has bought a house where he plans to live with his wife and teenage son, a cousin and a widowed aunt.

Over the years, the district attorney and others have accused Judge Hunter of being too soft on defendants, and of having too high an acquittal rate in nonjury trials. (He says he is simply fair.) But even longtime critics like the independent Metropolitan Crime Commission say that when it comes to the public defenders' office, he is doing the right thing.

"I don't have any problem with what he's trying to do there," said Rafael C. Goyeneche III, president of the commission. "He's demanding that it function properly."

The battle over indigent defendants is proceeding on several levels. Last month, Judge Hunter granted a petition for release filed by Professor Metzger on behalf of Donald Crockett, a mentally ill man accused of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He has been in jail since October 2003.

The district attorney's office appealed, and an appellate court found that additional procedural steps were required. Though it reversed the judge's decision, the court suggested such releases might be possible once the program completely runs out of money. Professor Metzger said she planned to appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco has submitted a budget that would double, to $20 million, the appropriation for defenders around the state, and a legislative task force set up before Hurricane Katrina continues to work on the issue.

The Louisiana State Bar Association has made fixing the public defender system a priority and has paid for both another study and for the salaries of three defenders for a year, said Frank X. Neuner, president of the bar association. In Orleans Parish, the criminal court judges have appointed new directors (including Professor Metzger) to oversee the public defenders' program.

Judge Johnson, who runs the criminal court and is a former public defender himself, has been working to build a consensus for changing the system, something he said he has supported for years. He was the first judge after Hurricane Katrina to order an investigation into whether the public defenders could adequately represent the poor.

But having Judge Hunter halt prosecutions and consider freeing inmates has helped focus attention on the issue, Judge Johnson said.

"You have to have some guy out there rattling the saber, absolutely," Judge Johnson said. "I think the message was loud, clear and necessary."

    Judge Steps In for Poor Inmates Without Justice Since Hurricane, NYT, 23.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/us/23court.html?hp&ex=1148443200&en=cd7bc9da0931fb9d&ei=5094&partner=homepage


 

The Vote in New Orleans        NYT        May 21, 2006

    An Incumbent Proves Resilient in New Orleans        NYT        22.5.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/us/22orleans.html?hp&ex=
1148356800&en=c45d2b5c611430b1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

An Incumbent Proves Resilient in New Orleans

May 22, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

NEW ORLEANS, May 21 — The extraordinary circumstances stacked against Mayor C. Ray Nagin by Hurricane Katrina — a displaced electorate, an emptied city treasury, a punishing leadership test — could not finally trump a constant force of New Orleans politics, the power of incumbency.

By a margin of four percentage points, voters re-elected Mr. Nagin on Saturday to guide the city through the next four years, having rejected the temptation to change leaders in the midst of a crisis.

Mr. Nagin drew the vast majority of the votes of black residents, many of whom said they wanted to retain a black incumbent rather than see City Hall in the hands of a white mayor for the first time since 1978. At the same time, enough voters in the city's whitest precincts decided they were comfortable with the unscripted personality of a mayor who has dominated headlines, nearly tripling his support in those precincts from last month's primary. Those were areas in which Mr. Nagin's challenger, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, needed virtually unanimous support to win.

Anthony Young, a black evacuee living in Jackson, Miss., who returned to the city on Saturday to vote for Mr. Nagin, spoke for many voters in explaining his support.

"He's the only one that stayed through the storm," Mr. Young said. "He's got the experience. He's got a better idea of how to carry people through it."

Pres Kabacoff, a white real estate developer and Landrieu supporter, said that the way Mr. Nagin conducted himself after the primary restored much of his credibility and attracted conservative whites leery of Mr. Landrieu's liberal reputation.

"He showed the style and charisma and sort of the glib way of handling himself that caused those people on the fence to just say, 'I'll stick with him,' " Mr. Kabacoff said.

Despite the advantages of holding office, however, Mr. Nagin was no ordinary incumbent. His off-the-cuff style in the national spotlight earned him blistering criticism and outright mockery. He was far outspent by Mr. Landrieu, whose name recognition rivaled the mayor's. In a crowded primary last month, the mayor failed to win 40 percent of the vote, prompting many people to declare his campaign moribund, if not dead.

The candidates split the absentee vote cast by . thousands of voters displaced from the city by Hurricane Katrina, who were expected to be far more supportive of the mayor.

At a victory news conference on Sunday, Mr. Nagin compared himself to David facing Goliath, saying he had learned that "a well-placed slingshot is very effective." Asked what he would say to those who were surprised at his re-election, he replied, "They don't get the uniqueness of New Orleans, they don't really get what really happened during Katrina — all they saw was those awful images — and they really don't get Ray Nagin." Then he added, "Sometimes I don't get Ray Nagin, so it's all right."

Some political analysts here said the victory was a triumph of political acumen and charisma; others said it came down to simple demographics in a city whose electorate is predominantly black. A preliminary examination of the results showed that the mayor won nearly 80 percent of the black vote, while his white opponent won about the same percentage of the white vote, said Greg Rigamer, an elections analyst who has worked for the Louisiana secretary of state.

"This was a case of, My core constituency is bigger than your core constituency," Mr. Rigamer said.

Still, a crossover vote of more than 20 percent is considered high, said Susan Howell, a political scientist at the University of New Orleans, especially since only 5 percent of whites voted for Mr. Nagin in the primary.

One factor was a series of forums that exposed voters to the contrast in the candidates' personalities. Mr. Landrieu was scripted, careful and short on specifics that might have attracted white voters who were dissatisfied with the mayor's leadership, while Mr. Nagin's knowledge of the intricacies of the rebuilding effort allowed him to speak with authority and in detail.

"But that's not the usual incumbency advantage," Dr. Howell said. "The usual incumbency advantage is money, and that in a crisis you like the way this person is performing."

Mr. Nagin also received the endorsement of the only significant Republican candidate in the primary, Rob Couhig, and of Virginia Boulet, a corporate lawyer who also a candidate. Mr. Couhig and Ms. Boulet are white. "They can't really just deliver their voters, but they can give a cue that Nagin is acceptable to business," Dr. Howell said. Mr. Nagin said Sunday that he intended to give the two candidates a role in his administration.

Voting along racial lines may be a tradition here, but it is not how Mr. Nagin was elected the first time. In 2002, his first step into politics, he was supported by New Orleans businesses and won more than 80 percent of the white vote but only about 40 percent of the black vote. This time around, the trials of Hurricane Katrina, and the criticism heaped upon him by outsiders, garnered sympathy among blacks.

"New Orleans has a pretty significant poor and undereducated population who for a long time dealt with adversity," Mr. Rigamer said. "With respect to his performance, a lot of the people who were most severely affected were a little more tolerant."

Turnout in the run-off was 38 percent of registered voters, an increase of about 5,000 votes over the primary, when 36 percent of registered voters cast ballots.

It was not clear how many evacuees had voted, or how they had split, because many evacuees had returned to the city on Saturday to vote. But the number of absentee ballots cast was up by more than 2,300. (That number includes votes cast early in New Orleans, but does not include evacuees who traveled to New Orleans to vote on Election Day.) The absentee votes split almost 50-50 between the two candidates, with Mr. Nagin leading by less than 200 votes.

It is not clear why the absentee electorate did not follow the larger pattern. But one study of voting in the primary showed that evacuees living closer to New Orleans were more likely to be white, and also more likely to vote. That was in part a matter of access — there were satellite early voting stations throughout Louisiana, but none in Houston or other cities with heavy concentrations of black evacuees.

The business leaders who supported Mr. Nagin's first run for office deserted him this time in part because of what they perceived as his lack of credibility with Baton Rouge and Washington, where officials have enormous influence over the city's efforts to rebuild.

But Mr. Nagin played down concerns that businesses would leave the city because of his re-election, saying many companies had expressed an interest in opportunities .

"Once they get over the shock of me winning this election," he said with a laugh, "I think we're going to be O.K."

    An Incumbent Proves Resilient in New Orleans, NYT, 22.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/us/22orleans.html?hp&ex=1148356800&en=c45d2b5c611430b1&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Man in the News

New Start for Familiar Face: Clarence Ray Nagin

May 22, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, May 21 — As he delivered his victory speech on Saturday night, Mayor C. Ray Nagin was interrupted by an overexuberant supporter.

"Ladies and gentleman, somebody put a muzzle on this brother to my right," Mr. Nagin said coolly, breaking into his own speech. He went right on into a quick litany of thank-yous, wisecracks, self-mocking reproaches and appeals for peace.

Mr. Nagin was as unruffled in his upset victory as he had been facing defeat, better-financed opponents, a cataclysmic flood, the defection of onetime supporters, the partial destruction of his city and skeptical reporters.

"I'm on my boogie board," he said on Sunday after Mass at the historic St. Peter Claver Church in the Tremé neighborhood. "I'm just going to keep on riding."

Mr. Nagin is a mayor who has elevated being cool to a policy as well as a style. He improvises on the stump and — some former staff members say — in his second-floor suite at City Hall as well. Critics say this has served him and his city only intermittently well during his first four years, as some promises failed to materialize, crucial staff members frequently left or were forced out, and the road through Hurricane Katrina and after proved rough.

On Sunday, Mr. Nagin promised a new beginning, a different staff and an economic boom once federal reconstruction money started flowing, perhaps by late summer.

"We now have the economic stimulus that will happen at unprecedented levels in the city, for us to expand the economic pie and for everyone to get a piece of that pie," Mr. Nagin said at a news conference. "This is our shot. This is our time."

Though he did not address during the campaign the central issue of whether some ruined neighborhoods should be abandoned, he hinted on Sunday for the first time that this might happen by default. The difficulties of reconstruction in some areas could make rebuilding an enormous task, he suggested.

"Reality is setting in, in a lot of neighborhoods," Mr. Nagin said. "People are going back and saying 'Wow, that's pretty awesome. I'm not sure whether I can rebuild in this area.' "

For all the post-election exuberance, however, Mr. Nagin's own complicated trajectory — before, during and since the hurricane — offers only ambiguous confirmation of his brighter vision for the city and his administration of it.

On August 28, 2005 — the day before Hurricane Katrina hit — Mr. Nagin's most notable accomplishments to date were to have run an administration largely free of scandal and to have removed politics from municipal contracting.

In a city with a small economy, where the budget had for years represented an irresistible temptation to City Hall's friends, relatives and hangers-on, this was considered no small thing, and Mr. Nagin seemed a safe bet for re-election the next year.

Less passive accomplishments were harder to identify, however. He came into office in 2002 a political unknown, the highly paid head of Cox Cable in New Orleans whose long ascent from humble beginnings in the Sixth Ward had not carried him into the intersecting inner circles of cash and politics in the city.

He was divorced from the alphabet soup of black political organizations that dominated politics for years in this city. And he set himself up as a dragon-slayer, going after what was widely perceived — and partly confirmed by subsequent investigations — as a municipality for sale.

Political professionals at first considered him a longshot, just as they did this year when his post-hurricane gaffes had apparently sunk him low. But Mr. Nagin astonished the professionals and everyone else in 2002 when he came in first. And now he has astonished them again.

Clarence Ray Nagin was born on June 11, 1956, at Charity Hospital, to a father who cut fabric in a clothing factory and a mother who ran a lunch counter. Mr. Nagin attended an integrated high school but went to college at Tuskegee University in Alabama, one of the most venerable of the nation's historically black institutions and one with a distinctive ethic of personal success.

Still today, Mr. Nagin's rhetoric is infused with a worshipful regard for business acumen and the private sector, an attitude that initially endeared him to the white executives who mostly deserted him after Hurricane Katrina.

But some of Mr. Nagin's grand, market-oriented ideas, like selling the airport or developing the riverfront, stalled. A drive to crack down on municipal corruption that was Mr. Nagin's calling-card in 2002 resulted in little more than the arrest of some cab drivers and city employees accused of abusing the permit system for taxis.

His staff choices have generally been reckoned unsuccessful, ranging from a chief administrative officer fired early in his administration, Kimberly Williamson Butler, who wound up in jail this spring after defying state judges, to the police chief, Edwin P. Compass III, who gained international notoriety during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for exaggerating the extent of the city's anarchy. He, too, was let go.

Many of these difficulties, insiders and observers say, stem from a businessman's habit of going it alone and not consulting others. Mr. Nagin seemed to half acknowledge this difficulty at the Sunday news conference, though he minimized it. "It's just my style that gets people to calling me a lone wolf," he said.

Those close to Mr. Nagin, while acknowledging some of his political faults, say that now, with unprecedented offers of help pouring into New Orleans, the mayor has a renewed chance at helping his city.

"Pre-Katrina it was hard to get good people in government service," said John Georges, a longtime friend who runs a food distribution business. "He never really attracted a good team. I think he's got a huge opportunity to bring in the right team. More people than ever are willing to serve."

Still, for all his conciliatory talk on Sunday, Mr. Nagin proved again that he had not lost his ability to throw verbal bombs.

Responding to a provocative suggestion that businessmen might now leave New Orleans because of his re-election, Mr. Nagin showed a rare flash of anger.

"In breaking down the corrupt, bankrupt political system in New Orleans, I had to do it in a systematic way," he said. "The first piece was the political community. The next piece was kind of the religious community. The next piece was the business community. And the business community now has to make a decision, if they want to participate in a new paradigm, a paradigm that says, 'We're not going to be like the New Orleans of old. We're going forward.' "

Mr. Nagin added: "If they opt out of that, where are they going to go? Where are they going to find a New Orleans of 1840?"

    New Start for Familiar Face: Clarence Ray Nagin, NYT, 22.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/us/22nagin.html

Voters Re-elect Nagin as Mayor in New Orleans

May 21, 2006
The New yorkTimes
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, May 20 — C. Ray Nagin, the unpredictable mayor who charted a sometimes erratic course for his city through Hurricane Katrina and after, won a narrow re-election victory here Saturday.

Mr. Nagin, who will now lead the city through four crucial rebuilding years, fended off a strong challenge from Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, the scion of one of Louisiana's leading political families, in a vote that see-sawed all night. With all of the city's 442 precincts reporting, Mr. Nagin had 52 percent of the vote, while Mr. Landrieu received 48 percent.

Mr. Nagin, an African-American, won about 21 percent of the votes of whites, as well as over 80 percent of the black vote, according to a local elections analyst and political consultant, Greg Rigamer. Mr. Landrieu appeared to have lost black votes that he picked up in last month's primary, Mr. Rigamer said in an interview.

In claiming victory before his supporters tonight, Mr. Nagin said it was time to end the arguments over how to rebuild the city and to begin the arduous task. "It's time for this community to start the healing process," Mr. Nagin said, adding that he intended to continue working with his opponent.

Mr. Landrieu, who is white, called on residents in his concession speech to unite behind the mayor in rebuilding a city that has barely begun to recover from the flooding.

"I want to congratulate Mayor Nagin," Mr. Landrieu said. "This was a hard-fought campaign. The people of New Orleans conducted themselves in a dignified and thoughtful way."

Mr. Nagin raised far less money than Mr. Landrieu did and had little of the business and establishment support that helped him take office four years ago. But he appeared to benefit from a surge of votes cast by those displaced from the city by the hurricane, who were encouraged to vote with absentee ballots and at satellite polling stations set up around Louisiana.

Mr. Nagin retained the strong allegiance of black residents here, who are still in the majority, albeit more narrowly than before the hurricane. They did not blame him for missteps during the storm and afterwards, and many said they simply wanted the man who led the city during the last hurricane to continue leading it through future ones.

For months, Mr. Nagin played on that underlying loyalty and remade his political persona, going from a candidate originally favored by whites to one making an overt appeal to black unity and pride.

A speech in January in which he vowed that New Orleans would once again be a "chocolate city" outraged whites, but brought a smile to many black voters.

In addition, conservative whites who have long mistrusted the Landrieu family have consistently found Mr. Nagin's business background —he was a cable television company executive here — appealing.

Other white voters, in interviews, unfavorably contrasted Mr. Landrieu's stiff delivery with the mayor's resonant New Orleans colloquialisms. And during Mr. Nagin's administration, in notable contrast to those of his predecessors, there have been no patronage or other scandals.

In his victory speech, Mr. Nagin pointedly thanked President Bush, of whom he had previously spoken critically.

"To President Bush, yeah, I want to thank you, Mr. President," Mr. Nagin said. "You and I have probably been the most vilified politicians in the country. But I want to thank you for moving that promise in Jackson Square forward. You are delivering on your promise, and I want to thank you for delivering for the citizens of New Orleans."

Mr. Nagin came out on top in an April primary, but opponents collectively received a majority of the votes.

With Mr. Landrieu and Mr. Nagin taking the same muted position on the central issue facing this city — both refused to rule out rebuilding in any area, no matter how badly damaged by flooding — the race was about who was most competent to lead New Orleans out of its current predicament.

Mostly unspoken was the larger reality: that the federal money destined for the city, as much as $10 billion that would perhaps arrive by late summer, would have far more influence on its recovery than the actions of any mayor.

Mr. Landrieu accused Mr. Nagin of botching the recovery. He said he had failed to put into place a rebuilding plan and to get ruined cars, garbage and debris off the streets.

"This race only comes down to leadership, competence and performance," he said Thursday. "The rebuild's got to start sometime, and it's not happening."

Mr. Landrieu repeatedly suggested that the city's finances were in disorder and that New Orleans might need to declare bankruptcy, as some civic groups here have suggested.

Then, earlier this week, Mr. Nagin announced a $150 million loan from a consortium of banks, two French and two American, to keep the city going through next year — a deal that turned out not to have been fully completed.

Throughout the race, Mr. Nagin used his opponent's connections against him, suggesting that the election of Mr. Landrieu would perpetuate a family "dynasty." (Mr. Landrieu's father, Moon Landrieu, was the city's last white mayor, and his sister Mary is the senior United States senator from Louisiana.) He characterized Mr. Landrieu's record as sketchy, after 16 years in the Legislature and two as lieutenant governor.

"I think Mitch is a good guy," Mr. Nagin said Friday. "I love him to death. But he's not really an implementer."

The choice was not clear-cut, though, and residents often expressed confusion over it in the days leading up to the election. Above all, the election sometimes seemed merely a distraction in the context of a city still facing questions over its survival.

Still, as the election neared and increasingly began to seem like a referendum on the city's future, attention began to focus on it.

Saturday was a clear, hot day, and in the areas that did not flood during the hurricane, volunteers stood at street corners waving signs, while flatbed trucks and even a fire engine passed by packed with cheering supporters. In the flooded areas, piles of debris stood outside empty houses still showing last August's water line, and there was little life. The medians of the broad, silent boulevards in Mid-City were crowded with signs for the candidates.

Among voters on Saturday there was unease, dissatisfaction over the recovery, and — for those who had been displaced — a longing to return. Still, African-Americans voters for the most part said they were standing by Mr. Nagin.

"The city is starting to show a little progress, but only a little progress," said Idoshia Gordon, reciting the list of family members — cousins, siblings, aunts — who had lost houses to the hurricane.

Despite these reservations, she said was going to vote for Mr. Nagin. "I want to see him carry it through," she said. "I want him to finish it out."

Many whites were openly angry at the mayor.

"We've got to change the situation," said David Castillo after voting at Jesuit High School in Mid-City, where construction workers were busy on a building that was badly flooded. "It's a bad situation."

Others were more forgiving of the mayor, who voted at the school.

"You did everything you could, my darlin', " said Theresa Graffin, embracing Mr. Nagin, who buttonholed as many people as he could and appeared cool and collected.

Less than half of the city's population of 455,000 has returned, by most counts.

    Voters Re-elect Nagin as Mayor in New Orleans, NYT, 21.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/us/21election.html?hp&ex=1148270400&en=cf4b5960d60f0659&ei=5094&partner=homepage

In the Lower Ninth Ward, a Day of Voting and Reunions

May 21, 2006
The New York Times
By SHAYNA RUDD

NEW ORLEANS, May 20 — Veronica Williams and Michael Vaughn raced across the parking lot of the New Pilgrim Baptist Church on Saturday morning, not to cast ballots in the voting booths inside, but to share a hug long enough to make up for all those missed over the last nine months.

"Seeing you feels like home," said Mr. Vaughn, 50, who was rescued from the roof of his house here after Hurricane Katrina wiped it from its foundation. "You know, I have stopped crying. I can't cry no more. But I'm so glad to see you."

For these childhood friends and hundreds of other former residents of the devastated Lower Ninth Ward, Election Day was like a family reunion, with gospel music blaring in the parking lot as voters lingered to swap stories of the storm.

Ms. Williams, who said she spent 10 weeks in a shelter before settling in with relatives in San Antonio, was the first in line when the polls opened at 6 a.m. for the mayoral runoff race between the incumbent, C. Ray Nagin, and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

Ms. Williams had driven 10 hours the day before to vote at New Pilgrim, and after casting her ballot she waited for more than an hour in her black sedan, as though the true purpose of the long trip was outside.

"I knew that I would see him here," Ms. Williams said of Mr. Vaughn. "I didn't know if he was dead or alive. But somehow, I just knew he wasn't."

By breakfast time, the lot was dotted with huddles of long-losts laughing and crying and talking over old times. They reminisced about Hurricane Betsy in 1965, and how their community had stuck together. They shared their individual experiences of Hurricane Katrina, and how their community had fared since.

"We made it then, and we'll make it now," said Leon Vaughn, who is not related to Mr. Vaughn. "We've just got to find everybody so we can build it back up."

They found one another at the church, which recently reopened and on Saturday served as the central polling place for the Lower Ninth, an African-American neighborhood all but vacant after suffering the worst of the disaster. The marquee in front of the large white-brick building read, "The church where the Holy Ghost has his way, We're back!"

Across the street sat a vacant house, all the windows blown out, the front spray-painted TFW, the rescuers' code for Total Family Withdrawal. Paint-stripped cars filled with trash bags lined the street, as they have for months. The only business open nearby, a convenience store four blocks away, was selling two slices of white bread in plastic wrap for 25 cents.

Michael Vaughn, who spent days that "ran into each other" in the Convention Center before evacuating to Texas, said he had yet to find any relatives except his 96-year-old mother. "I need therapy," said Mr. Vaughn, who has returned to New Orleans but not to the Lower Ninth. "I slept next to dead bodies. I heard women getting raped in the night.

"The worse of it was I felt alone," he added. "I didn't have my family to help me through it."

As this group dispersed, laughter leaped from a cluster of three men in their 20's surrounding their former high school guidance counselor, Dorothy Boyd, updating her on the condition of their community.

"I remember when these two boys were little," Ms. Boyd said. "I'm glad to see that they aren't lost."

Brandon Anthony, who left the city a few hours before the storm demolished his home, spoke numbly about what is there now.

"It looks like an open field," he told his buddies. "There might be six houses left, and they are ruined."

Jamar Francoise added: "All we have left is the spirit of this community. All of our material things are gone. But I know now it's not about that, it never was."

In a corner of the parking lot was a white Jeep Cherokee, spilling a soundtrack. "I believe he'll save me," came the gospel lyrics. "I believe he'll heal me, I believe he'll hold me, Oh yes he will."

Carole Pierce, whose mother died on a roof awaiting rescue, was one of dozens of neighborhood residents working inside monitoring the polls.

"People think this is the end for us," she said, her voice a mix of hope and anger. "It's just the beginning."

    In the Lower Ninth Ward, a Day of Voting and Reunions, NYT, 21.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/us/21church.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

In New Orleans, Suspense but No Drama as Race Ends

May 20, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, May 19 — At rallies, in grocery store aisles and at church pulpits, the two candidates for mayor sought last-minute votes on Friday, the day before the election, under a blanket of muggy late-spring heat. But with the city's future on the line, the relaxed rhythms of New Orleans made an odd contrast to the tensions of the race.

Over the last weeks, voters have been treated to a series of tepid debates and halfhearted campaign appearances, which, far from defining the path the battered city should take, have only obscured it.

There are leisurely gaps between campaign events, with the two candidates, Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, apparently deciding to forgo traditional stumping. It is also difficult to accomplish, with so many voters still out of town.

Neither of the candidates have publicly confronted the most important issue facing the city: whether damaged neighborhoods, vulnerable to future flooding, can or should be brought back. They acknowledge that their goals are virtually identical, arguing instead over who is more competent to accomplish them.

As a result, voters here appear confused. Some say they still have not made up their minds; others express anger at the pace of change without apparently knowing where such change should lead; and still others doggedly stick with Mr. Nagin, even while acknowledging the battering he has taken from critics who cite his loose rhetoric and erratic management of the recovery.

There is hunger for action, but few could say what it should be.

"Mitch Landrieu, I think he's the better candidate to get things done," said Ashley Hansen, walking her dog in the Uptown section. Though previously a Nagin supporter, she said the mayor had "sort of let me down in some of the things he's said."

There is great suspense over the result, because the large number of evacuees, voting with absentee ballots and at satellite polls, have made surveys unreliable. With more than 12,000 absentee ballots already received and more expected, they may well decide the outcome late Saturday night.

"What people are not understanding are the out-of-town voters, and how significant that could be," Mr. Nagin told reporters outside the Whole Foods market on Magazine Street, where he greeted shoppers.

But the instinct of everyone here — candidates, voters and pundits — is that the contest will be close.

Mr. Nagin, struggling against months of damaging publicity about his handling of the sluggish recovery, constant changes in City Hall policy and uncertainty about the city's financial condition, is seeking a mandate to speak authoritatively for his city against skeptics in Baton Rouge and Washington. Mr. Landrieu, who would become the city's first white mayor in 30 years if he wins, argues that a new voice and a fresh approach are needed to lead the recovery, which has barely begun.

Race, as always, is the city's barely spoken divide. In interviews on Friday, black voters again said they were sticking with Mr. Nagin.

"One thing about that mayor, he stayed here during the hurricane," said Louis Scott, a retired longshoreman near the wharves on Tchoupitoulas Street. "He did everything he could for the people. He stayed, and he's got the experience."

Whites, with some exceptions, said they were fed up with the city's limping reconstruction, and would opt for Mr. Landrieu. Mr. Nagin, for his part, promised voters better days while campaigning in his trademark casual style at the market, cooing at a baby by the poultry counter, hugging sales clerks at the flower stand and urging an outdoor diner to get rich: "Make all you can stand, man," he said.

He received barely 6 percent of whites' votes in the primary, but asserted Friday that they were coming back to his camp. There was some evidence of it.

"He's a true New Orleanian. He shoots from the hip," said Bruce Pennington, who is white, shopping at the market. "He may say some stupid things, but as a New Orleanian, I understand his stupidity."

Mr. Landrieu earnestly pleaded for unity — a nod to the 24 percent of black voters who supported him in the primary — and for change, at a noontime rally for campaign workers and supporters, well-attended by leading local businessmen and political figures, at his headquarters on St. Charles Avenue.

"This great city has one chance," Mr. Landrieu said. "It's going to be coming from all of you, holding hands." The familiar faces in the crowd were testimony to his success in rounding up this city's establishment figures, who have largely deserted Mr. Nagin. Mr. Landrieu has raised nearly $4 million, according to his campaign treasurer. Mr. Nagin is known to have raised far less — his list of contributors is far shorter — though his treasurer did not return calls Friday.

There has been relatively little street-level campaigning. Both candidates are extremely well-known — Mr. Landrieu has been in public life for 18 years here, and his family has played a leading political role for nearly five decades. And many neighborhoods are still uninhabited, so a plethora of televised debates has largely substituted for heavy advertising and pavement-pounding.

"The last thing they need is media attention, because there's been so much already," said Ed Renwick, director of the Institute of Politics at Loyola University. Besides, "people refer to Mitch like he's a member of the family. They never say Landrieu. They know them both so well."

Mr. Landrieu's television advertisements have spotlighted individual residents, in neighborhood settings, complaining about the pace of recovery. The lieutenant governor appears in several spots, in one complaining about the continuing presence of flooded-out, ruined cars under the elevated highways, a ghostly presence that has emerged as a symbol of the city's stagnation.

Mr. Nagin has had far less of a campaign presence, on television or otherwise. On Friday, he exhibited no worry at all about being unseated, which would be a rarity in this city's political history.

Instead, Mr. Nagin, a former cable television executive who entered politics only four years ago, once again displayed some astonishment at his current position.

"This is the biggest reality TV show ever, and I'm right in the middle of it," he said.

    In New Orleans, Suspense but No Drama as Race Ends, NYT, 20.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/us/20elect.html?hp&ex=1148184000&en=fd59a605c9f5239f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

New Orleans' aquarium reflects tourism's woes

Updated 5/19/2006 2:59 AM ET
USA Today
By Elliot Blair Smith

NEW ORLEANS — The penguins survived.

The sharks did not.

For almost nine months, the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas has been closed to the public after Hurricane Katrina swept through this storm-tossed city in August.

The aquarium is New Orleans' crown jewel of visitor attractions along the Mississippi River, where the central business district eases into the French Quarter. It is Louisiana's most popular destination, hosting 730,042 visitors last year, more people than attend Mardi Gras.

But the late-August sun converted the aquarium's glass-canopied interior into a 140-degree tropical inferno. Storm-related power outages starved its giant fish tanks of oxygen.

Days after the storm, rescuers found the aquarium's macaws, parrots, penguins and sea otters panting in stifling heat. Its silver tarpon fish survived by gulping air from the surface of the 132,000-gallon Caribbean Reef tank. But most of its aquatic life, including the sharks, perished. Among the survivors: Spots, the white alligator; King Mydas, the giant green sea turtle; and Patience, the 27-year-old matriarch of a colony of African black-footed penguins.

Today, the non-profit Audubon Nature Institute, which operates the city zoo and aquarium, is under immense financial pressure. The challenges it faces are symptomatic of struggles throughout the state's $9.9 billion hospitality industry, nowhere more than in New Orleans, which historically counted on visitors for $5.5 billion in annual revenue and 85,000 jobs. Tourism is New Orleans' biggest business and the state's second-largest after oil and gas. It generates $600 million a year in state and local taxes.

Angle Davis, Louisiana's secretary of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, estimates the hurricane cost Louisiana $2 billion in visitor spending. Davis says the damage does not end there. In a survey of key visitor markets, her department found that 34% of prospective visitors are less interested in visiting the state than before Katrina; 62% believe the state is less scenic; and only one in five leisure travelers were willing to schedule a trip during hurricane season, which begins June 1.

In uptown New Orleans, where National Guard troops camped after the hurricane, the Audubon Zoo reopened at Thanksgiving. But it loses money, including $3.9 million last year. The aquarium and its Entergy Imax theater downtown typically turn enough profit — $4.9 million in 2005 — to support the city's animal exhibits and its nature center in the eastern part of the city, which was destroyed.

Now, Audubon management must restock aquarium exhibits, rehire staff — after laying off 82% of its 267 workers Oct. 1 — and support debt service on $42 million in general-obligation bonds held by Wall Street investors without the benefit of a single paying customer. It also is hastening to finish $3.5 million in storm-related repairs.

A happy ending?

There might be a happy ending to this story yet. Children's voices are rising again in the French Quarter at a Catholic school whose students visit the aquarium each year.

Before Easter, they raised $600 in a coin-collection drive for the aquarium. Children, parents and teachers around the USA collected thousands of dollars more through bake sales, car washes and concerts. And several leading aquariums contributed their own gifts, including new sharks, stingrays and a school of blue runner.

What's more, penguins do fly. Next week, the Aquarium of the Americas' 19 penguins and two sea otters — rescued days after the storm, hungry and hot, and evacuated to California's Monterey Bay Aquarium for safekeeping — are arriving home on a specially equipped jet, courtesy of FedEx.

The New Orleans aquarium is scheduled to reopen May 26 amid signs that tourists and conventioneers are ready again to look to this city as a destination rather than as a point of escape.

Mardi Gras festivities in February and the Jazz Fest in April surpassed organizers' expectations though not past years' results. In June, the city convention center will host the first major conference since the storm. In September, the Superdome returns to action, hosting an ESPN Monday Night Football game.

"Visitors will come back to New Orleans," says Stephen Perry, chief executive of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. "The real question is, what will be the pace at which people return?" It is a big question. The answer will make all the difference to the local hospitality industry's ability to survive, and lead the state's recovery from Katrina.

The governor-appointed Louisiana Recovery Authority, which is marshalling state comeback efforts, plans to spend about 10% of an expected $332 million in federal economic aid to promote tourism.

Past tourism campaigns returned $16 for each $1 spent, says Davis, the state tourism secretary. The state also is spending about $7 million on a print and TV advertising campaign it calls "Fall in Love with Louisiana All Over Again," featuring endorsements by such celebrities as John Goodman, Wynton Marsalis and Allen Toussaint.

After the storm

New Orleans' central business district looks much as it did before the storm. Banks, brokerages, restaurants and stores bustle during the day. Night life in the French Quarter burns almost till dawn. But Katrina's scars are everywhere:

•Only 41% of New Orleans' world-renowned restaurants are open, according to Tom Weatherly, a spokesman for the Louisiana Restaurant Association.

"It is mostly the independent restaurateurs that have been able to get up and running, and basically the ones that had to. This is their only market," Weatherly says.

•The convention bureau expects to host one-third the number of major shows and only half its normal number of attendees this year, says Fitch Ratings public finance analyst Steve Murray.

•With up to three-quarters of the Big Easy's rooms available, hotel occupancy rates rose as high as 80% in the winter. But government contractors who filled those rooms are getting ready to leave, meaning occupancy rates will fall again.

Historically, business travelers represented only 10% of the city's hospitality business. Since Katrina, they have constituted 90% of the visitor market, according to visitors bureau CEO Perry.

•And though Mardi Gras was hailed widely as a triumph for a city that so recently confronted tragedy, this year's crowds were two-thirds of pre-Katrina levels, reducing direct visitor spending by one-half to $200 million. Many hotels and restaurants have trouble even finding workers.

Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, La., an hour's drive west of New Orleans, was on pace to host a record 250,000 visitors last year but ended up with 181,000, says proprietor Zeb Mayhew Jr. Attendance at the plantation this year is one-quarter of pre-storm levels. "It is definitely survival mode," he says.

Mayhew believes New Orleans is in better shape than most visitors perceive and that the tourism industry is rebounding "slower than it needs to." Says Mayhew: "On the one hand, you can't paint a rosy picture because you really do have problems. On the other, the part of the city that tourists would come to is fine, and something they can enjoy. ... Somehow there's got to be a separation of those two realities."

The reopened aquarium will bring back some of the tourists necessary to support what Perry calls "the working middle-class of New Orleans: the chefs in the restaurants, the doormen at hotels, the jazz musicians, really the entirety of the cultural economy."

But it will be a more embattled aquarium than before. One of the Audubon Nature Institute's chief concerns is how to pay its investor debt, which Fitch Ratings has downgraded to non-investment-grade junk status. A default on its bonds, which the state-chartered New Orleans Board of Liquidation issued on the city's behalf, would badly impair the ability of the city and state to borrow on Wall Street.

Dale Stastny, the institute's chief operating officer, says the aquarium has about $2 million in cash and a $25 million endowment, which it doesn't want to touch, to meet its immediate obligations. It also will receive a share of city property tax receipts, though this year's tax bills haven't been issued.

"All we need before October is a little less than 20% of the normal (property tax) collections to come in, and we'll have enough to cover debt service," Stastny says. He says the aquarium probably will have to restructure its debt to rebuild its cash cushion and make up for what is expected to be a large, ongoing deficit in city tax receipts.

That's where the children are pitching in. In the Vieux Carré, or French Quarter, the Cathedral Academy — which has educated children since 1718 — was the city's first school to reopen, on Oct. 17.

Sister Mary Rose Bingham, the principal, says she did not know how many children to expect. But the school's registered rolls doubled the pre-storm total to 237 students, swelled by the children of law enforcement workers temporarily living aboard a cruise ship on the Mississippi River. At last count, students from 28 schools across the metropolitan area were enrolled at the academy.

Each day, Bingham and the children walk around the French Quarter. She says she has watched the city struggle to regain its footing.

"The adults that live here who are running small businesses and large businesses really need tourists to come back," Bingham says. "I tell my friends and family: If you want to donate, get on a plane and come down to New Orleans and spend money. Because then you're helping not only this school but the hotels, the restaurants and all the tourist attractions."

To aid the aquarium, the school's students from kindergartners to eighth-graders began to bring in coins they collected in jars and plastic bags. Some children donated their money for snacks.

It swiftly added up.

"Everyone can do something, and that's what I wanted our children to know. Even though you might not have a home, or anything, we all can do something," Bingham says. "We were hoping that perhaps some others would hear about what these children had done, and maybe they would help."

Help from kids across USA

Across the USA, children were helping, according to aquarium spokeswoman Melissa Lee:

•In Kansas, Wichita High School East and Robinson Middle School held a concert, raffle and silent auction that raised $5,000 for the aquarium and zoo.

•In Plano, Texas, the parents of 12-year-old Nick Epstein, a penguin lover who died of a stroke, directed gifts to the Dallas World Aquarium, which forwarded the money to New Orleans. Total: $1,753.

•In Culver City, Calif., the second-grade class at Willows Community School created hand-drawn note cards that they sold as gifts, raising $1,600.

•In Montgomery, Ala., 6-year-old twins Wylie and Spangler Edwards had their friends donate to help New Orleans animals and fish life rather than buy them birthday presents. Total donated: $805.

•In Trumbull, Conn., third-graders at the Nichols United Methodist Church school raised $410 with a bake sale and lemonade stand.

And in New Orleans, a dozen young mothers whose children play together donated $400. Leila Garnard, one of the mothers, says, "It just broke my heart" to know that her daughter Whitney "though she's 1 year old — and doesn't know the aquarium or the zoo — she might never get to know it."

With the return to New Orleans of Patience and the aquarium's other temporarily displaced exhibits, the city is getting back a part of its life, as it did when the first children returned in October. Bingham says, "Even old men would come up to us on the sidewalk and say, 'Thank you for bringing the children back. It's been so quiet without them.' "

The penguins add their own waddle and feistiness.

Christina Slager, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's curator, who formerly worked in New Orleans and has known Patience for nearly 20 years, says, "They recognize human beings. They recognize individuals. And they form opinions. They like some of their caregivers. They don't like others so much. I'm sure they will remember the people they are returning to in New Orleans. It will be a nice homecoming."

    New Orleans' aquarium reflects tourism's woes, UT, 19.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-05-18-aquarium-usat_x.htm

 

Politics Stalls Plan to Bolster Flood Insurance        NYT        15.5.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/us/15flood.html?hp&ex=
1147752000&en=642a0e94055e1126&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Politics Stalls Plan to Bolster Flood Insurance

May 15, 2006
The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JOSEPH B. TREASTER

If ever there was a moment for the obscure federal flood insurance program to ride to the rescue, it would seem to have been in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Its premiums were supposed to insure homeowners in flood-prone areas and also protect taxpayers from spending billions to bail out flood victims. But with Hurricane Katrina, the program failed on both counts.

Nearly half the victims did not even have flood insurance. Claims from homeowners who were insured, $25 billion worth, bankrupted the program. And the government has had to commit $15 billion in additional taxpayer money for rebuilding in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Now, an effort to rescue the insurance program that grew in Hurricane Katrina's wake is faltering, too. Though experts foresee a generation of fiercer and more frequent storms, Congress seems unlikely to make more than modest changes when it takes up the program in the coming weeks.

The drive to restructure the perennially underfinanced program has been blocked by real estate interests, who worry that requiring millions more people to buy flood insurance would stifle development, and by lawmakers from areas that rarely flood who see their constituents as supporting those who are frequently flooded, particularly in the South.

"You've got people living in dry areas paying for people who want to keep living in wet ones," said Representative Can