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What Now? A family walks past a covered body down a devastated street Saturday. Thousands are still making their way out of the city.Resurrecting New Orleans
Nation will spend tens of billions of dollars to rebuild ravaged city
Beyond the human suffering along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi lies a challenge for America that will take years and untold billions of dollars to fulfill: the reconstruction of New Orleans.
Devastation in the hurricane's path was widespread, and recovery will be costly -- dozens of towns lie in ruins. But restoring the city is a unique problem -- not only of resources, but also of national will.
Can we muster another Marshall Plan (which allocated $12 billion for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II) for America?
"Can we do it bigger and better? Sure. Do the people of the United States want New Orleans at any cost? That's not a technical question," said John E. Durrant, the managing director of the American Society of Civil Engineers in Washington.
Fixing New Orleans will be done in a series of unprecedented steps, not in kind but in scale. America has repaired flooded and hurricane-lashed cities dozens of times. But New Orleans will require, as a first step, the single most costly natural disaster cleanup in American history. This will be followed by the biggest civil engineering project in memory.
Such work will be needed to give new life to a New Orleans that sits in a natural flood plain where a city shouldn't and one which has historically owed its existence to human engineering -- but which has played such a storied role in American life that anything less than full restoration is unthinkable.
According to the best assessments of experts, the project likely will focus on defining the level of federal commitment, cleaning up waste and restoring utilities, rebuilding roads and transportation, demolishing wrecked homes and rebuilding them, and then investigating long-term improvements to the city's extensive flood control apparatus. Then, perhaps, the city's artistic life can be restored.
Here, in detail, are the challenges.
Cost to restore city is astronomical
The $10.5 billion that Congress quickly approved on Thursday and Friday for relief efforts is likely to be only a small share of the federal government commitment to the rescue and recovery effort that eventually will turn toward reconstruction.
U.S. Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Grand Rapids, who sits on the House committee with jurisdiction over emergency management, said he thinks the commitment easily could reach $50 billion to recover from a disaster that could have been avoided with an investment of about $2 billion.
"One of the most frustrating things serving on that committee that I have observed is the American public doesn't understand the need for infrastructure, and they're not willing to pay the price," said Ehlers, a member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
After officials determine what is covered by private insurance and federal flood insurance, the federal government's vast resources will come into play in the reconstruction of New Orleans, but Ehlers said he isn't sure how it will be funded.
"Do we raise taxes, or do we add it to the deficit?" he said. "That's going to be a debate in the Congress for the next several months, I'm sure. I'm not sure how you raise taxes unless you put a Katrina surcharge on everyone's tax bill for next year."
Ehlers said Americans are proving generous with financial contributions and volunteer time, but he thinks they would be upset about paying taxes to fix a problem that could have been prevented with better planning.
George Haddow, former deputy chief of staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said that in the past, the resources of 28 agencies along with the Red Cross have been brought to the table to contribute to communities' long-term recovery plan.
FEMA has two assistance programs. In previous disasters, where inspectors could examine the destruction immediately, individuals sometimes got checks from the government within seven days to help them rebuild their homes.
With the other program, which gives public assistance to rebuild a community's infrastructure, the money doesn't begin flowing immediately because engineering studies have to be developed, and the approval process takes longer, said Haddow, now an emergency and disaster management consultant.
One thing that's clear from previous disasters is that there will be a federal presence in New Orleans for more than a decade.
The Department of Transportation will help rebuild roads and bridges, and the Department of Health and Human Services likely will help rebuild hospitals. The Small Business Administration will be instrumental in providing loans to businesses wanting to rebuild.
Scott Adcock, public information manager for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, who had experience with last summer's Hurricane Ivan, said federal dollars paid to remove debris and reconstruct public buildings, roads, bridges and other public property.
After the September 11 attacks, the federal government provided New York with funds for debris removal, community development block grants and workers compensation and to create an emergency employment clearinghouse to help dislocated workers.
James Carafano, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the federal government will have to deal with a host of regulatory and liability issues. From an environmental standpoint, it will have to decide whether damaged sites will have to be cleaned up to standards now used for brownfields. It will have to make similar decisions about occupational health and safety standards when rebuilding.
"In terms of the physical resources the federal government brings to bear, the Corps of Engineers is going to be there a long, long time," Carafano said. "Certainly, OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration) will be engaged because of the safety issues, and cleanup will be enormous. EPA is going to be involved."
"Even more than money and the availability of money, what really slows down the reconstruction is decision-making bureaucracy and red tape," Carafano added. "Anyone can bring a court case and put a hold on the whole thing. It will depend on what Congress does to streamline procedures and cut off liability.
"You can't make a million people happy. There's going to be a lot of debates. I don't think you can minimize the role Congress is going to play in what kind of legislation they formulate to guide the reconstruction. There will be enormous pressure to do something quickly. It's all new virgin territory, and it'll be tough to craft an optional strategy."
Defense: D.J. Kelly waves the flag as members of the National Guard arrive in the city to evacuate survivors and ease chaos.
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The Detroit News.
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