White House announces levee reconstruction plan

The White House announced Thursday that it would devote $3.1 billion over the next two years for the reconstruction of key levees in New Orleans to prevent flooding from future hurricanes.

At a briefing for reporters, officials said $1.6 billion will go toward an immediate shoring up of damaged levees -- including corrections to earlier construction flaws that caused the collapse of barriers struck by Hurricane Katrina storm surges. Scheduled for completion by June 1, those repairs also will restore the levees to their proper height.

In addition, President Bush will ask Congress for another $1.5 billion to reinforce the main levees with concrete and stone, close three internal canals that overflowed and flooded large sections of the city, as well as install a new state-of-the-art pumping system to help rid the city of high waters that might get into lower city precincts.

This second phase of the project will take two years to complete, officials said. Of the total, about $250 million will be directed to restore coastal wetlands. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin welcomed the administration's new commitment and urged residents, scattered to other places, to return to the city.

Nagin's comments came as a Senate panel released transcripts indicating that federal engineers trying to stop the New Orleans flooding were unsure who was in charge of fixing the levees amid the confusion of Katrina.

In a Nov. 15 interview with investigators for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Army Corps of Engineers Col. Richard Wagenaar recounted an instance after Katrina hit when federal workers attempted to fill in the breached London Avenue canal and were told to stop, the Associated Press reported.

That led to a discussion of "who is in charge?" Wagenaar said. "I mean, where's the parish president? Where is the mayor? And then the state, well they work for DOTD," Wagenaar said in the interview, referring to the Louisiana's Department of Transportation and Development, while adding: "At some point, you know, you've got to make some stuff happen. Because this was a bad situation."

At a hearing held by the committee Thursday, lawmakers suggested that officials at all levels of government -- federal, state, and local -- should share in some blame. "All of you didn't do the job that you were supposed to be doing," declared Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio.

In other developments related to the aftermath of Katrina, the Congressional Black Caucus said Thursday that FEMA guaranteed it would not displace hurricane evacuees from hotel rooms or temporary housing units in February as planned. After a meeting with FEMA Acting Director David Paulison, Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C., the CBC chairman, said members discussed the "growing sense of urgency" among evacuees about shifting housing deadlines.

The program was set to end this month, but was extended until Jan. 7, then Feb. 7 for those working with FEMA to receive housing assistance. "There is a lot of frustration, and this meeting was a result of that growing frustration," Watt said during a morning press conference.

Paulison acknowledged that "perhaps we're not communicating as well as we should be" with evacuees about housing. He said FEMA representatives will go door-to-door to hotel rooms and temporary housing units to talk to people to ensure they are registered with the agency to receive aid.

Also addressing the housing issue, the House Financial Services Committee approved a bill, sponsored by Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., establishing the Louisiana Recovery Corp. to redevelop areas of the state devastated by Katrina. The measure, which cleared the committee on 50-9 vote, would allocate $17 billion in funds already appropriated for disaster relief to Community Development Block Grants, housing vouchers and grants for low-income homeowners.

Nine GOP members, including Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas voted against the measure, saying it did not have enough provisions to ensure the funds would not be mismanaged or misused.

"I don't want a human tragedy of this generation to become a fiscal tragedy of the next," Hensarling said in introducing an amendment, later withdrawn, that would have shortened the 10-year sunset on the corporation's authorization to five years.

Staci Zavattaro contributed to this report.