McKinney: slow federal debris removal after Katrina "sinful"

<p>It is "absolutely and utterly sinful" that federal hurricane clean-up contracts have gotten so little done in 4 1/2 months, said a member of the U.S. House panel set up to investigate the government's response to Hurricane Katrina.</p><p>Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., spoke after she and other members of the committee toured devastated areas of New Orleans Thursday and the other two parishes worst hit by the storm _ St. Bernard and Plaquemines.</p><p>"Tremendous amounts of money are being spent, but they are not reaching" people who need it, she said.</p><p>Two members of Louisiana's House delegation and four from out of state _ including Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss. _ spent the day walking through neighborhoods where levees broke in New Orleans, then taking a bus tour of St. Bernard Parish and a helicopter flight over that parish and Plaquemines Parishes.</p><p>"Debris removal is way behind what I would expect from us as a government," Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., said. The committee will investigate why, he added.</p><p>Floods covered 80 percent of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29. Sixty percent of the homes in Plaquemines Parish were destroyed by floodwaters, and St. Bernard Parish was utterly inundated by roof-high floods.</p><p>Davis and other members said they were struck by the difference between areas of Plaquemines Parish where the parish hired contractors on its own and those where Federal Emergency Management Agency crews were at work.</p><p>"The locals have done a better job, they have done a faster job, and, we think, with less money," Davis said.</p><p>Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., said this is his third visit to Louisiana and Mississippi since Katrina, which was followed three weeks later by Hurricane Rita in the other half of south Louisiana.</p><p>He said FEMA's response in Louisiana is important to people in his state because Pennsylvania also has disasters _ he mentioned the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island and the flood of 1974. "It is extremely important to us in Pennsylvania to understand what to correct," he said.</p>

http://accesswdun.com/article/2006/1/131539