Appropriations

Details on the Omnibus Appropriations Bill with $142M Specifically for La.

The omnibus appropriations bill contains key funding for Louisiana that will help us recover from the 2005 hurricanes and boost our economy by fueling infrastructure projects all over the state.

The bill now must return to the House of Representatives for final consideration before being sent to President Bush's desk.

Something Positive (for a change)

Katrina wrought so much destruction and pain. But there are some things related to the storm's aftermath which may have a positive affect on the area and hopefully more wide spread areas in the near future.

One such project is the grassroots efforts started by an non profit organization in the Slidell area called Bio Liberty .

The brainchild of US Vet Gordon Soderberg of Slidell, Bio Liberty aims to help rebuild the Gulf Coast.....and use recycled materials and renewable energy techniques through the following aims:

1. Market the use of bio diesel that we use in our vehicles and equipment.
2. Market our lot clearing and tilt wall construction services.
3. To demonstrate a sustainable business model
4. Provide jobs for Veterans of the US Military.

Located in the heart of the Bayou Liberty area in Slidell on the same land used by hundreds of volunteers from the Bayou Liberty Relief Organization , Bio Liberty has already manufactured 500 gallons of "Gator Grease ®". It's used in their tractor, bobcat, stump grinder, trucks, a media buse, and a Volkswagon TDI. Gator Grease powers the equipment used to run the machines that perform lot cleaning services in Slidell and New Orleans. All drivers and operators have reported increased fuel economy, horsepower, and engine response using the Gator Grease. To date, Bio Liberty has cleared 50-60 lots in the Lower 9th Ward.

Gator Grease is made from used cooking oil from Slidell restaurants Southside Cafe , Vera's Restuarant and the Red Fish Trading Company.

Here's a link to a video that tells the whole story of Bio Liberty. It gives one a good feeling to know there are people out there who are actively pursuing to make this area come back better.

FEMA Trailer Testing to begin

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will begin testing Dec. 21 for formaldehyde in a sampling of trailers FEMA provided for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, FEMA and the CDC announced today.

The testing is scheduled to take 35 days, when results will be shared with residents. A final report will be made public in mid-May, the agencies said.

Dr. Henry Falk, director of CDC's Coordinating Center for Environmental Health and Injury Prevention, said 500 trailers will be tested. He said that number was chosen because it allows a representative sample of 11 types of trailers by different manufacturers. Scientists, accompanied by FEMA officials, will go to trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi proportional to the number of occupied trailers in each state.

There are about 46,000 families in FEMA travel trailers and mobile homes across the Gulf Coast.


It's about freaking time, y'all.

August '06 from The homeland stupidity website
In Mississippi alone, FEMA has received 46 complaints from people who say they have been affected by symptoms of formaldehyde exposure, including eye, nose, and throat irritation, nausea and breathing difficulties. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, formaldehyde has been found to cause cancer in rats and may cause cancer in humans.

The Sierra Club conducted tests of 31 FEMA travel trailers and found that 29 of them had unsafe levels of formaldehyde, according to a report (PDF) published on the group’s Web site.


A tragic story about the affect of this toxic substance's tragic affects were detailed in a Gambit story in July.

Indeed, the story of toxic levels of formaldehyde in the 120,000 trailers that FEMA supplied to Katrina and Rita evacuees -- and the agency's cover-up of the crisis -- is still unfolding. At a minimum, more than 5,000 internal emails, many made public on July 19 by the House Committee on Oversight and Government, reveal what committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) calls "an official policy of premeditated ignorance."

CBS news received an envelope stuffed with documents from the FEMA.
What they found was quite interesting:
a standard part of the job description package for most federal jobs..... entitled "FEMA Job Hazard Analysis" and lists, in helpful chart form, the activities involved in the position. The position is Logistics Material Specialist, Trailer In-Bound Inspection (the guy or gal who inspects a brand-new trailer before it is sent off to a needy family in the Gulf).

Under the "Physical Hazard" for those entering a new trailer it says, "Formaldehyde off gassing..."

The potential injury: Cancer.



From Ellathebella over at reelrelief dot com
I spent the weekend working in Hancock County. While researching air quality issues, with the help of two stalwart volunteers, I spent about sixteen hours over two days in FEMA trailers, a FEMA mobile home, a newly constructed home and a MEMA cottage. Before the second day of work was over, we were all suffering from nausea, headaches, bloodshot, puffy eyes and wheezing in our lungs. Having left that environment, we are all feeling better. We had the option to leave for more healthful housing, thanks to the generous folks at St. Rose Outreach and Recovery and D'Iberville Volunteers Foundation. Even if money were not an issue, which it is, there are not enough buildings for everyone on the Gulf Coast to leave the trailers.

If we felt that sick after two days, how must it feel to live in that environment day after day after day?

It has been 27 months since Katrina hit. I would challenge anyone on Capitol Hill to spend 27 days, let alone 27 months, living in this uncertain, unhealthful environment and say that enough money has been spent on Gulf Coast recovery.

FEMA, acting "responsibly" issued this press release in July of 2007


From the Sea Coast Echo website

A Bay St. Louis resident who worked in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency following Hurricane Katrina alleges the embattled agency knew of potentially dangerous levels of formaldehyde in trailers in December 2005 and the death of a Diamondhead newborn may be connected.
A congressional hearing held last month have resulted in changes to many of FEMA's procedures, including distributing formaldehyde information, revising guidelines of swapping trailers to temporally halting sales and deployment of travel trailers.

From Food Music Justice dot com
Quotes from a 7/20/07 New York Times article about formaldehyde-laden FEMA trailers provided to evacuees :

“We were not formaldehyde experts.”
- R. David Paulison. FEMA Adminstrator.

“Do not initiate any testing until we give the O.K. Once you get results the clock starts running on our duty to respond to them.”
- Unnamed FEMA lawyer sent this e-mail in response to concerns expressed by field staff about toxic levels of formaldehyde reported in FEMA trailers.


How do these bastards sleep at night?

Scuzzbucket of the week

I was reading the article at nola dot com about the two bodies which were discovered a few miles apart on Interstate 12 in western St. Tammany Parish. The victims were of Hispanic descent. After reading the article, I stumbled into the 'comments' section where this einstein posted


I find it interesting how things have changed since the large influx of non-locals to St. Tammany. You may call me a racist or a bigot, but it is a FACT of life in our society that these people are bringing violence and crime to our area. It is crimes like these that I thought only occured in the East (New York/New Jersey) and West (California/Arizona) of our nation. It is a shame that we cannot preserve our community and heritage since Katrina. There are so many out here that complain about who we were and how we need to keep South Louisiana as she was, but there is little action. We really need to get out act together, stop arguing over who lives where and just make sure that our community does not implode before we have time to rebuild.

What a pinhead idiot this person is.

Happy Story (for a change)

December sucks. Too many things to do, so little time. While looking around for something to smile about in the midst of so much bad news, I came across this at the Katrina film dot com website




Thanks to Charles London for this ray of sunshine for today.

Why I love New Orleans

One of a thousand reasons.

Cliff on Brad

Cliff's take on what Brad Pitt is doing down in the 9th Ward


While “black leaders” all over the country sit by their television and wait for the next Don Imus or Jena Six to jump off.

Guess who’s down here on the ground actually helping poor black people rebuild their homes?

Baghdad on the Bayou - Part II

Excerpts from part two of an interview with Tab Benoit about Louisiana Wetlands.

I posted about part one last week

“Right after the hurricane, they were digging new canals. I saw, I was out there in my boat. Here the world just saw us flood because of this [Katrina], and we did get introduced to the fact that the wetlands are our real protection, and here oil companies are right in here instantly digging again. It’s wide open. It’s a gold rush down here. This town [Houma] is, probably after Katrina, another 30 or 40 thousand people. This town was 80,000 before Katrina, and now it’s way beyond. All of that is oil. That’s the only real industry out here.

“But then again my family will gladly move out of here. They don’t have any ties here, not like me. I love this place. I understand the importance of Louisiana, for the United States to survive, for the globe to survive. You hear all about this global warming, and you look at all the stuff that supposedly causes it, and the stuff that could be fixing it. Everybody knows that the delta of a river, that those lush forests of swamps and trees are like natural filters, and oxygen makers. And we just killed a huge amount of it. We killed the third largest river on the planet’s delta. We killed one of our big atmosphere scrubbers. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that maybe we should pay more attention to the delta of the Mississippi river.”

“As soon as I started being a professional musician I felt this is the right place. Just keep going. It’s led me to everything that I’ve done. Like talking to you right now. Little did I know that my area would need the most help out of any area in this entire country. But there you go. There’s gotta be a reason why I’m here, why I know what I know, why I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and everything that I did before was a huge part of getting me involved in wetlands restoration. I saw it from the air, day to day, I would come in and talk about it and people would think that’s never going to happen in my lifetime. Every day I’m watching stuff wash away. Yes, this is going to happen in our lifetime. Learning it from the air, watching it from a bird’s eye view, it’s so much easier to see. All your questions are answered in a matter of minutes.”

December

an interesting post comparing
December activities in New Orleans versus Wisconson.

Yeah, you right.

The East

New Orleans East clinic closing.


Opened 18 months after the storm, a New Orleans East Clinic, operated by
Operation Blessing International .
must close in less than a month.

From the above link
Operation Blessing, the charity that launched the clinic after Katrina and raised thousands of dollars to support its operations, has exhausted the stash of private donations that came pouring in after the storm.
The closing threatened to strand thousands of uninsured patients in eastern New Orleans without health care in their neighborhood, but the city Health Department - aware for some time that the clinic would close - has made provisions to turn an obstetrics clinic on Read Boulevard into a full-service primary care office by January.

A lot of blame has been pointed at the federal government since Katrina, and rightly so. But the above statement makes it clear that
Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin has not been on the job since his re-election; a victory fueled by the diaspora of Katrina victims not living in the city.
Ray Nagin…..here's a guy who can't remember if he
voted in the last three elections. The voting records show he didn't, but he claims he did. Whom would YOU believe?

New Orleans East has long been the "bastard step child" of the Big Easy.
I work in the industrial section in The East, and the main thoroughfare - Old Gentilly Road - has been in dire need repairs since long before the storm.
The New Orleans city government has been contacted numerous times regarding the road repairs and chooses to ignore them.

Heartfelt thanks goes out to Operation Blessing and all who've donated to them. You can be assured that your money has been put to the
best use. Let's hope that the city of New Orleans steps up to the plate and opens that long closed hospital in timely fashion to help the people
in The East.

Post Katrina Mental Health

Man jumps from highrise.

A little over 27 months post Katrina. People still living in those formaldehyde ridden trailers while FEMA - in typical fashion - drags its feet.

Fifty thousand Kids are still suffering all across the Gulf Coast due to the storm.

The mayor of New Orleans is suffering a mental breakdown in public.

People are still fighting the damn insurance bastards

The holiday season brings depression for a lot of people. This, the third holiday season since the storm feels like it's not going to be any better than the last two.

Thanks, Katrina