Award-winning reporter Eileen Lou Harrist wrote this story a year ago for The Gambit Weekly, the alternative newsweekly in New Orleans:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency shook up its way of distributing disaster preparedness money when it introduced its Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) grant program in 2002. Given the program’s criteria, Louisiana appeared to have been a shoo-in for federal dollars for 2003, the first year the program began awarding money. Instead, Louisiana got nothing.
Tom Rodrigue, flood zone manager for the Jefferson Parish Office of Emergency Management, says that office had submitted three grant applications and expected to receive some money. “One of the number one priorities for that PDM grant program is repetitive loss structures; Jefferson Parish, unfortunately, has more repetitive loss structures than any parish [or county] in the country,” he says. “We felt sure we would get some funding out of that grant program, and we didn’t.”
The PDM program largely replaced FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, an older system of awarding grant money to local governments. (That program still exists, though now it mainly distributes money only to declared disaster areas.) In a September 2002 letter to FEMA’s Office of the General Counsel, the national Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) outlined several differences between the old and the new programs, and voiced its concerns about the changes.
One of the ASFPM’s main issues was the program’s emphasis on structural flood projects: for instance, shoring up levees and dams or raising buildings located in flood plains. The association fretted that by focusing on such projects, FEMA would ignore other sound flood-prevention tactics.
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Who’s to blame? Okay, canít they see by now, the eerie blight? That so soundly they failed despite hindsight and screaming? Who’s brought strife and starts fights? Who imperils our rights and runs rampant on watch while Haliburton is scheming. And the weapons werenít there while GIs die oíer there: lacked proof on the Right, and the Leftís still no where. O say, how the Party system is a shame. While taking corporate fees, they only share blame.
#134392 | Author: Rex | Date: Sep 12 2005
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The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the MFP Solutions Lab, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.
