Louisiana’s Senators Mary Landrieu (D) and David Vitter (R) have proposed legislation to provide about $250 billion in federal aid to help their state rebuild from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The Mississippi Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal aims for no less than an “economic renaissance for coastal Mississippi,” says its chairman Jim Barksdale, a former president and C.E.O. of Netscape.
At press time in mid-September, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) had drained nearly 90 percent of the brackish, oily, bacteria-laden floodwaters that have inundated low-lying areas of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.