Bush Sees "Better Days" For New Orleans

President Tells City "We're Still Paying Attention" On Katrina's Two-Year Anniversary

(CBS/AP) 
"People are angry and they want to send a message to politicians that they want them to do more and do it faster," said the Rev. Marshall Truehill, a Baptist pastor and community activist. "Nobody's going to be partying."

The anniversary was a reminder of the desperation that filled New Orleans' flooded neighborhoods in the days after Katrina hit. Images of dead bodies, people in the flood zones calling from their roofs and waiting days for help, and of the thousands of evacuees packed into the grimy and damaged Superdome, are still fresh in many minds.

Politicians have used the date to pitch policy. Scholars and activists have released a steady stream of reports on the state of recovery.

Along Mississippi's 70-mile shoreline, harsh economic realities also are hampering rebuilding.

Many projects are hamstrung by the soaring costs of construction and insurance, while federal funding has been slow to flow to cities. Other economic indicators are down - such as population, employment and housing supplies.

Mr. Bush's Gulf Coast rebuilding chief, Don Powell, noted the federal government has committed a total of $114 billion to the region, $96 billion of which is already disbursed or available to local governments. But most of it has been for disaster relief, not long-term recovery. He implied it is local officials' fault, particularly in Louisiana where the pace has been slower, if money has not reached citizens.

Powell also said the president intends to ask for the approximately $5 billion federal share of the $7.6 billion more needed to strengthen New Orleans' levee system to withstand a 100-year storm and improve the area's drainage system. Though the levees are not yet ready for the next massive storm, they are slated to be strengthened by 2015.

But Powell said other areas - such as infrastructure repair and home rebuilding - are shared responsibilities with local officials or entirely the purview of state and local governments, suggesting that the federal government is absolved when those things don't happen.

Locals don't appreciate the insinuations.

"The federal government still seems to place a higher priority on troop surges in Iraq than on storm surges in our part of the world," New Orleans resident Walter L. Bonam wrote in an op-ed in Wednesday's Times-Picayune.

In Gulfport, Miss., Gov. Haley Barbour urged people to see the positive. About 13,000 of his state's families are still living in FEMA trailers, but that's down from a peak of 48,000, and he expects they could all be out of the temporary housing in a year.

Biloxi, Miss., Mayor A.J. Holloway said he was grateful for how far his city had come.

"God has been good to Biloxi and its people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast," Holloway said. "We have a new outlook on life and a new appreciation for what's really important in life. It's not your car or your clothes or your possessions. It's being alive and knowing the importance of family and friends and knowing that we all have a higher power."

In New Orleans, a candlelight vigil was planned in Jackson Square at dusk Wednesday, right around the time the French Quarter last year started getting tipsy with street parties and residents choosing to remember the anniversary in their own unique way.