Gulf Coast marks a difficult 6 yrs since Katrina

A manicured lawn surrounds the foundation of a destroyed home along Flood St. in New Orleans, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2011. / AP Photo

Monday marked the passage of six difficult years of rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina for devastated Gulf Coast communities. In dozens of towns along the Coast in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, residents gathered to honor the more than 1,800 people who lost their lives to the storm and the catastrophic human failure to protect against it.

In addition to the human toll, Katrina is still the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, and rebuilding from it has been challenging, to say the least.

Besides the much-talked-about red tape between rebuilding dollars and rebuilding projects, the reconstruction of Gulf Coast communities has been made challenging by the recent crash in the economy.

A flood of federal and private aid dollars after the storm gave many local government leaders in devastated towns and communities across the Coast the idea that they could and should rebuild bigger and better, but then regular municipal revenues bottomed out.

In Waveland, Miss., where the post-Katrina landscape looked like a squadron of bulldozers had rumbled through the town, city leaders recently dissolved the police department, and are considering allowing casinos in a bid to keep the budget afloat, The Sun Herald of Biloxi reports.

Just a few towns over in the also-devastated Iberville, Miss., city leaders built a large new city hall after the storm, but are now contemplating renting out the bottom floor to make ends meet, the Sun Herald reports.

In New Orleans, there has been a blossoming of optimism under new Mayor Mitch Landrieu. Although the promise of construction cranes dotting the landscape there never materialized after the storm, the city has been coming back one house, and one new small business at a time.

The symbol of that city's morass, the Lower 9th Ward, is still a sparsely populated landscape, but new houses continue to be built, largely due to private charities like the Make It Right Foundation.

Despite the hardships, many New Orleans residents are upbeat, as one Mardi Gras season rolls into the next, uninterrupted.

The levees around New Orleans, which infamously failed after Katrina and led to most of the destruction and death in lower Louisiana, are continually being worked on. That said, the Army Corps of Engineers and state officials are currently mired in a debate over whether there is enough money to complete the massive levee rebuilding project, The Times-Picayune reports.

President Barack Obama said recently the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina illustrates the need for the federal government to respond as best it possibly can to natural disasters.

Some have cited the example of New York City's hyper-vigilant response to Hurricane Irene, during which the country's largest city had no fatalities, as one of the legacies of Hurricane Katrina.

[NOitsjustme]

Tedsliver: No one had to be sheltered in stadiums for Irene, but if they had, those stadiums would be wrecks too if 40,000 people had to shelter in them for days with no electricity and running water knocked out by the hurricane. You can't compare the aftermath of Irene to Katrina. They hit different areas and populations. Irene will cost about $10-$20 billion, and last I heard killed about 40 people. Katrina cost over $110 billion and killed more than 1800. That'd be like comparing the 1906 San Francisco quake to the one on the east coast last week.

[Lifeson2112]

These people are still whining and crying for help. Mississippi got the brunt of Katrina but they aren't holding out their hand and bemoaning the injustice of it all. Did it take Florida 6 years to recover from Ivan? No. They built their stuff back and got on with their lives. New Orleans is a disgrace.

[NOitsjustme]

Katrina surge came into Mississippi then promptly rushed back out to sea. In New Orleans, the water sat in a much more densely populated area for weeks. Also, there are still many people in Mississippi who need help.