Robbing New Orleans to Pay for BP's Spill
Business & Economy, Louisiana/GulfCoast, Politics, Recovery
July 16th, 2010
The New Orleans house I’m sitting in at the moment is finished with meticulous detail: cypress crown molding and trim, recycled loblolly-pine posts, Art-Deco Oriental rugs. To my left, there’s a bathroom with wood wainscoting and a refinished 100-year-old claw-foot bathtub on a decorative-tile-lined platform. Almost exactly five years ago, all of this was submerged by toxic floodwaters. Its restoration was made possible by two years of sweat, occasional tears, and a Road Home grant from the Louisiana Recovery Authority.
Now a supplemental appropriations bill that passed the House earlier this month would take $400 million from post-Katrina recovery programs like Road Home in order to fund other projects, including $304 million for Deepwater Horizon-related remediation and investigation. To some Louisiana residents, using any taxpayer money, much less hurricane-relief money, to clean up BP’s oil just adds insult to injury. “Any provisions related to the spill should be paid for by the responsible party,” says Monika Gerhart, director of policy and government relations for the Equity and Inclusion Campaign, a nonpartisan advocacy organization. “We’re not yet recovered. So don’t take our housing money.”
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by Mac McClelland Mother Jones
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