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Slow coast repairs rile Mississippi

OXFORD, Miss. — It was billed as a conference on the future of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. But with the recovery from Hurricane Katrina moving at a snail's pace, it was also a time for troubling questions about when — or even if — that future will come.

"I wonder if we are living under an the illusion that we are ever going to be able to return to the coast. And I've lived there all my life," said Mary Anderson Pickard, daughter of famed coastal artist Walter Anderson, who lost her Ocean Springs home and pottery studio in the storm.

Trial lawyer Richard Scruggs questioned whether the state has either "the political strength or the will" to capture federal dollars for the recovery effort.

Those words had a special weight because, in addition to representing Katrina victims who were denied flood insurance, Scruggs is the brother-in-law of U.S. Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

President Bush's pledge to pour billions of dollars into a coastal recovery effort were "like the weapons of mass destruction: a figment of his imagination," Scruggs said after a panel discussion Friday.

Scruggs' frustration is being echoed in Washington by the state's Republican U.S. senators.

Sen. Thad Cochran has introduced legislation to double the amount requested by President Bush for rebuilding roads and military bases in Mississippi and Louisiana. Lott complained Friday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency hasn't provided enough trailers to house those still homeless from the hurricane.

"Winter is coming to Mississippi, and too many people are still living in tents or carports," Lott told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.

The tone of the two-day conference, coordinated by the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture, was notably more bleak than the visionary optimism expressed last month in a Biloxi conference sponsored by the Congress for the New Urbanism to explore rebuilding strategies.

Reflecting the more pessimistic mood, perhaps the most widely repeated observation at this gathering was that the devastated coast still looks the way it did only days after Katrina struck Aug. 29.

"It brings you to tears to see the conditions under which, even after three months, people are still living," said former Gov. William Winter, who serves on Gov. Haley Barbour's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal.

Several speakers voiced the fear that with the passage of time, media attention is shifting away from the plight of the coast. Malcolm White, executive director of the Mississippi Arts Commission, said the intense focus on problems in New Orleans has also made it hard to call attention to Mississippi's problems.

"The media has become fixated and fascinated with the city that has fixated and fascinated many of us," White said.

Another fear is that the rebuilt coast will become a strip of upscale developments and casinos, unlike the diverse communities that once thrived in the area.

"I don't know but I've been told there are already people who are putting together large assemblages of land," said Tom Howorth, an Oxford architect.

Without the capital to rebuild, Howorth said, lower-income residents could be squeezed out.

Winter said the region is about to receive "one of the most incredible injections of private capital that we've ever see," but voiced similar concerns that the rebuilding effort won't serve those who already live there.

"That's one of the roles of this commission I'm serving on is to try to ensure that when we sweep aside all the debris of this hurricane that we don't sweep aside the remnants of the old culture there," Winter said.

Tom Baxter writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: tbaxter@ajc.com