BILOXI — In struggling to return to their feet after Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi and Louisiana are not in a race. Good thing, too, for Louisiana, which in almost every way trails Mississippi in crucial recovery benchmarks.Both states grant that the metrics for recovery are different. Louisiana’s biggest problem came from breached levees that flooded much of New Orleans in 8 to 10 feet of water. Mississippi’s damage is more typical for a hurricane where water rushes in and then is rapidly sucked back out, leaving tremendous destruction in its wake.
Leaders from both Mississippi and Louisiana grant the tremendous challenges facing both states. Nobody got off easy, they both agree. Both also note that Mississippi is far ahead in drawing up recovery plans and thinking about fortifying its coastline. The consensus is that, following the storm, Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss., moved faster than his counterpart to the west, Gov. Kathleen Blanco, D-La.
Barbour’s former life as a Washington mover and shaker in Republican circles surely helped in securing federal dollars. However, money gets you only so far when it comes to better planning and organization.
In Jackson, the Mississippi statehouse OK’d moving the casinos off the water, thereby eliminating the barges that held the gaming houses afloat and became battering rams once Katrina’s waves floated them across a state highway and into large buildings.
In October, a collection of hotshot urban designers produced a report detailing how Mississippi’s coast could return better than ever. When implemented, “Smart Code: Model Development Code for Mississippi Cities and Counties” would aim to eliminate the trashy sprawl that once cluttered the coastline. (“Smart Code’s” introduction describes “the long hurricane” that led to a “destructive development pattern.”)
The buzzword in Mississippi, a state not traditionally thought of as a groundbreaker, is “new urbanism,” a concept for reconnecting people to their communities by, among other things, eliminating an overreliance on automobiles. While such high-mindedness has not always had the desired outcome in other places it’s been tried, it surely beats the anything-goes development that Katrina smashed.
Towns all along the Mississippi coast are thinking seriously about these big ideas.
By comparison, Louisiana’s government and recovery commission are months behind.
But while the Magnolia State is running circles around Louisiana, that’s not to imply Mississippi faces an easy task. The state is still a mess. The businesses and homes along the coastline are mostly trashed. A state highway bridge that once connected Biloxi to points east is ripped to shreds. FEMA trailers dot the landscape. The Gulf is littered with all sorts of material that was sucked from homes and businesses along the coast. Meanwhile, bananas and formerly frozen chickens parked in the Long Beach port when Katrina hit were until recently strewn across inland.
“I saw things fly that don’t (normally) fly that day,” says Brent Warr, mayor of Gulfport.
Mississippi’s recovery plans are moving rapidly today. The casinos, an economic mainstay for the Mississippi coast, are springing back to life.
For a state traditionally thought to be a perennial loser, “the last shall be first” is becoming a truism.
— Bob Davis
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