Where have they been? Oh wait - they've been falling all over themselves for covering the media kerfuffle in New Orleans. It's been the bloggers in many of those areas who have been pushing stories out about how devastating the storm was when Rita came ashore. It was the same story with Hurricane Katrina. Everyone in the mainstream media focused on New Orleans, when the heaviest storm damage was in Mississippi where the storm surge basically wiped away anything and everything within a mile or two of the seashore.
More areas of New Orleans are being opened and Mayor Nagin is pressing for an aggressive reopening schedule. Too bad that the city still doesn't have a safe water supply and electricity is still not available in parts of the city. Yet, Louisiana wants the feds to kick in $250 billion to rebuild.
Here are locations in Mississippi where you can get state disaster food stamp assistance. After a rocky start, charitable groups are doing a better job of working together in Waveland, thought this is a story that repeats itself up and down the Gulf Coast. More views of Waveland.
Meanwhile, Mississippi's legislature move to permit on-shore casino operations cleared an important hurdle.
Today is the fourth day of a special session Gov. Haley Barbour called to handle issues designed help the coast start recovering from one of the most destructive storms in the nation's history.
"We're ... somewhat working under the gun in an attempt to leave this place as quickly as we possibly can, but we're not going to do it in a slipshod manner," Moak said. "And so we're going to revisit (the bill) if necessary."
The bill could come up for more debate in the Gaming Committee today. It also must pass a special hurricane recovery committee before it can go to the full House.
The Gaming Committee took a voice vote Thursday, so there is no record of how individuals voted. However, there was no opposition.
Casinos now sit on public tidelands and must renew their leases every five years. The Gaming Committee also passed a bill to extend the current leases to 30 years each.
Another bill that passed is designed to ensure the casinos keep paying taxes. Both measures were held for more debate.
Senators have not yet debated a casino bill.
Republican Barbour says he supports letting casinos go up to 1,500 feet on shore, or some distance short of that, as long as they still have facilities touching the water. He says he also opposes letting casinos go into counties or communities where they were not already located before Katrina.
Neither Barbour's proposal nor the House bill would affect river casinos.
The House bill would let casinos move on shore 800 feet or to the southern boundary of U.S. 90 "whichever is greater." The highway runs along the beach in Harrison County, but it's more than a mile inland in many parts of Jackson County, including in downtown Pascagoula.
The state also approved $200 million for a new bridge over Biloxi Bay between Ocean Springs and Biloxi. This new span for US 90 would replace a drawbridge span that was very heavily damaged by Katrina. Other bridging projects are also progressing.
The $4.2-million I-10 project could be finished next week, with the bridge opening to traffic in early October, he said.
Brown said the U.S. 90 project will be bid as a design-build, which means the winning company and its engineers will design and build the bridge.
The bridge will actually be two bridges.
"We expect to have one span completed in 12 to 14 months, and the other one two months later," Brown said.
Both spans are expected to be open to traffic in 2007.
UPDATE:
Photo blogging in the New Orleans region.
Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; oil production; impeach bush; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; compass; nagin; blanco; barbour.
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