Donald E. Powell, the Bush Administration’s federal coordinator of the Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, is resigning his post.  In Washington, appointees usually say that they need “more time with family” or cite “a desire to return to the private sector.”  Powell chose the latter formulation.  It's clear from Spencer ...

We can't say nobody warned us.  That's the key to preventive journalism, and one of the reasons Understanding Government will be giving away $50,000 to the best piece of preventive journalism published in the year-long period ending on June 30, 2008.  And there's no shortage of potential topics, as Alex Prud'homme's column in the New York Times makes clear:  even after Hurricane Katrina, few journalists are looking at the threat posed by America's aging network of levees and earthen berms.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were ready to investigate possible health threats from formaldehyde in FEMA trailers given to Hurricane Katrina victims more than a year ago, according to a report by Alison Young in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  But they did not launch an investigation because, according to ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has authorized the razing of 4500 apartment units that were damaged during Hurricane Katrina, as part of a plan to build 3000 new units of subsidized housing for poor and displaced residents of New Orleans.  Some of the apartments coming down are still ...

Spencer Hsu reports in the Washington Post on the decision to bar FEMA employees entering the same kind of temporary trailers now being used by thousands of citizens in Louisiana and Mississipi.   It turns out that FEMA's position on this is entirely correct -- as long as you understand their point of view.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is at the center of a rapidly deteriorating picture in the Florida Everglades, where a $8 billion federal program  aimed at renewing this unique natural resource has stalled.

The "temporary" trailers in which more than thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims are still housed emit formaldehyde gas at levels 75 times higher than those determined safe for the American workplace.  (Note that said "workplace" -- where one assumes you and your children are not sleeping and spending half your ...

The Small Business Administration canceled 8,000 loans to hurricane victims without notice to the borrowers.  When the borrowers sought an explanation, they were told, according to Ron Nixon of the New York Times, “that they had voluntarily given up their loans,” which was not true.

Why this fiasco?...

Michael Grunwald of Time sounds the alarm for New Orleans in his special report entitled "The Threatening Storm."  Unfortunately, the city could fall prey to exactly the same destruction it faced in 2005, because the government -- through the Army Corps of Engineers -- is getting ready to do exactly ...

Adam Nossiter writes in the New York Times about New Orleans residents who are rebuilding their own homes, sometimes getting money promised by the federal government only after they've spent thousands of their own dollars.  $7.5 billion for homeowners' aid remains unallocated, meaning that some citizens are, in essence, lending ...