Recovery czar retired Marine

• By STEVEN WARD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: May 8, 2008 - Page: 14A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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The new federal hurricane-recovery czar said President Bush challenged him to complete as much rebuilding as possible on the Gulf Coast between now and January of next year, when a new administration takes office.

“I’m a muddy-boots Marine and I want to get the job done,” Douglas O’Dell, a retired U.S. Marine Corps major general, said Wednesday.

“Long term, we have $120 billion to rebuild the Gulf Coast and a significant portion of that has gone to Louisiana,” he said.

About $7 billion of those funds will be used to strengthen hurricane protection in New Orleans, he said.

A former New Orleans resident, O’Dell was appointed 2‰ weeks ago to the big job with the long title: coordinator of federal support for the recovery and rebuilding of the Gulf Coast.

O’Dell — in Baton Rouge Wednesday to meet with Gov. Bobby Jindal and other state officials and slated to meet today with Mississippi Gulf Coast officials — replaces former federal hurricane-recovery czar Donald Powell, who resigned in March after 28 months on the job.

O’Dell said Bush asked him to concentrate on five areas of recovery: levee and flood protection; law enforcement and criminal justice; health care; education; and housing.

“Part of my role is to be an advocate for long-term goals but also to facilitate short-term action,” O’Dell said.

“It’s not moving fast enough for me or the president. It’s unsatisfactory,” he said of the pace of recovery in New Orleans. “But that’s the reason why I’m here.”

O’Dell also told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he also is concerned about the large number of errors in the grants to homeowners through the state’s Road Home program.

The $10 billion program, funded mainly with federal aid, awards grants of up to $150,000 to homeowners with severe damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

“I’m not going to be satisfied if we continue to experience gross errors in calculations resulting in overpayments that, in a sense, revictimizes the victims of Katrina,” O’Dell said.

The Louisiana Recovery Authority is working with ICF International Inc., of Virginia, on a plan to collect the overpayments.