The LRA sought competitive proposals from throughout the state with only $19 million available for an industry that suffered $500 million in infrastructure losses. To judge the programme the authority has invited fisheries experts from outside Louisiana. There are people who criticized the projects as creating subsidized competition against business owners who rebuilt on their own.
The main issue that start all the controversy is the challenges in sending recovery money to an unconventional industry made up of fiercely independent businesses. Rocky Ditcharo, who spent $900,000 rebuilding D. Ditcharo Seafood in Buras in the months after Katrina, said that if they wanted to boost infrastructure, they should have helped us with some zero-interest loans from the beginning.
It is said that Ditcharo’s seafood dock and ice-selling operation could be affected by one of the projects receiving money, a $1.1 million grant for four parish-operated ice houses, including one next door to him. The interested parties were required to have either a government agency or a nonprofit group sign on in support of their project.
Pat Forbes of the Office of Community Development, told that almost all the infrastructure was owned by private, for-profit, and the vast majority of it didn’t get rebuilt. He added that they want to make sure that all that stuff can be built back by FEMA if it gets whacked in the future.
