US: Stephen Braun, Ann Simmons and Richard Fausset report from Louisiana on the first anniversary of the devastation
From the ghostly streets of abandoned neighbourhoods in New Orleans to Mississippi's downtrodden coastline, the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's onslaught is arriving with emerging signs of federal money at work.
This is marked by the rented trailers parked in driveways of flood-ravaged homesteads, teams of army engineers overseeing levee repairs and beaches swept clean of debris.
But the federal government has spent less than half the rebuilding funds that it amassed for Katrina recovery, a pace that has raised sharp questions about the Bush administration's stewardship of the Gulf Coast's reconstruction and has provoked a chorus of complaints about excessive delays and government sluggishness.
Despite four emergency spending Bills passed by Congress to provide more than $110 billion (€86.26 billion) in aid, federal agencies have spent only $44 billion. Even as President Bush insisted last week that "$110 billion is a strong commitment", he conceded that the recovery effort was plagued with "bureaucratic hurdles".
The scale of the catastrophe continues to overwhelm the government's capacity to respond. Aid agencies are only now contending with the long-term needs of hundreds of thousands of evacuees and with the landscape of shattered houses and public infrastructure that will take years to restore.
Many homeowners and business owners have waited impatiently for promised grants and loans as federal and state officials have spent months bickering over how much and where to spend aid - and officials remain at odds over who bears the blame.
Last week, federal recovery director Donald E Powell attributed the pace of aid payments to the "balance in attention between getting the money out fast and getting the money out responsibly fast".
But after a year of fielding constituents' pleas for help, US senator Mary L Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana, said: "We're seeing the same thing going on with the recovery as we did with the immediate response. We're going through another unfolding disaster."
Some federal agencies acted quickly to help Katrina victims. Flood insurance payments moved early and efficiently, according to Landrieu and others who have analysed the aid flow.
But other agencies proved inflexible and overwhelmed, making little effort to clear bureaucratic obstructions and releasing available aid at a trickle.
In July, Congress's nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reported that disbursement of Small Business Administration recovery loans was marred by "significant delays".
A report last week from Democrats on the House Small Business Committee said that of $10 billion approved for such loans, just 20 per cent had reached recipients. Moreover, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the administration's top recovery authority - already attacked for its response to the storm - has again taken heat.
Brian M Riedl, a budget analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said: "The government is barely adequate at counting how much money goes out the door, but it's terrible when it comes to tracking how much reaches the ground."
The telltale effects of the unspent billions emerge in the bitter accounts of homeowners who have waited for months for trailers that have not arrived, merchants who agonise over government loans still pending, town officials frustrated by rebuilding efforts stalled by the vagaries of federal regulations.
The toll taken by the government's slow-motion funding reveals itself in miniature on Flood Street, an aptly-named stretch of flood-scarred dwellings in New Orleans's devastated Lower 9th Ward where the Kent brothers are trying to resettle their family home.
Lonnie Kent applied to the Fema six months ago for a trailer where he and his brother Clark Gable Kent could live while repairing their mother's mould-infested house, the only one on their block someone has returned to.
Only last month did a Fema agent show up to survey where the trailer would go. But the agent departed without making a commitment, leaving the brothers to wait it out in a house where sheetrock walls lay exposed and the roof leaks.
"They said they couldn't hook up the trailer because an electrical line was too low," said Lonnie Kent.
"But ain't no trailer that high."
Fema officials said more than 19,000 trailers had been delivered to displaced homeowners in New Orleans. But many others are still waiting, including 4,200 in New Orleans and 4,000 in neighbouring parishes. The anxiety of waiting afflicts the city's affluent as well.
Colleen Monaghan (44) lived in the once-thriving neighbourhood of Lakeview, where blocks of water-damaged homes sit vacant and exposed. The wall of floodwater that broke over levees caused $470,000 in damage to her home.
With only $26,000 in insurance coverage, Monaghan turned to the Small Business Administration. She said she applied for a loan to rebuild her house a month after Katrina hit.
In November, the agency informed her she would receive a $200,000 loan. But it was not until Wednesday that Monaghan received the money.
"It's been an ongoing nightmare for the one whole year," said Monaghan.
"I feel I'm finally beginning to see the light. I'm proud to be an American, but I've lost all confidence in our government."
Bush administration officials say that the $44 billion paid out so far was not a complete portrait of government efforts.
Powell and other senior officials pointed to more than $77 billion in Katrina "obligations" - a term the administration uses for federal money that has been approved, but not yet disbursed, to state governments or through direct loans and grants.
At times, Fema's slowness to provide funds has paralysed state agencies - required under federal law to match 10 per cent of the cost of repair work - said Amy Liu, deputy director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution think tank. Local governments dealing with the damage sometimes have waited months for funding, Liu said.
"The people who need it the most are not getting the assistance they deserve," said Minor Sinclair, US regional grant-making director for Oxfam America, a non-profit aid group.