OneWorld.net (U.S.)

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 30 (OneWorld) - Hundreds of local residents protested the reopening ceremony for a 3.2-million-square-foot luxury resort in Biloxi, Mississippi Tuesday that was timed to coincide with the 1-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall in the region.

State officials were on hand to celebrate the grand reopening of the MGM-owned Beau Rivage complex, which includes a casino, 1,740 guest rooms and suites, restaurants, shops, kitchens, meeting rooms, a luxury spa, and salon.

But activists lobbying on behalf of the region's low-income families were not in a partying mood.

"The construction of the casinos are displacing land that people of color--Blacks and Vietnamese--owned or used to have their homes on and were destroyed," Don Rojas of the international humanitarian group Oxfam told OneWorld during the protest.

"The casinos are buying up all the land in the adjacent areas. They are putting down shopping centers and everything they need for the luxury hotels."

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi legalized on-land gambling (only water gambling had previously been allowed) and has handed out $5.1 billion in business grants, though critics say too much of that has been given to big businesses like casinos, with little left over to support the state's small businesses.

In addition, of the 60,000 families in Mississippi whose homes were destroyed by the hurricane, Rojas said only about 30 have received cash from the government.

The federal government has earmarked $3 billion for Mississippians who lost residential property to Katrina, but Rojas said that money hasn't materialized. "The governor keeps saying 'the check is in the mail--just be patient.' Now here we are one year later."

Derrick Johnson, president of the Mississippi State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), told OneWorld there are a number of reasons for the government's slow response, including a lengthy and confusing application process and an administration of Republican Governor Haley Barbour that doesn't prioritize the needs of the state's poor.

"The recovery process for the average Mississippian affected by the storm is still a long ways out," Johnson said. "Despite all the hoopla around the reopening of the casino, a majority of workers have no ability to plan what they're going to do next."

Johnson is especially worried about renters who he says have received no support from the government--either state or federal.

Such callousness is ironic, says Johnson, because unlike the displaced from New Orleans, who have scattered throughout the country, most Mississippians rendered homeless by Katrina have not gone far.

"You can see the tension and frustration that's built up," he said. "People have been staying close to their homes with their friends and family. Mississippi is a very close-knit state. People are trying to make do with what they have but it's increasingly difficult."

Even homeowners who receive assistance from the government still face an uphill fight, according to a new report by the Mississippi NAACP entitled "Envisioning a Better Mississippi: Hurricane Katrina and Mississippi One Year Later."

The report catalogs a laundry list of barriers to redevelopment, including predatory lending practices that drain away resources from low- and moderate-income households, and the unwillingness of insurance companies to provide coverage to affected communities.

According to a report released Tuesday by the Washington, DC-based Earth Policy Institute, insurance companies are abandoning homeowners in high-risk coastal areas.

"The world's largest insurer, American International Group Inc., is no longer taking on new policies in some Gulf Coast communities," the independent environmental think tank said. "Allstate, one of Florida's largest insurers, dropped 95,000 policies in 2005 and plans to drop an additional 120,000 this year. As state or federal insurers jump in to cover properties that private companies will no longer touch, essentially subsidizing development in risk-prone areas, they often incur large deficits that someone, generally the taxpayer, must cover."

Such a trend could have catastrophic effects given higher ocean temperatures caused by global warming, which many scientists say are largely responsible for the record numbers and severity of hurricanes in recent years.

"More than 40 percent of the U.S. population resides in coastal counties, many of which are growing fast," the report added. "The country's most rapid population growth has been in Florida, the state most at risk from hurricanes, with 1,350 miles of coastline and no point farther than 80 miles from the water. The population along the hurricane-prone coast between North Carolina and Texas more than tripled, from 10 million to nearly 35 million, over the past 50 years."

According to the Earth Policy Institute, people will either have to move inland or the world will have to get serious about reducing carbon dioxide emissions in order to slow global warming.