FEMA Should Recover $1.7 Million of Public Assistance Grant Funds Awarded to the City of Waveland, Mississippi – Hurricane Katrina (

The City received a Public Assistance grant award of $130.2 million from the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (.State), a FEMA grantee, for damages resulting from Hurricane Katrina, which occurred in August 2005. The award provided 100 percent FEMA funding for debris removal activities, emergency protective measures, and permanent repairs to buildings and facilities. The award consisted of 85 large projects and 52 small projects.1 This is our second audit of this subgrantee; the first audit resulted in OIG Audit Report DA-08-08: Audit of Hurricane Katrina Activities for City of Waveland, Mississippi, July 17, 2008. We conducted this audit because of a complaint that our Office of Investigations received in February 2011. The complainant alleged that the City's sewer system contractor had overcharged the City for installing temporary bladder tanks as a temporary sewer collection system. We did not audit these costs during our previous 2008 audit because, at the time, the City had not completed the work. Therefore, we limited this audit to $5.2 million FEMA awarded the City under Projects 4916 and 4917 for the installation of a temporary sewer collection system (.See Exhibit, Schedule of Projects Audited and Questioned Costs). The audit covered the period from August 29,2005, to July 26, 2013, during which the City claimed $5.2 million in FEMA funds for the two projects. At the time of our audit, the City had not completed work on some of its projects and; therefore, had not submitted a final claim to the State for all project expenditures.