Today is the first day of the hurricane season.  Two years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the scars of that hurricane season have yet to heal:

Pass Christian's difficulties pale compared to those of Pearlington, which as an "unincorporated" town does not have a tax base or local government to coordinate reconstruction.

Pearlington is four miles (6 km) inland but Katrina sent a surge of water racing up the Pearl River that flooded the town and rendered all but four of its houses uninhabitable.

The local school and post office remain closed, few businesses have reopened and only a quarter of its 800 homes have been rebuilt, according to Glenn Locklin of the charity One House at a Time.

Volunteers are key to reconstruction but their numbers have dwindled as other natural disasters, such as a tornado in May that ravaged a town in Kansas, have drawn the focus of concern away from the aftermath of Katrina, he said.

"You don't hear about us anymore. They say we're not news," Locklin said. "The one thing people don't realize is that we are just as bad as we were."

Mayor Nagin, in his first State of the City address since Hurricane Katrina, outlined the progress that has been made since the storm.  Video of the speech is available here. He also called on President Bush and Governor Blanco to expedite access to federal and state funds:

Nagin called on President Bush and Gov. Kathleen Blanco to do more to help speed the city's recovery from the August 2005 storm. He urged Bush, who he said has failed to keep a promise to move federal aid to "the people who need it the most," to deliver - and forgive millions of dollars in disaster loans that the city took out after the storm to help it to continue operating.

He called on the state to streamline its process of passing down federal rebuilding aid to the cash-strapped city - and on Blanco to tap into a state budget surplus to help the city and other parts of the state still struggling to recover from Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which struck a month later.[...]

[A]s of midmonth, the city said it had received just $163 million in federal rebuilding aid - a fraction of the $1 billion or more it says it will need just to restore what Katrina damaged and with little of that earmarked for permanent infrastructure work.

The national spotlight has long faded away, and it's unclear how well the money already allocated is being managed, or how those who are "not news" can draw enough attention to their plight in order to hold their local, state, and national leaders accountable.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post explains today the levee repairs -- which won't be completed until 2011 -- fail to provide the highest level of protection to the citizens of New Orleans and the surrounding areas.   The Army Corps of Engineers has worked around the clock to repair the levees, but another Katrina would again flood the Lower Ninth Ward.

For nearly two years, those who are "not news" -- the victims, the selfless volunteers, those rebuilding levees, homes, and lives -- they are stark reminders of the quiet struggles endured by our fellow citizens, by those most let down by the same politicians who loudly proclaimed that they would do "what it takes" to restore the region:

The work that has begun in the Gulf Coast region will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen. When that job is done, all Americans will have something to be very proud of.

"When that job is done," indeed. Until then, however, there is little pride to be had in the handling of that reconstruction effort to date.