Obama vows to stick with Gulf renewal efforts

NEW ORLEANS - Five years after Hurricane Katrina's wrath, President Barack Obama sought to reassure disaster-weary Gulf Coast residents Sunday that he would not abandon their cause.

"My administration is going to stand with you, and fight alongside you, until the job is done," Obama said to cheers at Xavier University, a historically black Catholic university that was badly flooded by the storm.

Obama spoke five years to the day from when Katrina struck Louisiana, tearing through levees and flooding 80 percent of New Orleans. More than 1,800 people along the Gulf Coast died, mostly in Louisiana.

Even as the region struggled to put despair behind it, hardship struck again this year with the BP oil spill. Obama said one of his promises - to stop the oil leak - has been kept. "The second promise I made was that we would stick with our efforts, and stay on BP, until the damage to the Gulf and to the lives of the people in this region was reversed," he said. "And this, too, is a promise we will keep."

Some residents had hoped the president would announce an early end to the deepwater drilling moratorium he enacted after the spill. But he did not mention the moratorium, which some say is costing jobs.

Obama did offer a list of accomplishments on Katrina recovery he said his administration has achieved, including helping to move residents out of temporary housing and streamlining money for schools and restoration projects. He promised that work on a fortified levee system would be finished by next year.

Also on the visit, Obama toured Columbia Parc, a development that's replacing the St. Bernard Housing Development that flooded during Katrina. Several dozen demonstrators, protesting a shortage of affordable public housing, chanted nearby: "Housing is a human right."

And Obama dropped in at the Parkway Bakery and Tavern, a local institution known for shrimp and roast beef po' boys and was underwater after Katrina. "I appreciate you coming here," one woman told him. He responded with a hug.

After his speech, Obama defended his administration's handling of the oil spill in an interview with "NBC Nightly News." The president said, "Because of the sturdiness and swiftness of the response, there's a lot less oil hitting these shores and these beaches than anybody would have anticipated given the volume that was coming out of the BP oil well."