NEW ORLEANS – Progress rebuilding the Gulf Coast is still overshadowed by the devastation brought by Hurricane Katrina, senators said Tuesday, promising more federal help as they viewed broken levees and the shattered homes of victims trying to restart their lives.

Four months after the Aug. 29 storm, lawmakers said they were surprised to see how little progress has been made in places like Gulfport, Miss., where churches were gutted and trees uprooted, and in New Orleans, where piles of boards and rubble sit where homes used to stand.

Senators touring the destruction were decidedly less upbeat than President Bush was five days earlier, when he visited New Orleans for the first time in three months. During that trip, Bush called progress since August “pretty dramatic,” but he was later criticized for visiting the city’s wealthier neighborhoods, which escaped the brunt of the damage.

“It’s good to say that we’ve made progress, but also important to say we’ve got a long way to go,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., on a daylong trip to some of Katrina’s hardest-hit areas by members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“I’m disappointed, coming back four months later, that you don’t see more visible progress along the coast,” Lieberman said after an aerial tour of Gulfport. “We can’t kid ourselves, nor can we look the other way. This is a long-term commitment.”

Housing needs for workers coming back into New Orleans – a top priority cited by senators and local officials alike – were highlighted by muddy camps of tents. Need for help in rebuilding coastal wetlands and strengthening levees against future storms was made evident by a sole dump truck packing dirt at the Industrial Canal.

Congress so far has approved $67 billion for the Gulf Coast, and Bush has called for an additional $1.5 billion to strengthen New Orleans levees. On Tuesday, none of the lawmakers said how much more federal aid will be needed, or for how much longer the government will have to help rebuilding the area.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chaired the congressional delegation, said she was surprised that more debris has not yet been cleaned up in Gulfport and New Orleans – despite a federal program that pays for all of the removal costs until March.

“When I learned that Mississippi still has 19 million cubic yards of debris to be removed, when we saw the mountains of debris in the [New Orleans] Ninth Ward, it underscores the lack of sufficient progress,” Collins said. “And it’s not a money problem, so that to me is a major obstacle, and I don’t understand why we haven’t made more progress.”

At a hearing in Gulfport, senators grilled Don Powell, who has been coordinating government rebuilding programs, over whether the federal commitment to the Gulf Coast is enough.

“Hopefully it will be enough,” Powell said of the money approved so far.

Powell agreed that debris removal, along with temporary housing for evacuees, remain a top priority in Mississippi. He said the state has cleaned up 27 million cubic yards of debris – about two-thirds of the total, and estimated that the storm left three of Mississippi’s hardest hit counties with more debris than the combined total created by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

However, he said some progress has been hindered by Federal Emergency Management Agency workers in the region who do not have authority to make decisions without first receiving approval from Washington. He also acknowledged confusion from local officials who turn to government for answers.

Frustrations continue to rise for Gulfport residents who are waiting for new flood insurance guidelines being drawn up by FEMA, said Mayor Brent Warr, a Republican elected shortly before Katrina hit. Without the guidelines, businesses and residents are reluctant to start rebuilding, he said.

“Things are pretty depressing, but they’re still holding out hope for the federal government,” Warr said. “Now the federal government needs to come up with some real answers for us quickly.”