BATON ROUGE, La. -- More than 1.5 million people in Louisiana received disaster food stamp aid after hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

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People wait for food stamps in New Orleans..

That's the total released by the Department of Social Services, which operated the program until it shut down application sites last week.

DSS says the number of recipients represents more than 609,000 households who received $208 million in aid. The parishes with the most recipients were East Baton Rouge, Jefferson, Orleans and Calcasieu.

The disaster food stamp program ran for more than three weeks and was plagued with computer problems that prompted complaints that aid was moving too slowly to families. The problems were largely solved in the final days of the program.

DSS says disaster food stamps were denied to more than 38,000 applicants.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)