Flooding: A comprehensive regional strategy needed

Last week’s waterlogged streets demonstrated the daunting scope of the region’s stormwater management problem, and hinted that a solution could cost upwards into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Only a regional approach – with national help – can generate enough funds to upgrade the pumps at the moribund Orleans Sewerage & Water Board, protect with Northshore by building a floodgate at the Chef Menteur Pass & the Rigolets, and truly invest in coastal restoration to protect Louisiana’s southern flank. But the U.S. Senate seems more focused on spending oil revenues derived from Louisiana and Texas, originally earmarked for this purpose, to upgrade National Parks in the West.

By last Monday, floodwaters had inundated Old Mandeville. The storm surge from TS Cristobal literally pushed the Gulf of Mexico into Lake Pontchartrain, elevating sea levels so high that they submerged parts of the city Bernard de Marigny built. Old Mandeville appeared as overcome by seawater as Grand Isle and other coastal communities, temporarily submerged into the Gulf. More worrisome, last week’s floodwaters prophesied that in a far worse weather event even more of the Northshore would be submerged.

Conditions were only slightly better South of the Lake. Despite the billions in levees and storm gates built after Hurricane Katrina, the subsequent rains of the same tropical storm submerged streets in Orleans. Unlike the city’s neighbors to the North, the Southshore possesses wonderful storm surge protection. New Orleans’ aging system just failed to pump the water out fast enough. S&WB’s Pump 4’s antiquated electrical system blew up, leaving St. Roch submerged. It’s so ancient in design that the pump cannot be run off of Entergy’s grid in an emergency. At least, Pump 4 still works. Another nearby pumping station catastrophically self-destructed, and the S&WB lacks the $20 million to rebuild it to the obsolete standards of its design – much less upgrade to what the city actually needs.

To quote the late Everett Dirksen, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

A lack of modern infrastructure left streets defenseless to flooding on both the Northshore and Southshore. Louisiana collectively lacks the tax revenue to upgrade and replace deteriorating and ancient pumps in the Crescent City, just as the state cannot afford the estimated $2 billion to place a flood wall at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, and just as coastal communities alone could not begin to find the tax revenues to fund $20 billion to bolster state’s wetlands protections.

We were lucky this time, yet it only took 3.38 inches of rain per day over three days to submerge over 100 streets on the Southshore, and nearly as many on the Northshore. In a worse storm, the Federal flood program would have had to pay out billions of dollars to recompense and reconstruct inundated homes and businesses. Therefore, one would think making much cheaper investments in flood protection today would at least be a factor in last week’s debate before the U.S. Senate. Instead, as the Tropical Storm attacked, a bipartisan bill sought to take offshore oil revenues – once promised to Louisiana and Texas for coastal restoration and storm protection – and give the monies to states like Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

The Great American Outdoors Act enjoys broad bipartisan support. It would divert a greater share of outer continental shelf energy revenue – mostly from Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production – to permanently guarantee $900 million a year to support improvements to national and local parks and wildlife refuges, and an additional $11.9 billion over five years to chip away at an enormous backlog in deferred maintenance on public lands. However, as Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy noted, the bill would unfairly deliver the most money to states with the least population, mostly in the West and Midwest, which already garner billions of dollars of revenue from oil and gas—while 40 percent of the nation’s population lives along the coasts of states receive little.

Moreover, the GAO Act would break a promise. When Cassidy’s predecessor Sen. Mary Landrieu negotiated expanded drilling in the Gulf, under Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, she did so with the expressed proviso that Louisiana and Texas would take home increased tax revenues up to maximum $375 million per year. Previously, the states which hosted the offshore oil industry received not a dollar. GOMESA promised to provide Gulf states with 37.5 percent of revenue from some oil and gas wells drilled after 2007 in the Gulf off the shores of coastal states, and Louisiana created a trust fund to dedicate 100 percent of those revenues to use towards coastal restoration and flood control.

Senator Cassidy has asked in exchange for better funding for National Parks to remove that $375 million cap. He observed that while offshore oil wells produced little revenue until 2017, the amount could grow to $1 billion or more a year over the next few decades. That would make a real difference towards protecting Gulf communities. The author of the bill Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia blocked Cassidy’s amendment, though, as did his co-sponsors, the GOP Senators from Colorado and Montana – whose National Parks would benefit most from the increased tax monies.

It is almost a bipartisan conspiracy against the Gulf Coast, especially when one considers that interior western states are guaranteed a 50 percent share of revenue – with no cap – from oil and energy produced on federal lands within their borders. In fiscal year 2019 alone, New Mexico’s 50 percent share from federal lands within its borders was $1.2 billion, compared to the $95 million from offshore received by Louisiana.

No one questions that deteriorating infrastructure at the National Parks stands as a national embarrassment. However, flood protection in South Louisiana and Coastal Texas not only saves lives; it ranks as a national security priority. We produce over 40 percent of the nation’s petrochemical refining, and over 30 percent of its aquacultural food supply. Even more importantly, from Houston to Mobile, millions more people live than in many of the Western states, which currently receive billions more in oil tax dollars than we. Most importantly, it was our coastlands which suffered when oil companies built canals through our wetlands to provide easy transit to the offshore oil rigs. Subsequent saltwater incursion destroyed our natural hurricane protections. Is it not too much to ask that a greater portion of the revenues derived go to ameliorating that damage?

Unfortunately, the Feds might choose to ignore us. Time is not on our side. It might be up to the communities of Louisiana to work together in our common fight against floodwaters, and that could require new revenues raised at home. To paraphrase another famous wit, “For we know that if we do not hang together in these fights, Louisiana United, we shall all submerge separately.” If we lose the fight in the Senate, we might have to look after our own needs.

This article originally published in the June 15, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.