[StBernard] Levee-board amendment push begins

[Westley Annis]

Editors Note:  Sen. Boasso will be making one of his speeches to the Kiwanis
Club of Thibodaux on Wednesday, August 30 at Noon, barring any surprises
from Ernesto.  The public is invited.

Levee-board amendment push begins

By JOHN LAPLANTE
Capitol news bureau
Published: Aug 27, 2006

While most New Orleans-area politicians attended Hurricane Katrina
anniversary events last week, one traveled hundreds of miles away, trying to
prevent a repeat of the disastrous flooding.

Republican state Sen. Walter Boasso estimates he will deliver well over 100
speeches across the state by Sept. 30. That's when voters decide whether to
revamp the management of levees in southeast Louisiana.

His message: Nothing is more crucial to the state's image, its economy, its
people or its future than proposition No. 3, a proposed constitutional
amendment he got through the Legislature last winter.

"The whole world is waiting to see what happens," the St. Bernard Parish
businessman told the Capital City Kiwanis in Baton Rouge last week.

He made similar speeches as far away as Natchitoches. He said he is just
starting to stump the state in favor of the amendment.

Without a more potent and less-political system to manage levees, residents
and businesses will lack confidence to return to the flood-ravaged city, and
the rest of the nation will lose interest, Boasso tells his audiences.

The resulting economic stagnation could permanently cripple the quality of
life for everyone in Louisiana, he predicts.

Adopting the levee-boards amendment would send at least one positive message
to the rest of the country, which is bankrolling  Louisiana's recovery
effort, Boasso notes. That would counter some of the negative images.

After all, he said Wednesday, "I'm positive we're not finished embarrassing
ourselves."

The next day New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin helped prove Boasso's point. CBS
News released part of a "60 Minutes" interview in which Nagin defended the
slow post-Katrina progress by knocking the city most victimized by the Sept.
11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"You guys in New York can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five
years later. So let's be fair," Nagin told a now-national audience. The
remark prompted outrage from New York and an apology to New York from Gov.
Kathleen Blanco.

But the amendment means more than public relations, Boasso insists.

The city can't recover economically without assurance that someone is
watching the levees closer than some of the old boards were, he says.

"How can you justify to your stockholders to relocate (a business) in a
place where this might happen again?" he tells his audiences.

Most importantly, he said, the revamped levee boards would include
engineering experts, not just politically connected locals who might know
little about how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers builds levees.

"The main thing is to hold the Corps accountable, and this is the only way
we're going to accomplish that," Boasso says. "We've got to have some
say-so."

The amendment is far from a sure solution to future fears of storm flooding.

Boasso wanted one board to oversee a comprehensive system of flood control
in southeast Louisiana, replacing the patchwork of boards that sometimes
delved into nonflood ventures such as marinas while paying little attention
to their crucial major mission. He had to settle for one board on each side
of the Mississippi River.

And no state can give its experts power over federal engineers. The state
engineers could cajole and complain - but not control - levee work.

Perhaps most notably, no new system could produce a lot of benefits right
away. Improving and raising levees to handle severe storms will take many
years and many billions of dollars.

Last week the Corps acknowledged that a major storm could pour four feet of
water over some levees and back into the bowl of New Orleans and some of its
suburbs.

"All you can do now is cross your fingers. We're at God's whim," Boasso
admits.

But not passing his amendment would be a disaster too, Boasso says: "The
opportunities are here. It's just a matter of making the right choices."

John LaPlante is Capitol editor for The Advocate.

Story originally published in The Advocate