[StBernard] Corps delays in hurricane protection plans outrage Louisiana officials

[Westley Annis]

Corps delays in hurricane protection plans outrage Louisiana officials
by Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune 
Tuesday January 13, 2009, 9:06 PM
Frustration and rage poured from state officials in Baton Rouge Tuesday over
continuing delays by the Army Corps of Engineers in producing a plan for
"Category 5" storm protection. 

If those recommendations don't get to Congress by 2010 -- a distinct
possibility -- that could raise a new and thorny obstacle that could further
mire the projects in federal politics. That's because Congress in 2007
enacted a provision allowing all projects recommended by the corps before
2010 to be put into a fast-track approval process, which requires a vote
after just 45 days. 

Congress could likely approve the projects en masse -- and quickly --
greatly accelerating the start of construction. But if the fast-track rule
expires, the state could be forced to lobby for each individual levee or
coastal restoration project, with no defined timeline for approval of any of
them. 

That concern, along with deep frustration over the delays, poured out of
nearly three dozen legislators Tuesday as Gov. Bobby Jindal's coastal czar,
Garrett Graves, briefed them at a joint meeting of five legislative
committees. The details of the continuing delays -- combined with the fact
that corps officials passed on an invitation to appear before the committee
-- prompted one legislator to suggest sending the Legislature's
sergeant-at-arms to New Orleans to fetch top corps officials. Another
suggested that the state cut off natural gas to the rest of the country in
the middle of winter. 

Rep. Simone Champagne, D-Jeanerette, who suggested shutting down the Henry
Hub offshore natural gas terminal, said Iberia Parish has waited too long
for hurricane protection projects. 

"We're at the point where we have to take drastic measures to make this
nation understand how important our communities, our fishermen, are to the
rest of the nation," she said. "If we were able to cut (natural gas) today
for the rest of the weekend, it would send that message." 

Graves, director of the Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration, told
state politicians Tuesday that Louisiana's future is threatened by the
continuing delays in completing a plan to protect coastal communities from
storm surges created by worst-case hurricanes. 

The corps has repeatedly failed to meet congressional deadlines for
completing the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Study, which is
now more than a year late, he said. Senior corps officials turned down a
request to testify about the delays before the unusual joint meeting of the
House and Senate committees on Transportation, Highways and Public Works,
House and Senate committees on Natural Resources and the Senate Select
Committee on Coastal Restoration and Flood Control, said Rep. Nita Hutter,
R-Chalmette, chairwoman of the House transportation committee. 

"We requested the opportunity to brief the committee after the LaCPR
Technical Report has undergone the final reviews required by federal law and
regulations," said Maj. Timothy Kurgan, a spokesman for the corps' New
Orleans district office, when asked why corps officials did not attend the
meeting. "We currently anticipate that the report will be forwarded to the
National Academy of Sciences for statutorily required external peer review
in March 2009," he said. 

Graves said the corps told the state's congressional delegation in December
that the study, now scheduled for completion in late June, will include a
list of projects that Congress can authorize immediately. Both the project
list and the environmental study were required by Congress in legislation
ordering the study, he said. 

Even if completed by June, it remains unclear how long it will take for the
study to be delivered to Congress, Graves said, because it must then await
approval by senior Army officials. 

Congress appropriated $23 million to complete the study, which would
identify a much higher level of protection for New Orleans than the
improvements currently under construction. Current construction aims to
protect the region from a moderate-strength hurricane with a 1 percent
chance of occurring in any year, also referred to as a 100-year storm. 

The new study was supposed to aim for protection from "the equivalent of a
Category 5 hurricane" by combining higher levees, gates and coastal
restoration projects. 

The corps has been looking at projects that could protect some areas from
400-year storms, such as Hurricane Katrina, or larger, 1,000-year storms.
Parts of the coast would remain either unprotected or protected by smaller
levees. 

But after initially focusing on a list of projects that the corps and state
had quickly identified, including many in the state's own master plan, the
corps moved into "an era of stonewalling" during the summer of 2006, said
King Milling, chairman of the Governor's Advisory Committee for Coastal
Protection, Restoration and Conservation. 

Rather than identifying and endorsing projects, the agency adopted a
recommendation to create a complex "risk-informed decision matrix," causing
considerable delays. The decision matrix, however, would produce no
decisions; the agency instead merely identified five groups of alternative
plans for five different regions along the coast. 

Milling said that change of strategy was ordered by the White House Office
of Management and Budget, rather than the corps' New Orleans District
officials in charge of the study. 

"This has to do with money and the influence of power," Milling said. 

Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein at timespicayune.com or at
504.826.3327.