Posted on 02/11/2006 4:30:18 AM PST by abb
BATON ROUGE -- In a seven-hour meeting that ended Friday at 1:48 a.m., the House transportation committee reduced the scope of the governor's levee board consolidation plan from an eight-parish region down to pieces of four parishes in a zone around Lake Pontchartrain. Advertisement
The committee then passed its own version of a levee system overhaul with several bills that form separate levee authorities for the east and west banks in the New Orleans area, plus an enhanced role in levee oversight by the state Department of Transportation and Development.
Although the committee left intact some of the core of Gov. Kathleen Blanco's proposal, the post-midnight actions dealt a setback for her and the bill's sponsor, Sen. Walter Boasso, R-Arabi. By showing a streak of independence from the Democratic administration, the Republican-dominated transportation committee succeeded in creating an alternative to the Boasso bills and placed severe pressure on Blanco to compromise.
"I'm still moving forward," said Boasso, who wants to reinstate his original plan when both the Senate and House chambers debate various initiatives for levee reform legislation Sunday afternoon. "There's a lot of compelling arguments out there, but I can't take the chance of jeopardizing what we've been working on for so long."
Boasso's Senate Bills 8 and 9 passed the Senate Transportation Committee on Wednesday. Those bills are scheduled for a Senate floor debate Sunday.
They would create a Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority to manage the affairs of levee districts in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and portions of St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Livingston, St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes. The bill would keep the existing levee districts but replace their individual boards with a single superboard.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
Here's the Baton Rouge Advocate's spin...
Levee bill advances with cuts, changes
By WILL SENTELL
Capitol news bureau
Published: Feb 11, 2006
A plan backed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco to revamp key levee operations cleared a House panel early Friday morning after critics stripped Livingston Parish from the bill and made other changes.
They also deleted three other areas from the proposed regional flood-protection plan.
An amendment to take Livingston Parish out of the package won approval around 1 a.m. Friday in a basement committee room of the State Capitol.
The revamped proposal, initially designed to improve levee operations around New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, passed the full committee shortly before 2 a.m. after nearly seven hours of discussion.
The panel is the House Transportation, Highways and Public Works Committee.
The two bills in the package next face action in the full House. The Senate is set to debate levees Sunday. The thorny debate has to be resolved by Friday, when the 12-day special session ends. The proposals are House Bill 84 and House Bill 86.
On Thursday evening, Blanco pleaded with the committee to approve the original package, which she called the most-significant levee reforms in state history.
The governor has repeatedly said that the state’s chance for additional hurricane aid, and to lure residents back to southeast Louisiana, depends on showing the nation that it can improve its levee system.
Under its original version, the package would create four new levee districts, including one covering parts of Livingston Parish south of Interstate 12. It would abolish the Orleans, East Jefferson, West Jefferson and Lake Borgne (St. Bernard) levee boards.
All eight districts would be put under the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority, which backers said would make levee operations more efficient and less political.
Rep. Dale Erdey, R-Livingston, urged the committee to remove Livingston Parish, which he said was put in the proposal without local input. It has triggered opposition from area lawmakers, Parish President Mike Grimmer and the Parish Council.
Erdey said the chief worry of parish residents is flooding from the Amite, Tickfaw and other rivers, not storm surges from Lake Maurepas, which is in the southeast end of the parish. It drains into Lake Pontchartrain, which flooded much of New Orleans after Katrina.
He said parish residents are already paying taxes to stem river flooding.
He said the benefits from joining Blanco’s levee consolidation bill, and possibly paying more taxes, are unclear.
“If we are taxed, what is going to be done to protect us from tidal surges?” Erdey asked.
Rep. Mert Smiley, R-St. Amant, said any tidal surges powerful enough to damage Livingston Parish would cause heavy damage throughout south Louisiana.
“I would plead with you to take Livingston Parish out,” Smiley told the committee. “We’ll never, ever benefit.”
Rep. Karen Carter, D-New Orleans and House sponsor of the package, asked the committee not to splinter the measure.
“The intent of the bill was to capture all those levee districts on Lake Borgne, Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas,” Carter said.
Sen. Walter Boasso, R-Arabi and Senate sponsor of the package, said including Livingston Parish was well intended.
“We have to show the world things are changing back in Louisiana,” Boasso said.
Erdey’s amendment to remove Livingston Parish won approval without dissent.
The package initially created the Livingston, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa and West Lake Pontchartrain levee districts, which includes parts of St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes east of the Mississippi River.
The West Lake Pontchartrain Levee District was removed. So were the Lake Borgne and West Jefferson levee districts.
Another bill was approved to answer criticism that areas west of the Mississippi River should not be lumped in with levee districts east of the river, which suffered most of the damage from Katrina. That measure, House Bill 25, would put West Jefferson and western parts of Orleans Parish under one flood-protection panel.
bttt
The federal government should stop any federal funding of LA levees.
Let the locals fund them until the no longer exist (levees OR locals).
Now that it has been decided (not sure by whom or how or where,but seems to be taken for granteed by the victims) that the entire debacle was the fault of the Corps of Engineers, why would we still need levee boards? Seems like a good way to save lotsa taxpayer dollars to me. And I also wonder if all those flooded out folks can produce a document certified by whomever saying the government guarantees that even though your home is below sea level it won't flood. I lived there a long time and I knew sooner or later a "Katrina" like storm would do exactly what Katrina did. Hey like I said before after a 4 inch rain in the the summertime there would be water in houses in some areas.
When I was living back in Baton Rouge (pre-1996), it seemed to me that Livingston had a pretty good handle on its problems--as do the parishes along the Mississippi. It has historically been the New Orleans region that didn't seem to "have its act together"--as was graphically displayed in the Katrina fiasco.
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