I want to thank you all for coming.

And then any of the representatives of the different groups out there, I want to thank them, too.

It's really just delightful to have everybody under one roof to talk about this important issue.

And, you know, the purpose of of doing this was to give the groups out there a chance to meet more community members and spread the word of what they're doing so the community can be more aware and maybe even get involved because I know some of these groups have volunteer programs going out there, going on out there, which are really very important.

So but this discussion today, I ask these three gentlemen here, just to give us an idea of what's been going on with our coast.

And when this coastal restoration effort really sort of background us, give us a history on how that all began, because they've all been really involved in it.

Our mark has certainly covered it.

So who we have here, to my right, my immediate right is Dave Montes.

He's been in the business of coastal restoration for, what, three decades now?

Right?

Quite a while.

And he served as executive director of the Louisiana Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration, also director of Barataria Terribles, national estuary program.

Are you the first one?

Yeah, I was the first director.

They call me the good director for the, Okay.

Also, you've worked with other programs with Coimbra, an Army Corps of Engineers, now with Stantec Global Coastal consultant.

Right.

That's right.

Now, Ma has been with the Times-Picayune, New Orleans advocate for whole, 40 years.

40 years.

Yeah.

I hope that we can keep you there for a while longer.

Like a couple months, I guess, when I retire.

How dare he, that you'll be doing some contracting work.

I hope you'll still be doing some contract work.

And once you leave the building, I mean, you.

Working on something.

Now?

All right.

So long as you keep us informed, like you have for these past 40 years.

Pulitzer Prize winning March team, and then Steve Cochran.

All right, Steve has worn many hats, and I couldn't begin to put them all down here.

So you have been an environmental policy advocate.

You worked with Governor Romer.

You, also did work with Congress, Environmental Defense Fund.

They were charged with Washington, right, for a while.

And you came back here to stay with them and involved in coastal restoration issues, with Restore the Mississippi River Delta.

Now you are retired, but not really letting go of the issue, are you?

Retirement.

Is there anything where I think those of us who cover these issues will have.

Actually hired someone?

Because, yeah, when I.

Come to retire.

One thing that I would add in there is the lack of information that I.

Know.

Right, exactly.

And that's beginning of that.

Yes.

And by the way, this is a 36 anniversary of that.

What what is now the position Conservancy.

Right.

That's right.

So, you know, we have seen now these organizations and then also, you know, state agency public monies to prepare the pro and da to really give us a more organized focus on restoring our coast.

And that's really what I want to talk to you guys about, because you all they are from the beginning.

So why don't you tell us about those earlier days?

I mean, what came to everyone's attention saying, oh, we have a problem here and we need to start dealing with it.

State yeah.

I'll start.

And yeah, I grew up on North Shore.

And actually started in 1981, so.

1240.

Yeah.

So I.

After grad school, I came home, worked for me for many years.

And, you know, anytime we want to do that, those are coastal animals issue a little bit.

But I remember that, in fact, I took this little snap from school conservation.

Service for general.

Parish.

And at the time that small snap, if you look at all the terrible marsh, it was weird because it was waste land, okay?

Because that was the perspective of the federal government at the time.

That was not worth anything.

There was so much of it, you know, it was never going to go away.

And so we we kind of recognize this problem.

Corps of Engineers sort of recognize we kind of talked around it a little bit.

And then I going to tell you when I, when I joined the estuary program in the late 80s, to me, that was kind of a a turning point in my life.

The estuary program to though, the way it was set up in the early beginning.

And then it was that we had committees and we had nearly 250 people in these committees, and they met one day a month, one day a month for a period of five years to develop their the comprehensive management plan.

And that's a hell of a commitment.

Okay.

And you had people from oil and gas, people from the Sierra Club, people from the parishes, people from the Corps, all the federal agencies.

You had people that, knew one another from being on opposite sides of court cases.

Okay.

And then you come to the estuary program and you're forced to talk to one another about the problems.

Okay, guess what we found out.

We found out that, you know, the Corps of Engineers was not the Corps of Engineers, some entity that we didn't know anything about.

Everybody that work there was a Louisiana, and they all went to school.

And LSU, you know, they all lived here.

Same thing with state agency, same thing with oil and gas.

You go to a soccer game.

That guy's kids are playing against your kids.

We were all.

One.

Okay.

And so we we talked about what was the thing we wanted for our coast going forward.

Okay.

So for me, that was a real change in how we looked at it.

But I got to tell you also, being a kid who grew up here didn't work on the North Shore during Hurricane Betsy.

You know, we always referred to Hurricane Betsy as the storm of a lifetime.

So in your mind, you're thinking, I've lived through Betsy.

I've lived through the storm of my lifetime.

Okay.

And so you're working for agencies.

You're talking about coastal land launch.

You're talking about what might happen if you have a big storm.

But I'm going to tell you in the back of your mind, you're still thinking that some point in the future that's not me, because I've lived through my storm of a lifetime right?

So then we have Hurricane Katrina.

Now, y'all may not remember, but I think some of y'all were probably there.

There was a, there was a meeting downtown.

It was on the Friday before Hurricane Katrina hit on Sunday night.

The governor was there, and we were talking about all other issues.

And the news reporters were saying, well, governor, what about the hurricane?

I'm like, we're not worried about the hurricane.

The hurricane was going to the panhandle of Florida.

We were on the dry side.

We were good right?

It all changed Saturday morning, right where all of a sudden, wait a minute now we're in the cone.

Now we got to get out of here knowing everything I knew.

Right, because I work for the Corps of Engineers.

You can do the math really easily.

You do the storm surge, you know, the height of the levees, what they were supposed to be, you know, that they were.

Did you know, below grade?

You know, we were going to have problems.

Yeah.

When I got in the car to leave, I got a gym bag, three golf shirts, two pair of shorts.

I'm thinking I'm coming And we're going to do certainly we will be getting to that.

But, you know, I did want to get the backgrounds of you guys to when, you know, when you start started covering these stories back then, Mark, what what were you being told?

What were you learning?

And, you know, what was the situation back then.

So yeah, I, you know, let's let's start actually a little bit farther back than when I got here in 1984.

And that's 1947, I think was the year, Woody Gagliano was, a geologist here.

And, there was a problem that the state was having at that time, which was that some, officials in Texas wanted to we ran a portion of the Mississippi River to Texas because of their water problems.

And so Woody was asked to go find out if there were any problems with that happening on the Gulf Coast.

And, what he found was what everybody should have known for a long time before that, which was that there was, coastal erosion occurring all along the coastline that was, directly tied to the Mississippi River levees.

And it was the first time that somebody had actually outlined what our real problem was.

And, you have to start with that.

That ended up killing that effort to reroute, the river.

But it also started people thinking about what would happen and how to deal with issues that we were facing.

So fast forward to 1984, and one of the first things that I covered was a public hearing for permits for the, the Davis Pond, conservation and at that time, the Bonnie Carey Spillway diversions that were proposed, by the Corps of Engineers, for a variety different reasons.

And what I learned from that, was a couple of things.

The first one was that, the federal law at that time allowed only allowed the Corps to build projects like that if they had a financial reason for doing it.

And the financial reason that the Corps could look at did not include loss of land because there was no valuation system set up by the Corps of Engineers at that time, that put values on what happens when land is lost.

So what did they do?

They would do, in economic value oysters.

And they said, we can build these projects that we think will help Louisiana buy, basically designing them so that they increased oysters at a much southern point.

At the ends of where, this water will be going out and hopefully it will help things along as well.

And as we've learned in the aftermath, that was a nice idea.

But the real problem was sediment was and the fact that, you know, those diversions were not designed for capturing sediment was a real problem.

Fast forward, until 1998, and it became much more clear that, there were significant problems with land was.

Current.

And organizations like the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana helped push for us to study.

That ended up looking at what needs to be done.

And it was the first real master plan before the master plan occurred.

I can't remember what the name of it was, but, no time to lose.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

And, so that, that, that basically set the stage for where things could go in the future.

But again, it was still highly limited by federal law, especially in terms of what can the Corps of Engineers can do for these spills?

Well, they can only do this in terms of benefit cost analysis.

And at that time, the benefit cost analysis was was not what it is today.

So then you fast forward and we have Katrina and I will I will I will quickly give you my, advanced Katrina story.

The first one is in 2002.

We wrote a series, that basically that was called A Washing Away that looked at, the increased, risk that the city of New Orleans had from, storm surge, in part because of our land laws.

And largely because the levees were sinking and, they no longer were going to be able to protect us from what people thought hurricanes could do at that time.

Three years later, Katrina comes along.

It's Saturday, the day after your meeting Saturday afternoon.

I'm looking at a, a computer program showing, a hurricane that's a flood of New Orleans from the surge coming in from Katrina.

At my desk with the editor and the publisher standing behind me arguing that if we publish that in the paper tomorrow, it's going to scare the hell out of people, and they'll abandon the city.

And I'm going, no, you don't understand.

This is going to happen tomorrow.

We need to warn them that it's going to happen.

And the phone calls and it's 4:00, and I pick up the phone and it's Max Mayfield, the director of the National Hurricane Center.

And before I have a chance to say anything, he says, Mark, how long is your building?

What kind of winds cannot withstand?

And I turned and the argument behind me was over.

And, I said, why are you saying this?

And he says, well, because Katrina is a category five and it's headed directly towards the city.

And this is the big one.

This is the one that we've been concerned, and it's going to flood the city.

Now, it turned out that Katrina dropped in power over the next 24 hours.

And some other things occur that didn't make it as bad as it should have been.

And the effects in New Orleans, especially, were the direct result of, problems with the construction of the levee system.

But that was where we started from that point forward, immediately after Katrina, all eyes turned back towards the coast and said, we need to do something about coastal restoration, not because it's great for fish and great for wildlife, but because it's great for the public good, which is New Orleans.

And we've been moving in that direction ever since, and I've been attempting to cover it at that way ever since as well.

Wonderful story, Steve.

I mean, as I said in your introduction, you've been at this at various levels.

You know, in the state and then also on the federal level.

So your experience of, just sort of awakening, you know, your own awakening and then seeing people around you wake up to the fact that we had a coastal loss problem, sort of tracking it from there.

Yeah.

And we even, you know, when I was working for about an hour, a storm, in 1999.

And, you may remember that, the conversation on the this is it started about 1980 and, particularly when they really tried to do that, maybe a.

Task that that, they got shut down when in Rome and then in one of those on a plate was to begin thinking about how do we begin to get some money and I think it's it's not about how do you get individual money, how and so we were able to, basically can spread across a wide range of driving revenue money that, could be going to a community situation and detected getting, some money for the state.

But it was not a rhythmical issue.

And we we really went through you.

Saw all the things that and so we were I became more aware of it, listening to it.

When I was going to talk to these things like, hey, we can have better.

But there was not a lot of government activity at the state level in that period.

But other than beginning to set that, most right, Next media, which is which was working were inspired.

A lot of working in Congress and trying to get you know, I I, I am I, I'm not surprised, but I'm amazed every single time that same situation with people who are more interested in it and it, it gives us we, we really understand as structural association that this is not just a big event.

It was this if anybody was like, this is like not just normal life.

I mean, it was the media in changing people's lives.

So, the way to change issue is a lot of times just I suspect it was just from watching walking down because as you remember, there were a lot of questions of reform from from the beginning to Washington to Washington to be deeply skeptical about the meaning of making expressions of money that it would take.

And so what I saw was a series function, a real where issues because of what you described.

Finally, it was clear beyond question.

That is what was trying to Lebanese were going to fail because it became very much like an idea that the, you know, the Washington, you know, you know, I don't understand.

I want to take a look at what's going on now.

But he made it possible to begin to have the whole situation.

Even so, it wasn't until people realized I didn't want any the worst way to get money to to do just that, at that understanding, had to go to actually get executed.

So.

So I was part of a number of people who said, wait a minute.

We way the federal system, I mean, you just got to go back mostly to that for some reason, because they had.

But that's why you have to than that system.

You have to make sure that that was not the case.

And I called it and, you know, I mean, all of not just the uses of centrifuges, the damage from that, from that disaster.

So that was the opportunity that that came at you came around, which is a federal judge to get that money to.

And then I had that really made the difference, for instance, today and I thought, I because they have basis on which we used to have actually.

Yeah.

You have to change the whole.

Point.

There had been an original plan that I've been involved training.

We would not have been able to say that they were sending it to do this.

Yeah.

So and it was just like it just had the capacity to do that.

We had to know that it was possible to people in the to do this kind of behavior, to do that.

Let me just quickly add to that, that as part of the Restore act and, and the settlement, that, you know, ended up with the natural resource, development money, the the feds required states to come up with these master plans.

So and they all based them on what the Louisiana had already done.

Which was really the way.

Okay, so explain Quivira.

And when did that come into play?

The the Bro act, the coastal wetlands planning, protection and restoration and and what has that given to us?

Who wants to take.

Yeah, I think that was the late 80s.

And again, that was if you had to think about the way we did business back then, you had federal agencies that had their mandate of what they were supposed to do.

And when you talk about projects, everybody got a room and you said, this is my federal mandate, and you would just fight like hell to protect it.

That mandate.

Okay.

So the Fish and Wildlife Service, with their priorities, had the Corps with their priority and EPA with theirs.

And I think for me, Proact was, the first attempt to say you guys need to sit together at the same table and decide, how are you going to spend this money, you know, what projects are you going to build?

And so I think that was, again, that was the same time the estuary program was also we were talking people realize that there was an issue, and I was part of the Corps of Engineers at the time.

Okay.

So, you know, I kiddingly say that, you know, and we thought we knew all the answers.

We we thought we knew all the questions and all the answers because we had the gold, we made the rules.

Okay.

Then dramatically changed.

And so I think I said, I think that it incited have, you know, John Breaux had to force everybody together to make those decisions together, kind of changed how we did business.

And that wasn't enough for me.

I will tell you that when we naively, we thought if we were getting $40 million a year, we thought we maybe had a $500 million problem, maybe with a high number, we never use the million dollar number, like ever.

Okay.

And now to say that if you could really address the problems in the coast and allow us to live here and have hurricane protection and everything else, it's more it's north of $50 billion.

It's more like $100 billion.

So yeah, a little bit more expensive.

Mark, you wanted to say something about that?

Yeah.

So before the proact came into effect, there was like 3 or 4 years that Mary Landrieu had that other small program that that was like the precursor.

Sure.

And part of the reason for that in the initial years of the project was to show that Louisiana could spend that money correctly without, you know, doing bad things with it, which it became very clear that they could and were doing, which was one of the key things that has helped us all, all the way through this process.

And, the other thing that that happened was that over, over, I guess the first 4 or 5 years of the proact, it also became clear that, the project was going to become sort of the base of the state's master plan program.

It was the place where you would get engineering and design work done, and the first batch of money to start looking at programs that then would be adopted and put into the state master plan, and the state would come up with either project money and or other ways of funding of all, sizes and programs.

And that that's the way it's still working today.

And I think we made a decision then that because the dollars were not huge, there was a decision made that we we kind of put up a chicken in every pot, you know, that we had small projects that were being built across the coast, rather than saying, we're going to pool this money and build one project that was that would change an ecosystem.

Okay.

We thought that if we could prove that we could execute smaller projects, that then the larger money would come for the for the bigger projects.

And let me go back and talk a second about how the master plan got created as well.

That was, sort of a side effect of, after Katrina, the two major things, in this area for the, for the Saint, Louisiana.

The first one was with the $14.5 billion into rebuilding the what they system and helping start, working on drainage.

But the other thing was that they started a program called Coastal.

Louis.

Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Program, and it was supposed to come up with a master plan for themselves on where to put the money.

And the state was so concerned about that that they said, we're going to come up with their own master plan.

And at the very least, we are going to append to whatever the Corps of Engineers submits to Congress.

As it turned out, the state's plan was done well in advance as and when the Corps finished its program and the corps at the end, ended up basically saying, here's our plan.

But go with the state's master plan.

That should be at the base of where we're going.

State any anything.

You know, the thing that struck me from and I again, I was looking for middle liberty was the largest amount of money in the state.

They never had to deal with these issues.

And was this a tiny, tiny amount of money relative to other things?

So, so the training didn't.

How?

Because you were the part.

I mean, you they the, the problem with equipment wasn't the equipment.

It just there wasn't a lot of money in it.

And that meant that they had to think small didn't have the opportunity.

And the whole concept of trying to stand behind and be able to think, if you can't project knowledge, you're going to really have we measuring, can we in fact get invested in institutions?

Otherwise you get picked up.

So do you have to go to the legislature, to everybody who wants to put their money on their boat, and you're never going to get the money that you need to actually build these really big projects, right.

But then you had.

Well, and I would say, had it not been for the BP oil spill, we still would not have a source of money for those big projects.

And so we in Louisiana, I think that's one of the things that we're faced with going forward is when the BP dollars run out, where's the money going to come from to build the additional large scale projects that we need?

We haven't addressed that yet.

Until today.

And one of the things that, When and when I was in state politics office was, I worked for Roemer from 84 to 90.

You know, I was Democrat.

Republican.

And it was it was fairly new process, but it was a lot of people working together.

But on environmental issues, it was, the environmental community was completely shut off for the most part, really having conversations.

It was very industry dominated.

There was a really big split between and it was a it was an environment versus industry.

And all the issues with the way in, which was all really hard to make progress as well.

You can't sit and talk with people.

But that was what I was.

And when I came back in, which was really, really engaged with the state on a range of issues in 2014, long time Mark and I and the one issue which has managed to get over that, figure out how, Republicans and Democrats and industry and environment could actually work together was the coastal issue.

And and I have always been so impressed and amazed that that managed to happen because so that was such a big deal either a lot of big deals in the world, you know, or the Partizan politics and southern Louisiana and didn't figure out how to do that.

And even today, and it's a Partizan Partizan country.

This issue is still it is, is still possible for people to sit down and work together, try to figure out it doesn't mean there's never any disagreements, but we'll figure out a way to do that.

And I just think that's something that we can all be damn proud and, and every governor and every legislature, supporting the master plan, to the extent that they have up to now, that's critical to being able to communicate to Washington that Louisiana has its act together to spend money if the money becomes available.

That goes to Stevens Point.

We don't have enough money.

We really have to depend on.

We're going to have to raise our own money in Louisiana.

We have to be more of a commitment to the when we're in the single digits in terms of getting out of money percentage is the amount of money that Louisiana spends on the coast because it is not even 10% of the money it gets to the project.

It's it's only just alphabet soup.

We've been able to take advantage of it.

That's not going to last forever.

And we've had to have disasters to be able to follow it.

So we really got the road to go, go all the way up there.

That Stevens Point is exactly right.

I mean, we have examples in Louisiana where we our communities and by the foolish, levee district, you know, things are happen that they, they tax themselves because they realize, you know, this is critical to my life.

Okay?

So I think, you know, I mean, I live in New Orleans, right?

So we we have a new tax system.

And, you know, I didn't have to pay for.

So are you guys hearing of any talk about, a more consistent stream of revenue to continue these projects?

Once BP runs out, BP runs out.

What in 7 or 8 years.

On 20, 30?

That's that's a good question.

In the in the last administration, there were discussions going on about how how to address, this issue.

Those discussions have, sort of quieted down at the moment.

There's, there's something called the Rise Act that's being considered, before Congress, but it has not been approved, which would, expand, the Equip program, the broken program, to include wind, energy as well.

And other things that are offshore.

And would get rid of.

There's a there's actually a cap on the amount of money that's available from offshore.

But but that's still just a small amount of the money that's needed.

Everybody knows there's a problem and they have not come up with a solution.

Is with what?

The issues.

and I would say that we're going to be in competition for federal dollars more in the future than we've been in the past, because our coastal issues, the rest of the country is beginning to experience.

Okay, whether it's Texas with Miami, Puerto Rico, North Atlantic, the West Coast.

And I want to say and it's thinking about politics.

Louisiana used to have a really, really strong congressional delegation.

You know, a lot of influence.

John Breaux, Billy Tons, and, you know, Vinnie Johnson, all those guys.

I don't think we have that strength when it comes to, you know, how do you direct that money if you say, are you going to direct that dollar to Miami?

Are you going to direct it to coastal Louisiana?

People will say, we've already gotten a lot.

So I think it's going to be tough going forward for us to compete for the available federal dollars to address our problems.

And I don't want to seem bleak about that, but I think that's just Mark, you may see it differently.

I don't know, but, I don't know.

I, agree with that.

There's no question that we, we now, unfortunately, one of the wake up things that occurred after Katrina were was other community.

Well, there were two different things.

First of all, let me let me just say that one of the things that the Corps was required to do after Katrina was to go throughout the entire country and look at the levee systems and what the risks were for levees, whether they were on the coast or not.

The result of that was that other communities began asking for federal funds, from, you know, through the corps system, through the Water Resources Development Act for levee systems or other things.

And so, you know, you've got Houston with, $39 billion planned to build a barrier.

You've got Miami that's, considering, similar sort of a, an issue.

And, and the city in New York, which is looking at maybe $80 billion or more to, reduce the effects of storm surge on Manhattan.

And we have to have to deal with that.

And, I mean, you know, we're we're competing for water scarce dollars, in, in a Congress that's not interested in expanding what it's doing.

One of the things that the state had been doing, has been doing is participating in lawsuits that were filed by a bunch of parishes, against the oil and gas companies.

Those lawsuits supposedly are in the midst of a or multiple settlements that might result in some additional money coming for restoration efforts.

Whether or not that actually occurs is, anybody's guess.

Is at the moment.

I will say that if there's a positive sign, I will tell you that there was an early restera, an early, one of those agreements that was made with Freeport-McMoRan for $100 million and that Freeport has actually made the first $15 million, payment on that, which I just discovered this morning.

Believe it or not.

That's why we need.

So I don't.

Stop.

I don't understand it.

But if if there are, you know, if those issues go forward and if you can expand them to the entire coast, to all, all of the parishes, it might bring in some more money, but it's going to take cooperation on behalf of the oil and gas industry as well, to meet the requirements of those, but, Yeah, I just say, I mean, what you get a sense of is that there there's no civil there are a number of different pots that people are looking at or hoping and doing.

But the other witness is, expansion of the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act funding that comes from oil and gas.

There's a percentage cap on how much, places like Louisiana.

There's an effort in the Congress to to try to expand that as well.

So they need more resources to come here.

So it's a lot of those things.

And I just want to emphasize, I, like you said, we're not going to persuade the rest of the country to pay to solve this problem if we're not heavily investing in ourselves or not at all at this stage, we're just as well.

And so what we've settled, we don't do that or we don't.

And I'm not saying that's easy, because it means using the word taxes.

It it means actually engaging in what is it going to take for us to be able to stay and live here and, and even been able to for all the wrong reasons, like disasters, been able to avoid questions so far and to be, and some of that come from the political class.

I'm comfortable saying most politicians will avoid that conversation as long as they possibly can, and we don't have the right to avoid that conversation.

If we're going to care about people who live in Louisiana, we just can't do that.

I'll I'll throw out an alternative that no one wants to hear.

And that is, there are, at least 30 different individual plans to store carbon under the ground in Louisiana.

And there will be fees involved with the storage of that carbon.

That is a clear, connection between the the reason we're doing that is, is because you get rid of the carbon, it reduces, potentially reduces climate change effects on the state.

Well, why not use some of those fees to deal with the coastal restoration program to deal with those climate effects?

So that's something that, has not yet been really discussed much.

Let me ask you this, because we are leaving and I quickly run out of time, and I did want to open it up to some questions to, can we do this?

I mean, this is such a massive undertaking.

I keep hearing we're not going to get back to where we were before, but we can work on at least preserving what we have, restoring what we have, and just making us safer here to live here.

But this is just such a massive undertaking.

Can we do it?

I think so, and, I mean, I'll tell you why.

Not because it's easy.

It's it's hard.

And we're going to lose probably at least at least another thousand, square miles of land that we're going to lose what we do.

And it could be a little worse than that.

What's what it's dependent on is the whole world.

Because the whole world has a whole planet.

The drivers themselves now, more than anything else, is sea level rise.

And that's going to continue even in the future.

And the extent to which we can be a part of that in Louisiana, is the extent in which we can help the world.

So the world's problem, while solving our own problem.

The second part of it is, you know, on these big problems that are intractable, you have to have some optimism.

There's just no way around it.

You just can't fake it.

You can't act like, you're depressed on time and actually get these things done.

When I work for another, one of the jobs we're going to do is to show him what he didn't want to do and places.

And, and, Jean-Michel Cousteau, came to me presentation after about, and I was talking he was a of work in New Zealand and people I'm looking at this audience and there are people here old enough to remember the ozone hole.

The ozone hole.

It's not there, you know, it was intractable and it was a global problem.

And it required getting rid of emissions of chemicals that we depended on for air conditioning and and strawberries.

There's all kinds of things like that.

And I think to require that he he was worried about that because he was working in New Zealand and most of the impacts of the type of radiation that was penetrating because of the hormones was down in those areas, and they were seeing skin cancers scattered all over the.

And he was telling me about it is depressing as hell just doing it now.

Like so I said to him, do you think it's too late?

Do you think it's too late?

And he knew this is when we first you know, he said, my head tells me, yes, but my heart tells me no.

It's the same with you.

We could that.

But I think there's some optimism for us to be able to do this.

We've done incredible things in this state with these people, our people, and just the last 15, 20 years.

There's just no reason to think that we can't.

But we have to do it globally.

We can't just do it here.

We can do all the best coastal work in the world, pay for it all, and we will still lose if we can't harness the power.

And I'm optimistic long term.

But short term my, my biggest concern, is the people that live in coastal Louisiana.

And it is, you know, if it's someone my age, I used to say my parents age, but, you know, now I'm.

I'm an old guy in the room now, so, but but how do you afford if you have your house and you can't afford your flood insurance, and you can't sell your house because a buyer can't afford it, and all you can do is hope and pray that you don't have a storm in the remainder of your lifetime because your life will be destroyed.

Okay?

And we and we're already seeing young people move from the coast and move farther north.

I hope we have a plan that people you can move a little bit farther north.

But don't leave Louisiana.

Don't abandon us, okay?

You can still go back to the coast.

But I think that is that's really the short term.

That's a short term issue that I really, really worry about a lot.

Because if we don't have our people, and then, you know, Louisiana, if you're part of the Cajun culture, you can go anywhere.

You go anywhere in the world.

I guarantee you go to any city in the world, go to you know him, Hamburg, Germany, go to Manchester, and you go to restaurants and they'll have a Cajun.

Some that they have stuff they call jambalaya that I'm telling you.

It's going to be bad.

It's going to be with.

But everybody kind of latches onto that Cajun culture.

But if if we don't live on the coast and people move, like I said, I grew up on the North Shore.

So after Katrina, we had a whole bunch of people moving to Saint Bernard, to Bush, Louisiana.

Okay.

And so you no longer you no longer have the Saint Bernard culture if you're living in Bush.

Okay.

It's something different.

And so that's what I worry about the most, is that we in Louisiana will change from what makes Louisiana so unique, because our people can't physically live there anymore, because of the threat.

That's that's my short term concern.

But I have long term optimism.

Like I said, it's a short term that I worry about.

Right?

At about the same time as the, as Katrina, the National Academies of Science, put out a report called Drawing Louisiana's New Map.

And the purpose is that was to start talking about the fact that the state and the feds need to recognize that the coastline, you can't even then you could not say that the past coastline, the you know, the the whatever you want to call it, the tone of New Orleans, that it was going to stay in place.

And.

Governments need to make a decision about where that new map will will have people living, and that's going to be something that we're going to have to deal with as we move forward.

The master plan does that, but it doesn't.

But it does it more in in in glossy color maps showing how bad the flooding might be under the worst case scenarios, but it doesn't start really doing, the, the, the hard work of saying, okay, this town, you know, do what we don't think we're going to be able to make it another 20 years.

Let's start packing up.

Those are the kinds of decisions that this state is going to have to make.

It's already making.

It's already having, insurance make those decisions for people now.

It's already having, the Army Corps of Engineers make those decisions in terms of saying we'll give you money to elevate homes instead of building levees.

And here are the here are the 4000 houses in, the Lake Charles area that we're going to give you the money for it.

It's happening.

We just need to recognize it would be really great to have that map drawn and be updated every 5 to 10 years, just like the master plan is now.

And I would just say one, one of the things will be quiet.

But this is not a surprise.

Okay, if you think about think it was an article in National Geographic in 1897 or something like that that talked about living in the Mississippi River and what would happen if you in the Mississippi River.

And that article said that if you live in the Mississippi River in 2 to 3 generations in the future, you'd have this sediment starvation of coastal Louisiana and coastal land problem.

Okay.

So we've known it forever after the 1927 flood.

We live in the river right?

Then we start.

The clock started.

Okay.

And now we're about three generations into the future, right?

And the coast is falling apart.

So we known this forever.

But that particle way back when said it's okay to levee the river because you got plenty of time to fix this problem, because you can reap all these economic benefits for the agricultural areas in the central part of the country, because you no longer have these flooding.

Right?

And you can fix the problem.

We live in the river, but we didn't fix the problem.

Well, it's all very concerning.

And I mean the I can't thank you all enough for your knowledge and the work that you've done in this field and what you've shared with us today.

And I'm going to open up to some questions, but did you have a comment.

You have a mark.

Do you have a comment before we open to questions.

Anybody with some questions out there?

Okay, sir.

Thank you for bringing forth the fact that, as we're helping our ourselves, we can help the rest of the world and export technologies and everything else, in order in order to do this, and that'll get me from organizations like the United Nations more involved.

I remember on I think it was the 28th of August, right before the federal flood, listening to John Smith or watching John Sell on Channel eight.

And that's when Katrina was really starting to to grow big.

And he said, this is our Bangladesh.

And, and, and that has stayed with me ever since.

But yeah.

No, I think that that if we can get Louisiana to be a leader in the technology of coastal restoration, it'll give us a lot of comfort and a lot of credibility.

And I will tell you, we already see that.

I worked for Stantec, which is a large, international engineering firm, and we do restoration projects all around the world.

And, and in the company recognizes that the experience we get we the gain in Louisiana and the folks that we have that are from LSU or from Uno or whatever, those cats are getting to work on projects all over the world.

Okay, so everyone realizes that you got to punch your ticket with working on a Louisiana project before you can go to New New York or, Australia or the UK or whatever, and claim to be a coastal expert.

Okay, so that's happening right now.

Can I add one aspect to that?

And I want to broaden this a little bit because there's something else going on in Louisiana, and I think it gets lost, in some of the traditional, you know, every throughout history, probably every industry that successful fights to hold on to status quo as long as they can't because they're making money.

And we're doing that in Louisiana.

A lot of people are around the world who were in the only gas business.

But what we're also seeing in Louisiana is a transferring of technology from that industry into the cleaner energy industries.

There are we are building not boats, ships in south Louisiana that are going to the North Sea, they're going off of Massachusetts and Rhode Island to provide the support for wind industry, because they already have that experience from our industries here in the Gulf.

There are real jobs associated with that.

So rather than us being afraid that we might lose a job because of moving from one industry to another, we're actually able to take advantage of that.

And if we can do that, then we actually go with these powerful forces around the world that are moving to different forms of energy and take advantage of it based on what we already have, rather than get in this defensive crouch and saying, oh, we shouldn't be doing that.

Electric cars are bad and these things are terrible because they don't use oil and gas, and it's going to take a long time to phase out of oil and gas.

People are going to make money at that for a long time, but we're beginning to figure out how to economically benefit from this new world.

And the more that we can do that, I think the more we can contribute to the world to dealing with climate change and helping ourselves at the same time.

So I just want to broaden that out, thinking about it, because I think it's a it's a special time if we take it to continue.

And, I'm going to add, I'm glad you brought up the Bangladesh, because it's a good example of how we can learn from something that happened in Bangladesh for just that reason.

The, the major, systems that came in the tropical storm, whatever you call them, their hurricanes or whatever, it caused thousands of deaths in 1970 and 1990, and the NGOs around the world got together and said, we need to do something about this.

And they created a program where they build elevated buildings all across Bangladesh that were used in school rooms or other kinds of storage areas, until a hurricane came.

And then everybody in the villages would go up into those buildings and be out of harm's way.

And that dramatically reduced deaths as a result of that.

And in more recent storms, we have the ability of doing the same sort of thing here.

There's, you know, right now we're we're very concerned about the amount of time that it takes to, evacuate New Orleans and areas, along the coast because of the speeding up of, tropical storms and hurricanes as they come ashore because of climate change.

And those are things that we ought to be looking at.

What other communities are doing around the world, and learning those lessons.

Another question.

Okay.

Yes.

Thank you for everything that y'all said and brought forth today.

It's been really inspiring, especially about having hope, about always coming from an optimistic perspective.

On these huge issues of space.

I'm a native New Orleans, and I'm a young person, and I'm panicked.

I'm freaked out.

I feel the urgency of this every day of my life.

And, I'm curious because what I'm mainly hearing, that I would really like to know is how are we encouraging young people my age?

Younger, you know, slightly older, to move into these fields that y'all are working in, to be inspired, to be hopeful, to be excited about not only what Louisiana can do, but what we can do on a global scale where what's happening to encourage young people to these fields, to get them excited, to get them hopeful to get them ready to roll up their sleeves and get some stuff.

Done and be excited about, yeah.

Just about all of our little I think all of our local universities have programs and services on the engineering side and on the environmental side.

Tulane has a new institute.

The Nichols State University has a new coastal center that's being built.

LSU has a really long history of new.

Units, community college also has a coastal state.

Right.

So I think we can see the example of that with all of the groups that have participated here today, and certainly the folks who are sitting here.

But to see our pavilion and this pavilion filled with people who are interested and really involved in this issue, the groups, the agencies, the academic institutions, it it seems like there is a growing awareness and there's a growing engagement and a growing concern.

And yes, we definitely need the young people to come in and the development of the workforce, which actually is the topic of the show that we will be airing, premiering August 26th, just sort of getting that message out that it's a career.

It's a good pathway.

Yes, sir.

In Louisiana, you look at the number of tax exemptions we give to big industries.

In this state.

It's all about money preserve.

Now, of course, a lot of money can be diverted to that.

The second part is the only tax about young people come to Louisiana.

We have a legislature that's being controlled by powerful money lobbies, lobbyists lobby our legislators that do not follow the policy of science.

Until we do that, Louisiana will be the last.

And then this year.

I just like to make two quick comments.

First, I first got interested about the same time you started at your job in the fall of 1984.

I first got interested in coastal restoration when I did a first speech on it in high school was even senior year.

Secondly, when you talked about in looking to the future, I just want to make a quick comment.

About a month ago, I was privileged to be invited on a coast to restoration tour that was sponsored by Restore Mississippi River Delta and run by Richie Billings, down out of Empire, myself, and about 4 or 5 other people launched an empire on his boat.

He took us across the river and down a little bit where we could see Neptune past, which is a crevasse off of the river, a natural break in the legend of the natural levee, and you could see what was being built there.

And as we were going through, it was incredible as you, as we went through the marsh, you could see all of this new growth and the two things that that were really that stood out to me.

One trees, I mean, just every color of green you could imagine with all the different plants and everything that was growing willow trees in the background, it was incredible, Richie told us.

Just think about it.

Five years ago, this was open water.

Five years ago.

The second thing that stood out to me, where we were for a lot of it, we were across the river from.

Because I'm a lifelong Plaquemines Parish resident across the river, and because you could see the water tower and anybody who's ever been there.

And if you haven't, you need to see it at the Buras water tower.

If you go straight toward, the back levee, there is a Marina there.

It is a 180 degrees different than the environment that we were in.

So constantly.

I'm sitting there looking at this beautiful wetland scenery that might have just been created by the hand of God and across the river, I know that it is 180 degrees different.

You go over the levee and you're at the Gulf.

I mean, there are boats there, but I mean, it's marsh.

There's nothing like this.

The west bank of the river is falling apart.

And that's where a lot of this is happening.

The east bank of the river, espe is growing and it works.

And I'm talking about the diversion that we have in Plaquemines Parish that hopefully is going to come to Plaquemines Parish at some point.

It works.

And people argue about it like, wait, we didn't just develop this.

The river has been creating an estuary, a wetland, a delta forever.

It works.

You know, and I know that there are some people who are, you know, in some industry and some fishing industries that are going to have issues controlling the oyster fishermen, because oysters, we don't I mean, oysters, you you said best and I understand those people are going to be, in a bad situation.

And we already have money in the diversion program to help them.

But everybody else you boat's got a motor for the fish, the dolphins that people are talking about.

Oh, are we going to kill the dolphins?

Well, how did the dolphins get.

And Barataria Bay, we didn't put them there.

They swam there because the water was right.

Guess what they're going to do when the water turns fresh, fresh earth.

They're going to swim away.

It's that simple.

And it's frustrating to me as like I said, a lifelong resident that I'm seeing.

I'm seeing this happen again with some with a lot of folks, you know, and not a lot of folks, but enough folks who have a loud voice and say, oh, no, no, no, we don't want this.

We don't want this.

I'm glad to see at least we move forward a little bit, that my parish council stopped the lawsuit against the diversion.

And, God, I hope that the versio Well, we shall see.

And thank you.

For Mr. Hope, sir.

We are on and the you know, if you guys want to continue your conversation, you know, as we walk out.

Terrific.

But I've got to wrap this up right now.

And I want to thank you three once again for everything that you've done over these decades and all the comments that you made today in the the thoughts that you were leaving us with and everybody here.

I really thank you guys for participating, for your questions, for your interest.

I think this is something we all have to continue to work on to try to restore and protect our coast and our way of life.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you ever so much.

And thank you all.

For.

That it's all great.