During a recent meeting with coastal stakeholders, Gov. John Bel Edwards stated that, “Before the BP settlement, this whole master plan was an academic exercise.”
“For their part, the local levee board members, advocates, legislators and state officials who were in attendance knew exactly what the governor was attempting to communicate,” writes Jeremy Alford in his latest column. “After years of trying to convince the world that Louisiana was washing away, and following countless hours of public meetings and policy summits, the gigantic pile of money needed to jumpstart the state’s coastal master plan is finally on its way.”
Louisiana is slated to get two substantial pots of money, Alford notes: $10 billion to be paid out over the next 15 years for legal settlements reached with BP over its 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, and $140 million annually—beginning next fiscal year—from offshore oil revenue through the federal Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act.
“The combined cash flow has contractors, parish governments, engineers, landowners and many others beating their chests ahead of the competition to come,” Alford writes. “Elected officials, meanwhile, are looking and sounding more serious when it comes to their oversight roles.”
Spending priorities are already being questioned, Alford says, and bills have been introduced at the Capitol to address how some of the incoming revenue should be distributed. On another front, protection advocates and restoration supporters are facing off, with both arguing their respective projects are critical to the state’s core mission.
“Make no mistake—the state’s plan to save the coast is being funded and implemented on a grand scale that promises high hurdles,” Alford writes. “How grand is the scale? The National Wildlife Federation, for one, believes Louisiana is “embarking on the largest restoration effort in U.S. history. How high are the hurdles? The Public Affairs Research Council recently compared the process of putting the state’s blueprint into action with tackling a ‘five-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.’”
But before puzzle pieces can be placed, Alford notes that lawmakers have to approve two important plans this legislative session: A $50 billion, 50-year comprehensive master plan which lawmakers only get to weigh in on every five years, and the $644 million annual master plan that requires annual approval.
“This go around, though, there’s a slightly new twist,” Alford writes. “While in the past the annual plan was hosted in a single resolution, there are now two duplicate resolutions pending action in the session—one in the House and another in the Senate. Few can offer a straight reason why this has happened, but there’s speculation that each chamber has its own copy just in case one of them is held for political ransom.”
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
