Mary Landrieu on Louisiana’s Coastal Masterplan and A Solution for the Rising Cost of Flood Insurance
Mary Landrieu’s fluency with coastal issues in Louisiana was forged by necessity. The duel calamities of Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill five years later created a sense of urgency around water issues that was largely unprecedented. At the urging of New Orleans architect David Waggoner, the three-term senator traveled to The Netherlands to study best practices in water management. She helped craft policy that ensured that settlement money by law went to land-restoration efforts; she was part of legislative efforts to cap flood insurance, which became a huge issue in her unsuccessful run for a fourth term in 2014.
Initially I reached out to Landrieu in an attempt to get her reaction to recent political maneuvering by Governor Landry over appointments to the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority. She was not up to speed on those developments, but she was willing to talk about the current status of the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan, river diversions, and the flood insurance crisis. Landrieu is currently a senior policy advisor at Van Ness Feldman, a Washington, D.C.–based law firm. What follows is an interview that has been edited for length and clarity.
MCP: Martin C. Pedersen
ML: Mary Landrieu
Let’s talk about the ongoing land restoration efforts in Louisiana. You had a big role in setting up the funding mechanisms for that. What’s the status of the coastal master plan, as you see it?
Let me start by saying that it’s really been remarkable that the state’s master plan has sustained its integrity and effectiveness through several different administrations, Democratic and Republican. It has enjoyed widespread support from the legislature. I hope that will continue. Of course, there have been some recent challenges with the election of Governor Landry, who seems to want to put more emphasis on building levees than following the science of the master plan. However, building levees is very popular in Louisiana. People are looking for more immediate solutions to flooding than long-term restoration, which you can understand. But I continue to believe that the master plan could be modified to meet that objective and not thrown out with the bath water.
How would you modify it?
I would modify it by putting a little more emphasis on levee building and construction for communities that are front and center. I am no longer in public office, Martin. I’m not advising any particular organization, but I understand and recognize the pressures that some critics of the master plan are under. I’m not unsympathetic to those arguments, but I do think that you could do a modification without walking away from it.
Secondly, I am still a strong supporter of the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion. I realize that it will cause some disruption to fisheries. I understand that. The fisheries and individuals and businesses that are affected can be compensated under the law. But the restoration and the diversion of sediment from the Mississippi River is the only way to secure a long-term future for south Louisiana, and to maintain a vibrant economy, south of Alexandria, south of New Roads. So I am a strong believer and supporter. It’s been disappointing to see the attacks on that project. I hope that the legislature will push back and the coastal leaders will push back and continue the diversion projects that have proven to be universally, for the most part, supported by the broad scientific community.
From the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority: “The outfall area of the project, the Mid-Barataria Basin, is suffering from land loss due to hydrologic alteration, sediment deprivation, subsidence, sea level rise, and saltwater intrusion. By re-establishing a connection between the Mississippi River and the basin, the MBSD Project would restore a riverine/estuarine connection and mimic historic deltaic sediment deposition.”
Where’s Governor Landry on that project?
I’m not sure.
He’s called climate change “a hoax,” so I don’t know you square that position with the science. But let’s talk about one of the other elephant in the room: flood insurance. You did a lot of work on that, and the situation has gotten more dire since you’ve left office, in terms of the cost and availability. How do we fix this?
Well, first of all, the politics of this is tough. Because in Washington, the politics is a combination of the insurance industry, which is focused on maximizing profits and minimizing payouts, and their association with the left wing of the Democratic party, or the progressive party’s left wing, which doesn’t really want people living in low-lying coastal areas. That is their position. They don’t believe it’s sustainable. They don’t want it to happen. And so when that powerful group joins the conservative insurance industry, it has very negative effects on the broad middle class and coastal communities that have existed along waterways and coasts since the beginning of time. That’s the big frame.
So what I did in Washington, recognizing that, was to try to stand in the middle and do everything I could to protect the middle class by arguing that the flood insurance program may have to be subsidized by the federal government. It may not be able to run without subsidy. There’s nothing wrong with the federal government subsidizing things that are important. It does that all the time. And if the federal government wants coastal communities to continue operating—whether they’re in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, or Louisiana—with industries that must by nature be on the coast—commerce, maritime, transportation, fisheries—then the federal government should be willing, contrary to what the fiscal hawks and insurance companies say, to make some reasonable subsidies available. So that fight continues because, while people can and should be responsible to purchase flood insurance to elevate their homes appropriately, to keep out of repetitive flooding situations, or to move into places that are protected by levees, the federal government has a responsibility, not just a role, but a responsibility to be partners with these communities.
Just like I would argue that the federal government has a role and responsibility to help communities that are suffering from wildfires. Just like I think the federal government has a responsibility to help communities that suffer from droughts. The federal government subsidizes billions and billions and billions of dollars to farmers, when they suffer droughts and weather related instances, yet they flinch when we say, we need some subsidies to keep insurance rates lower. So homeowners insurance rates in this country must fall, substantially, 50% to 60% from where they are now, in order for middle-class families to be able to maintain living. And it’s not just coastal communities that people would automatically think of. I believe there were more flood insurance claims in Pennsylvania than almost any state, which surprised me. Tennessee has flooding problems.
This is not just for the coastal states that everybody always thinks about. It really affects many states around the country. So one of my top-of-mind suggestions is an all-hazards insurance program that every homeowner in the country could pay into, over and above your homeowner’s insurance. I’m talking about weather-related insurance that would take in droughts, floods, wildfires, earthquakes.
And that would be a federal insurance program?
Yes, a federal insurance, but it could have public/private involvement, and if you spread that risk across all homeowners in America, I think the program could potentially be close to self-sufficient. I didn’t have time, I wasn’t re-elected, so I couldn’t work on this, but had I stayed in the Senate, I was going to try to work on this issue.
Long term, that’s probably the only solution, because there’s going to be areas that will be uninsurable by private, for-profit insurance company standards.
Yes. And the reason that this idea was not that popular, let’s say, 15 years ago is because the states that didn’t flood would say, “Why should we contribute to a fund when we’re not flooding?” That was a legitimate response then, but now those communities are flooding. And if they’re not flooding, they’re subject to wildfires; if they’re not subject to wildfires, they’re subject to tornadoes. My view is there are enough hazards everywhere, every day now, in every state in America, that maybe people will think, “Oh my gosh, maybe we should pool all of our resources and intelligence together and protect ourselves, through a well-run, efficient, federally subsidized insurance program so that we keep those rates low enough for middle-class people everywhere.” That’s all I have to say on it. Whether this will ever happen or not, I don’t know.
The one thing that I worry about—well, I worry about a lot of things—but one of the things I worry about, as it relates to climate change, are large, sudden population displacements. I think the unavailability of insurance, if that continues, will force drastic movements of people, and at least a federally funded insurance program might mitigate that. What do you think?
Of course it would, and it would stabilize these communities. Think about the cost of the stranded assets and the cost to a nation that has just decided that it can’t protect hundreds of its communities. It’s just ludicrous to think about. We have to think of ways to live more resiliently in these low lying areas. And I’ll give you an example. The Netherlands came to grips with this problem many years ago, because 60% of their economy is generated in areas of the country that are below sea level. The Netherlands doesn’t have the option to move, because their people don’t want to move to Germany or to other countries.
The only way they can remain in the Netherlands is to be inventive, creative, and smart. We have to be more creative, smart, and think about how we can make our communities—where they are—more resilient. We elevate homes, we build levees, we find room for the water, we accommodate this rising tide. We fight against it, of course, by continuing to reduce emissions, but you just can’t abandon New York City. You can’t abandon Houston. You might be able to move a few people from Terrebonne Parish to Baton Rouge. But you’re not going to move Miami. You’re not going to move New Orleans. So the federal government should get smarter and much more aggressive about being a better partner to middle class families and to businesses that need, by the nature of what they do—ports, commerce, fisheries—to operate on the coast, and help all of our communities sustain themselves, where we are.
Featured image via Waterways Journal.