Coastal Day | Houma La | 6/16/2023

foreign of course we all know about the plight of levees and water control structures and flood controlled devices here in Terrebonne and Lafourche Parish let's concentrate on Terrebonne today Coastal day here in Terrebonne Parish a lot of dignitaries starting to gather a lot of work has been done I don't want to say millions of dollars I want to say billions of dollars that have gone to help the flooding problem here in the parish and how much longer and how much further we need to go till we can can I say totally rest never but to rest because of storm floods walk in the Civic Center pretty impressive as always and you know I guess if we really told the truth here that this hopefully in some parishes you don't need you don't need a coastal day but in terrible in Parish you need a coastal day to educate people on everything that's transpired with the coast over the years and Mr Gordy Dove the parish president has been instrumental in so many projects here in the parish and this has grown but it's a chance to educate the public to it yeah more and as you can see we've got equipment out here of equipment that's used for levees and pump stations and and as you go through there you see the different fluid or we've built 14 floodgates as big as 250 foot long the Bayou Shane which is 400 foot long we've built a 31 pump stations as big as a thousand CFS which is which is which is a million gallons every two minutes and we've doubled the capacity of pumping in terrible and Parish and this this this shows a complete uh photographs and pictures of actual pump stations and levees that are built not pipe dreams I mean you know for the last 17 years terrible Parish the state and now the feds have started coming in with money they have we haven't gotten any yet but excuse me we have the money with the Corps of Engineers and they're starting to design some floodgates in the intercoastal but this is done by the taxpayers the terrible Parish they tax themselves three-quarter sales tax plus a million and plus the state of Louisiana through cpra Coastal protection restoration Authority we've we spittle in plus Barrier Island restoration along with Coastal uh uh uh restoration we spent over 1.4 billion dollars in Terrebonne Parish but when you get a Democratic governor like John Bel Edwards in a republican Parish president the work between the two has been incredible so maybe we could teach the nation how Republicans and Democrats can get together and work together in Louisiana well you know what Coastal restoration hurricane protection has no party lines when I was in the leg I was chairman of Natural Resources in the in the legislature for 12 years and and when we started cpra there was never it was never party lines I mean you know flooding news no race knows no party except it floods people and look it's it's a concerted effort of a lot of people the Corps of Engineers have worked great with us cpra this Governor Bobby general of course Governor Ed Edward uh Governor Edwards of uh John Bel Edwards and actually we started when I was in the legislature we started with the governor Kathleen Blanco who originally started the cpra coastal protection restoration Authority she brought 10 million to the same location back in 2005 on Katrina and Rito hitting after Rita you you brought you brought this big function on and it came down and gave us 10 million dollars and then it was all it was history after that I mean we've all got together Table parts has about 350 million of their own money in it and we're building we're constantly building but everything all these all these photographs and pictures you see are actual and on the screen is actual work that's been done uh is in a is in the middle of uh construction the other thing is we talk about The Weather Channel comes in they put out to the nation that water is going to be in Terrebonne high school for these storms and of course we get on the air and we hurry up and say no that's not going to happen they're looking at the situation without the levy system and it's really unfair to Terrebonne Parish that we're judged even insurance and we've got a lot of efforts being made to bring people's insurance down but the country's slowly catching on that Terrebonne has massive Levy systems and that should be taken into effect when we're thinking about insurance and other things well more we actually have a redundant Levy system we have Morganza to the gulf which you can see right here which is a 15-foot Levy but while we're going to 15 foot but but a lot of it is 50 some of it's still 13 and then the the interior levees are 10 feet so if you do over top Leganza you have a redundant system we'd only perish in in uh Louisiana that has a redundant system and uh but but that is the problem because the core did not build our levees they're not certified by the core so Noah doesn't recognize them when they do their their uh their surge models and I and I've talked to the Admiral that runs that and said you know you can't go on TV and say that's gonna be four foot of water in terrible on Parish when it's not going to get over our full our 14 15 foot Levee so yeah that's been a problem the Congressional Delegation has been working diligently with us and in fact I'd like to thank the Congressional Delegation for bringing us 412 million dollars that the court has in hand as we speak to go ahead and get us start again well thank you for joining us once again Gordon Dove tremendous job in his his administration I know Aaron's going around and getting you different shots of some of the projects here but a tremendous day in Terrebonne Parish to educate the public on Coastal situations here in the area and trust me if you looked at our file footage at HTV years back when we had those little potato levees we call them it's a far cry like he said when you look up here 15 feet of levees here in Terrebonne Parish so we've come a long way and uh hopefully one day they'll recognize that we have levees and they'll put them on the maps and we'll get help so with Aaron Price I'm Martin falls from the Civic Center we'll see you around the corner foreign