Breaux Act Newsflash - CPRA Discusses Surplus and Stimulus Funds and Draft Annual Plan at Monthly Meeting

CPRA Discusses Surplus and Stimulus Funds and Draft Annual Plan at Monthly
Meeting

BATON ROUGE -- The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority
discussed potential funding from state surplus and federal stimulus packages
as well as the first draft of the 2010 Annual Plan for Ecosystem Restoration
and Hurricane Protection at its meeting Wednesday.

Chairman Garret Graves told the Authority Governor Bobby Jindal said, in an
announcement last week, he will ask the Legislature to appropriate $300
million in surplus dollars from the 2009 fiscal year to coastal restoration
and hurricane protection efforts.

Graves urged the Authority to dedicate $200 million of those potential
surplus dollars to the state's obligation to purchase lands needed by the
Army Corps of Engineers to continue to build the hurricane protection system
for the New Orleans area. He added the state will have to purchase $336
million in land by 2010 for the Corps to continue building the levees and
floodgates that make up the hurricane protection system, according to Corps
officials.

Corps officials have stated repeatedly that the system to provide a 100-year
level of protection to the New Orleans area will be complete by 2011.

"I very strongly urge this authority to commit the money needed to purchase
these lands to fulfill the state's obligation toward building this
protection system for the New Orleans area," Graves said. "We cannot afford
any delays in building this system and if we don't put forth the necessary
funds, we could lose billions in federal money. That will satisfy the
state's obligation to the project through 2011."

Additionally, federal stimulus money from the bill signed Tuesday could be
available for coastal restoration and protection projects but no particular
projects have been identified thus far, Graves said.

He said federal agencies that work on coastal restoration projects like NOAA
and the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service will receive stimulus package dollars
and the Authority and OCPR will work with those agencies as closely as
possible.

The Authority was also briefed on the Fiscal Year 2010 Draft Annual Plan for
Ecosystem Restoration and Hurricane Protection by Kirk Rhinehart of the
OCPR. The draft plan identifies a host of protection and restoration
projects that will receive funding over the next three years and the current
funding sources.

More than $1.2 billion in funding is currently available and will be spent
on projects in the next three years with about one percent of that being
spent on planning and studies, 46 percent allocated to land acquisitions for
hurricane protection projects and 39 percent spent on construction,
according to the plan.

Of that $1.2 billion, more than $75 million will be dedicated to the
beneficial use of dredge materials from navigation channels to build
wetlands and more than $10 million will be used for barrier island
maintenance.

Rhinehart said unlike the previous two annual plans approved by the
legislature, the FY 2010 Draft Plan identifies projects over a three-year
span rather than one year and it only lists projects that can be funded with
money that is currently available. Past plans identified projects that could
have been funded if more money was available.

"Funding is available through state surplus money and other programs for the
next three years, but we need to work on finding ways to keep these programs
at their current levels and even increase funding for their expansion," he
said.

Graves said the draft plan represents a more than 1500 percent increase in
the amount of restoration and protection work being funded with state money
when compared with the investment made in the years before the CPRA was
formed in 2005.

The OCPR is conducting public meetings for the draft plan this week and will
take public comments regarding the plan through March 27 of this year. A
final copy of the plan must be approved by the Authority and submitted to
the Legislature before this year's regular legislative session. The Draft
2010 Annual Plan can be read at the following address:
www.lacpra.org/draftannualplan2010.

In other business, the Authority discussed the ongoing efforts to build the
Morganza to the Gulf hurricane protection system for the Terrebonne Parish
area using state and local dollars. Corps officials said recently the
68-mile system of levees and floodgates that has received federal
authorization twice in the last 10 years will have to be studied for another
three or four years before Corps construction work can begin.

The Authority also discussed ongoing efforts to keep the West Bay Diversion
in Plaquemines Parish operating and supplemental construction funding for a
shoreline protection project at the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in Southwest
Louisiana.

For more information about the CPRA and Louisiana's coastal protection and
restoration efforts, please contact Chris Macaluso at (225) 342-3968 or by
email at chris.macaluso@la.gov.