Posted on March 24, 2019
The oversight board of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority on Wednesday approved CPRA’s plan to spend about $2.48 billion over the next three years.
CPRA’s annual plan is not technically a budget. It is a request to spend anticipated revenue if the money is available.
The authority spends money from various sources, none of which is the state general fund. Sources include state mineral revenue, federal revenue sharing from Gulf of Mexico energy production, and settlement payments resulting from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.
CPRA plans to spend $748 million during the upcoming fiscal year. About 65 percent of that total would be for project construction. Total spending would rise to $788 million the following year and $945 million the year after.
The board also learned the draft environmental impact statement for the $1.4 billion Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, considered a cornerstone of Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan, will be delayed by several months. Several factors were said to contribute to the delay, including the recent government shutdown and quality assurance.
Kimberly Davis Reyher, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, issued a statement expressing disappointment in the delay, noting that the organization has advocated for such sediment diversions for more than 30 years.
“We are confident that the best science and modeling will be included in the draft EIS when it is released,” she said. “We hope that the state will look to make up delays in other parts of the timeline to get ground broken on this diversion as soon as possible.”
CPRA Chairman Chip Kline took responsibility for the delay.
“Having a sense of urgency is important here,” he said. “Getting it right is more important.”
The board also heard an update on high water levels in the Mississippi River. Heath Jones with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said 196 of the 350 bays of the Bonnet Carré Spillway are open. He said 10 were closed on Friday but that he doesn’t expect to close any more for the next week or two.
Jones said the crest of the high water is currently passing Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
“It’s a very long crest, if you even call it a crest,” he said, adding that it was more like “a plateau hanging out there for the next month.”
He said there would be no need to open the Morganza Spillway, which was last opened in 2011. There is another crest coming behind the current one, he said, but it won’t be as high.
Source: watchdog.org
