Floodwaters are not just affecting those near the Atchafalaya Basin or the Morganza spillway - those who live along the coast are bracing for the worst as the water makes its way to the Gulf. Garret Graves is Director of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. He helped to negotiate more than $20 billion in hurricane and coastal protection programs for the state, and he's also worked to develop legislative initiatives on climate change, energy, coastal protection and management and hurricane protection.
Graves joined WRKF's Tegan Wendland in the studio to talk about the long-term impacts, and what the flood will do to the environment.
Listen to the interview
WENDLAND: How do you think the flooding will affect existing efforts to protect our coast here?
GRAVES: The reality is that we have an incredible amount of water coming down our rivers right now and so, when you talk
about protecting our coast an restoring our coast - looking at it holistically, this event actually shows that there opportunities to have excess water, to have excess sediment, that we should be diverting out into our wetland areas to try to mimic that process that mother nature used to cause to occur, where we actually had healthy wetlands and were able to push that water out. So I think the main thing to take away from this is that there are going to be events like this where those additional diversions would not only benefit the ecosystem - would allow us to help restore our coast, push the saltwater intrusion out, help to reduce the hypoxic or dead zone area, but also to serve as an incredibly relief valve for all of this floodwater coming down the Mississippi river.
WENDLAND: I wonder about people who've already been impacted by the BP oil spill in that region - if they're going to be further hit by some of that flood damage?
GRAVES: In some areas, without question. The folks here are incredibly resilient. We've been going out and offering up sandbags and other types of efforts to protect peoples homes and all the types of conversations we're having with people is like "Hey, look, we're going to get through this, it's going to be fine, but yeah, it's going to be tough!," but looking over the past six years - hurricane Rita, hurricane Katrina, hurricane Gustav, hurricane Ike, the BP oil spill, now this high water event - all of these are records, they're record-setting disasters that are occurring. So, people in Louisiana are incredibly independent and incredibly resilient and it's great to see them be able to persist through all of these challenges and it certainly is making us a stronger people. But, it's very important to also consider that our economy in some areas, some industry in Louisiana, can only take so much. So, I do think that some of these coastal communities that have been hit by these hurricanes and hit by this oil spill, this additional water in these communities is certainly going to push their patience and resolve.
WENDLAND: What kind of settlements are we going to be looking at? Individuals, I'm sure, will be dealing with their own insurance settlements, but what kind of federal money is the state going to seek to deal with this flood?
GRAVES: I think that some of the other work that's going to be necessary as a result of this high water event is going to be work on the levees, and it's going to be looking at this entire system - this entire river system, this huge watershed - and trying to determine if the capacity we have right now between the levees, to maintain water levels, is sufficient. We are at the brim right now and we are setting records, we're setting the highest high water records EVER in some areas of Louisiana right now. So, is this capacity we have in the river system, is it sufficient or should we be looking at doing diversions and other relief valves or outlets as an effort to complement the drainage of the country, literally AND our environmental or restoration goals. So we're going to be pushing some of these diversions as a drainage issue in addition to the environmental.
WENDLAND: How would you say the nature of this flood differs from the one in 1927? We've obviously built a lot of levees and improved our levee system, but agriculture has changed a lot since then and there's more big mono-crops, so I wonder if that plays any role in how the river is flowing or what this flood looks like now?
GRAVES: There's no question when you compare this to 1927 and 1937 and some of the high water events, that the additional development in the upper basin has caused more water to be put into this river system. If you develop areas then the ground isn't going to absorb water into the water table and aquifers, as we've seen in the past, so, there's no question that there's additional water being put into the system that has very much complicated the efforts in the lower basin, for us in Louisiana, to respond because I think it's more water than we would have seen had this happened a hundred years ago. I also think that it's important in this case to look at the technological advances. It's pretty amazing in this case that we were given the warning, the head's up, that this much water was coming down into our river system. It allowed us to get out there and do some flood-fighting activities that simply weren't an option in 1927 and 1937 when the folks in the lower basin weren't aware of what the coming days had in store for them.
WENDLAND: You just sound so positive....
GRAVES: This is a very concerning situation - the high water right now - but I think we also need to be looking forward and saying, "Okay, what are the take away from this? What are the lessons learned here?" Because we need to be thinking about the pivot - we need to be thinking about when this ends, what are the next steps. If we wait until the high water event is over, its going to be too late. So, we have a team of folks working with us right now looking at the next steps in addition to the emergency team that we have right now to prevent flooding.
WENDLAND: Thanks for coming in.
GRAVES: You bet.
