Worried they're not getting a fair cut, Baton Rouge-area parishes consider suit over flood money - The Advocate

Litigation over '16 flood bucks to seek project award info | News | theadvocate.com

After tens of thousands of homes and businesses flooded in 2016, billions of dollars flowed to Louisiana to restore damaged structures, clear clogged waterways and create new flood protection infrastructure for the next disaster.

The Louisiana Watershed Initiative is a $1.2 billion piece of the post-'16 flood recovery, employing federal infrastructure money to build projects supported by science and aimed at improving flood control for entire watersheds, irrespective of manmade political boundaries.

Nearly seven years since those rainy, fearful days in August 2016, though, some Baton Rouge-area parishes in the Amite River Basin are saying the program hasn't doled out enough to the worst-hit parishes and hasn't communicated clearly enough or moved quickly enough to turn paper ideas into dirt and concrete.

"A lot of parishes feel that they’re not getting their fair share. We feel the same way. We submitted several projects and just aren’t getting anything," Mark Harrell, Livingston Parish homeland security director, said in a recent interview.

Part of the critique aired by some other officials has focused on the initiative's federally imposed requirement through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to spend at least 50% of the money on areas with low- to moderate-income residents. They claim it is making it harder for projects in suburban and rural areas to qualify.

Jones Creek cuts its way through the former Sherwood Forest Country Club golf course on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023. The owner of the property, Randy Dornier Sr., says he has plans to build a tennis center and future golf practice course on the site, but the city-parish is planning to buy around 65 acres of the property for a flood detention project. In the background is a golf cart bridge that came off its abutment in the August 2016 flood and hasn’t been repaired.

At Harrell's urging, the Livingston Parish Council voted June 22 to sue the state Office of Community Development, which is administering the Watershed Initiative. Other parishes are considering the same.

In that meeting, Harrell said many officials suspect the scoring process is being manipulated. The litigation will be aimed at forcing the agency to better explain its decision making.

"It’s not going to be a long, protracted lawsuit. It’s a simple question: Do they have to follow the federal law, which they haven’t so far," Chris Moody, the council's attorney, told members.

In response on Friday, state officials said they are complying with federal mandates embedded in the watershed plan and moving as fast as the federal program and local communities' own design and engineering will allow. They also challenged, as inaccurate, the contention that the worst-hit parishes aren't getting a fair cut or rules are being broken.

Pat Forbes, director of the state Office of Community Development, also pointed out that the watershed initiative aids entire drainage regions, regardless of the political boundary.

"This is a watershed, so people within the watershed are impacted by projects done anywhere in the watershed," he said.

A project in lower Ascension Parish, for instance, would allow floodwater in the Amite River Basin to pass more easily under La. 22 near Acy and is projected to reduce flooding for lower Livingston.

Parishes in the basin have been awarded $188.6 million so far, the most of any in Louisiana, state office data show. The region is also benefiting from other projects outside the initiative, including the Comite River Diversion Canal and federally funded waterway clearing in East Baton Rouge and Livingston parishes.

A 'black hole' for some

John Clark, an Iberville official and chairman of the Amite River Basin Commission, said his parish is split up among three watershed regions and feels it hasn't had a voice with the initiative and other recovery efforts, despite many poor residents who were affected in the flood.

"We just don't feel (the initiative has) been transparent and been following the rules and regulations," he said.

The parish, which had flooding in the Spanish Lake Basin that left people trapped for weeks after the August 2016 flood, has been awarded $3.2 million so far. Clark compared the parish's lack of profile in the recovery efforts to being caught in a "black hole."

The Iberville Parish Council, however, is expected to consider joining the lawsuit later this month, officials said.

Ascension Parish officials want to reroute and elevate this section of the Laurel Ridge Levee, seen Friday, Dec. 21, 2018, just north of near La. 22 and west of the Amite River Diversion Canal. The reroute would be part of a plan to extend and elevate the levee and dig a channel under La. 22 to allow floodwater to escape.

Top leadership in East Baton Rouge, Ascension and St. James parishes also have aired concerns. Administrations in those parishes are mulling joining the same lawsuit, pending council votes, officials added.

"At this point, we haven't made a decision about any potential litigation. We are seeking a solution now," said Mark Armstrong, spokesman for Baton Rouge city-parish government.

Numbers say otherwise

Office of Community Development officials say the funding data don't support the parishes' contentions.

The program has awarded $523.7 million in projects so far, and 60% of that money — nearly $311 million — has gone to the 10 worst-affected parishes, as determined by HUD.

Ascension, Livingston and East Baton Rouge, though no other parishes in the Amite River Basin, are among the 10 worst affected.

East Baton Rouge and Ascension have received the most from the watershed initiative of any parishes in Louisiana, at $93.2 million and $82.3 million, respectively. Livingston has received $25 million, seventh most in Louisiana, state office data show.

Overall, the share of dollars awarded to the worst-hit parishes so far is 10 percentage points better than the minimum-required threshold for spending on them, which is at least 50% of the $1.2 billion, according to state office data.

Work moves toward a middle point between two of the contractors involved in the Comite River Diversion Canal project on Thursday, June 29, 2023, in Zachary, Louisiana. The middle area between the two contractors is the finishing spot that is removed and finished at the end after each section is finished.

Meanwhile, the program has been able to direct only 36% of those dollars to low- to moderate-income areas, and plans are for subsequent funding rounds to focus on those areas.

Across the nation, critics have pointed out the tendency of federal disaster aid to miss the poorest residents and, through the recovery, exacerbate socioeconomic disparities.

In December, an analysis of 92,000 Road Home rebuilding grants in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina reached a startling conclusion, according to ProPublica, The Times-Picayune | The Advocate and WWL-TV.

The poorest households paid 50% more out-of-pocket on rebuilding after all grants and insurance were included than households that made more than $75,000 per year.

After the 2016 flood in the Baton Rouge area more than a decade after Katrina, however, some rural and suburban areas that don't widely meet those federal poverty requirements were among the worst hit.

Livingston officials, for instance, point out that 83% to 86% of their parish flooded in August '16.

Forbes called it a difficult balancing act to meet the various needs posed by the '16 flood and other disasters.

The kitchen sink?

The planned legal action marks a sharp reversal for the parishes in the Amite River Basin.

In March, Chip Kline, then Gov. John Bel Edwards' longtime point man on coastal restoration, urged representatives of parishes on the Amite River Basin Commission to send him a "kitchen sink" list of projects. The state had money available, he said, and wanted to award it before the governor left office.

In May, the commissioners responded with a list, including top priorities costing an estimated $340 million. Among those priorities were clearing the bottoms and removing sediment from Bayou Manchac and the lower Amite River between Port Vincent and the river's mouth at Lake Maurepas.

By June, however, commissioners were reporting that they had "heard" that list — it's not clear from whom — hadn't received favorable reviews, triggering Harrell's call to sue the state office.

Harrell later told his Parish Council that he had learned the $100 million Amite project wasn't being looked at favorably because state officials doubted its impact. Harrell disagreed.

"I want to see why they made that decision and how they made that decision instead of just being told no," he said in the later interview.

Though other funding rounds are planned, the latest $100 million round of watershed money is geared to low- to moderate-income areas and has a funding cap that would likely preclude many of the projects on the commissioners' list.

Still, Forbes said his office has not told applicants yet about their projects' eligibility for that round.

"That should occur before the end of next week," he said Friday.