For those that do not know, Louisiana may have the largest land loss crisis in the world. So I had the opportunity to work for the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is SCAG, which covers about 19 million people. 99% of counties nationwide, regardless of whether you are coastal or inland, have experienced a flood event in the past 30 years. So let’s talk about this as a country altogether before we are all in that boat.

You’re listening to A Climate Change this is Matt Matern, your host, and I’ve got a great guest on the program, Peter Waggonner. Peter joins us from New Orleans. He is a senior policy advisor for the Greater New Orleans Inc. Welcome to the program, Peter.

Thanks, Matt, thanks for covering New Orleans and our greater ambitions as well.

I used to live in New Orleans for about five years, and love the Crescent City, and have lots of fond memories of being there, and quite frankly, a little bit of my environmental journey got started in an expose the Wall Street Journal did in the 80s about the oil companies digging canals all through the swamp lands of New Orleans and the wetlands, and making a hash of the place and dropping all kinds of heavy minerals into the water, and it’s just a disaster. And so that certainly raised my consciousness as to those problems really needed to be addressed. So I you’re engaged in helping that area occurred further environmental problems

Exactly. So we have made a lot of progress as a state since your time there.

We’ll refer to as the dark. We will not although we might be slightly more enlightened about the extent of our coastal crisis, really, and solutions towards our coastal crisis. So Louisiana now has a 50 Year coastal master plan. It is a $50 billion plan, but the ambition of this plan is that in 50 years, we will be at less risk than we are today, if all of these projects are implemented and funded and as part Greater New Orleans, anchor Gino Inc work, we bring together the business community in support of this coastal master plan.

So it’s really important not just to hear voices of community members and those affected by storms and coastal land loss, even though everyone is actually activating that business community, including lots of lots of energy companies, stand up in support of this coastal master plan. And actually, now, if we can get into this more, our biggest recurring revenue source for Master Plan Implementation is revenue from energy production offshore, and this is not the case in the 80s.

Right? That is definitely progress. So tell us about the progress that is being made there to kind of stop the coastal erosion. And we all know, or many of us have heard, about chemical alley down the Mississippi, down from Baton Rouge towards New Orleans, and all the different petrochemical plants along that corridor. And you know, it’s a big issue.

So of course, when we’re talking about the coastal land loss crisis, we also have to think about the incredible industrial facilities that our coast actually protects. So coastal restoration is absolutely essential to protecting private industry, and private industry, not only in Louisiana, but if you remember, Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana, then made it all the way up to New York and flooded much of New York. So Louisiana’s coast is kind of the first line of defense for life.

But not only in Louisiana, are the ripple effects are really far and wide. Right now, more money than ever is being dedicated to our coastal program. I believe it is about $1.8 billion this year that the legislature is going to be appropriating towards implementation of our annual plan. So we have a multi year coastal master plan and an annual plan that talks about what projects would occur that year. Is that federal funding or state funding, it is a mixture.

It’s a revenue sharing scheme that was actually not in place until after Hurricane Katrina. So right now, Louisiana or golf producing states and local jurisdictions receive 37.5% of revenues of energy produced offshore, and that again, was not the case until after Katrina. So we missed out on about 70 years of revenue that we really could have benefited from, and that 37 and a half percent is actually capped.

So we’ve reached that cap, and it still doesn’t compare to the 50% that is shared with states that produce oil and gas onshore or on land. So we are fighting there. Been legislated efforts through the rise and breeze act that would not only lift the cap but also expand what is shared to include alternate energy production, so offshore wind would be included in what is shared with Gulf producing states.

Again, we might be a little bit away from offshore wind farms at scale in the Gulf of Mexico, but we want to get ahead of that and set up a revenue sharing model so that Louisiana and our fellow Gulf states, and states like New York, which have seen large, large, large lease sales, actually receive some revenue from those lease sales, the lease sales that we have seen in the Atlantic and Pacific and golf, the states actually receive $0 from that, because there’s no revenue sharing in place, and we do not want a situation like what we’ve experienced in Louisiana, where decades go by and we continue to receive $0 from the incredible energy production that occurs.

Maybe walk us through, what are some of the things that are right on your horizon, and what are tangible projects that have been completed that have yielded benefits for the area around New Orleans?

That’s a great question, Matt, so many of you remember of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 it is still to date, the costliest natural disaster. There were some predictions that the Palisades fire would overtop that in terms of cost, they have not this far, though, thankfully, but Hurricane Katrina is still the most expensive natural disaster after Katrina, New Orleans and the Army Corps of Engineers built a $14.5 billion levee system around the city.

Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster, but it was also a huge engineering failure. So much of New Orleans levee system was under designed and under built, and maybe actively under construction during Katrina. So it was a little bit weaker, and it failed, and 80% of the city flooded. It’s at the 20 year anniversary of Katrina right now, and it was really important to highlight the incredible strides that we have made since and what we have to do over the next 20 years to ensure that we continue to improve our infrastructure and install more green infrastructure to continue to reduce our flood risk.

But we have built a $14.5 billion levee system, which really has had some major tests already. So again, Hurricane Ida hit just to the west of New Orleans in 2021 it was actually a stronger storm in terms of wind speed when it made landfall than Katrina, and our levee system held perfectly. So Katrina was about a $200 billion disaster, and those losses were prevented by a $14 billion system. So there is a huge benefit to cost ratio for that project in just one event.

Well, that’s a success story. Tell us what is being done to kind of prevent coastal erosion? I’ve read a little bit about some major projects along the Mississippi, but obviously you’re an expert in this area, so why don’t you fill us in?

So there are many different types of projects in the coastal master plan. Some include diversions, which are redirections of sediment from the river. There are controlled and even natural diversion. So some diversions have opened up on their own and appear to be building land naturally. There are also many other types of projects, like shoreline restorations. You can also channel or funnel sediment from a site to restore areas. So we’ve really seen lots of projects already.

The coastal master plan also includes these hardened levees that we see in New Orleans. So CPRA, the Coast restoration and protection authority in Louisiana, is a sponsor for cost share for some of these large projects that the Corps of Engineers put on. So one project that unfortunately, seems like it may be stalled, but will have to re emerge, is actually larger than Louisiana, and this does affect the entire supply of sediment that we even receive. So it is the lower Mississippi River comprehensive management study the Corps kicked this off in 2023 it is supposed to be a five year $25 million study of how the river works, its management all the way from Missouri to the mouth of the river, which is, of course, about 90 miles below New Orleans. And the study is supposed to consider flood protection.

It is supposed to consider sediment supply. It’s supposed to consider navigation, of course, that is a huge purpose of the Mississippi River and tributaries whole system. So it was a comprehensive look at all of the elements and benefits of the system. Even though it’s been kicked off, it looks like it might have to pause next year due to budgetary issues, but hopefully it does resume soon and continue to pave a way about the. Future management of the issue of the river. And as many people know, so after the great flood of 1927 which was a horrific loss, the decision by the federal government in the Flood Control Act of 1928 again, we’re almost at the 100 year anniversary of this was to levy the river.

So this has had amazing benefits in terms of flood protection and navigation, but it did come at the expense of Louisiana’s eroding coast. For those that do not know, Louisiana may have the largest land loss crisis in the world. We have lost 2000 square miles since the rivers levying in the past 100 years, which is about equivalent to Delaware. So we are losing American states, and it is important to be aware of this and to look at ways to generate revenue for implementation of our master plan, which really is the solution to this crisis at this point, while considering efforts that are even beyond Louisiana, this comprehensive study of river management, and it also includes the work of all of your other podcast guests and all efforts to decarbonize and invest in resilient infrastructure, really globally, because this is all a global system.

We in New Orleans, we do have to reiterate just our impact and our connection to the global economy. We really do fuel and feed the world in terms of what is imported and exported through our ports and what’s produced. We’re often the largest coffee import port, and we are the largest grain export port. So all the farmers in the Midwest and everyone who drank coffee in the morning is dependent on our ports, and thus our coastal program to protect our ports.

Tell us a little bit about the erosion in terms of, has it slowed down? Is there, you know, at what point in time will there be a turnaround where some of this erosion will kind of go the other way, hopefully. But where are we at in terms of stopping it and turning the tide?

That is a great question. I do believe that it has slowed down. We used to say that we lost a football field with land every hour. Now, more recently, we’ve said a football field is land about every 100 minutes. And now we really don’t, we don’t have a definitive stat like that, but keep in mind that that land loss was due to a multitude of factors. Of course, now we have to consider the additional challenges of salt water intrusion and sea level rise.

So it’s really hard to say that we have tapered off much of the what the coastal program intends to do is just stabilize us, is to look at, where can we build barrier islands and where, when we build projects just to maintain the land that we have now. So that’s a great question, but but a little bit hard to answer, and there are so many variables at play, unfortunately.

So tell us, yeah, I’ve read about the saltwater intrusion, and that’s a big risk factor. Is that the saltwater is coming up the mouth of the Mississippi close to the intake valves for where the city of New Orleans gets their fresh water and processes it. Tell us more about that risk and what is being done to mitigate it.

For everyone’s reference, New Orleans is not alone in this, but we drink water directly from the Mississippi River. Of course, it is highly treated and very safe to drink, and many communities do the same thing. So this river is the watershed of 31 states and two Canadian provinces. So there are again, lots of factors in terms of melt and rainfall in these states that affect the flow of water to all the way down to New Orleans.

And keep in mind that New Orleans is kind of doing the work, the dirty work, and training all of these areas. So it’s really important work, but it’s hard to predict the flows, but it’s pretty easy to predict a few weeks in advance, but it’s pretty hard to predict far out. So it doesn’t happen all the time, but for two years in a row, we had significant saltwater intrusion, meaning saltwater was actually making its way up the river, because the river was pretty low, because there was little rainfall in other places of the country. So saltwater was so Plaquemines Parish is below New Orleans, and it did make it to the intake sites there. This was 2023 it did not make it to New Orleans.

The Corps of Engineers can actually build a sill. Salt water is heavier than fresh water, so it floats lower. So the Corps of Engineers can kind of build a sill that allows for navigation to continue, but that kind of turns the salt water around. So for the next few years or few decades, that sill seems to be a viable solution, and the sill will naturally. Just be toppled over by once flows increase on the river.

But in the long term, our water utility, the sewage and water board, is conducting a comprehensive water quality study that’s looking at many, many options in terms of water treatment and how we operate our water treatment plant, and maybe do we move the water treatment plant upriver and connect it with other jurisdictions water distribution services so we share the costs and have cleaner, safer water for decades or centuries to come? So that as a consideration, and again, we do have to consider that New Orleans, while ratepayers will certainly pay for water service to offset much of those costs, we have to advocate that maybe the federal government should chip in in some accord, because we are draining 31 states and drinking it.

It sounded like is, my recollection, that there was some issue as to the navigability of the river because of the loss of volume down the river, which kind of seems mind boggling to anybody who’s seen the Mississippi River, and how big and how wide and how powerful that river is, to think that it got low enough where it potentially wasn’t navigable is bit mind blowing, and that’s not evidence of climate change I don’t know what is.

It’s almost less mind blowing or more mind blowing when you consider how large these vessels are these days, and how many containers you could stack on top of each other. And you have to consider that these are not just the ships that you imagine that are that are trying to navigate the river, but these are huge ships that, again, are essential to international trade, really. So a whole other conversation. But Louisiana is are there? Part of New Orleans is building the Louisiana International Terminal further down river that actually allows for even larger ships to make it up the river, and it will include space for advanced manufacturing and warehousing and distribution.

So a really exciting initiative and huge Greenfield port development that is incredibly important to our economy in Southeast Louisiana, and again, incredibly important to international trade. We actually, not only do we have an issue sometimes when the river is low, but we have, you may remember the Crescent City connection. It’s kind of the bridge that goes from the east bank to the West Bank in New Orleans. But that bridge is the draft is too low for these huge, huge, huge ships that want to make it to New Orleans to thus connect to Middle America and places to the west and east of us, so we are working on a huge new port facility to accommodate that demand.

Well, that’s a lot on your plate. So tell us, how did you get here? What was your path to this place and being an environmental and advocate for sustainability?

Great question, and it really does always go back to Katrina for me. So Katrina occurred when I was 12, which was a huge, devastating loss for our city. Our population is still down about 20% which creates a huge crisis in terms of how much revenue we can generate locally to fix our ever growing problems and deferred maintenance on infrastructure, but that wake up call at 12 was, for me, personally, a blessing, because it did provide a calling and a purpose that I have been blessed personally to have ever since then, for about two decades now.

So I have been interested in the environment and economy, because Katrina not only affected it not only really amplified coastal land loss when made landfall and hit our wetlands, it also shut down an economy that is necessary for the world. Oil and gas prices spiked across the country, and trade was paused. It was supposed to be paused for months and months and months, but I think the port got reopened in about eight days. So really understanding the interconnection between the environment and the economy was a gift that I received at a pretty early age, and my first job out of college was working for a city council district that includes the upper Ninth Ward.

Some of y’all might remember the Lower Ninth Ward, which had some really devastating impacts, but this council district that I worked for had some of the hardest hit neighborhoods in New Orleans after Katrina, and again, it was a challenge of a lifetime and a blessing of a lifetime to work with about 80,000 constituents who were still recovering from Katrina a decade after at that point, so working with people on the pothole in front of the street, which was really probably like a drain line failure, and really understanding what’s happening, how municipal infrastructure works, and how it is old and how it needs to be replaced, and how we should probably be replaced.

It with a technology that doesn’t even really exist yet. So working in City Hall in New Orleans was another great privilege and challenge.

Well, tell us a little bit about the changes, if any, that you’ve experienced in the first 120 days or 150 days of the Trump administration, and how that’s changed anything on the ground in New Orleans and the problems that you’re working on.

Absolutely so just for context, GNO Inc, again, Greater New Orleans. Inc, we’re just the regional economic development organization for Southeast Louisiana. However, GNO Inc is really an incredible player in state and federal policy. So in 2013 GNO Inc formed the Coalition for sustainable flood insurance. The acronym is CSF. I you can visit us at CSF. I dot info and sign up to be a member of our coalition. So this coalition includes about 800 contacts across the country advocating for the availability of flood insurance through NFIP, the National Flood Insurance Program, and affordability of flood insurance through NFIP, and the incentivization of mitigation through the National Flood Insurance Program.

So through New Orleans, I’ve had the opportunity to bring together this coalition, which, again, is a incredible privilege, and we have to do this at the federal level, of course, because FEMA oversees NFIP. NFIP was created in 1968 it started in HUD, then moved over to FEMA. So with that said, the FEMA review council that President Trump set up by executive order, either on his first day or first week is greatly important to the future of NFIP. So this review Council is not explicitly tasked with considering reforms to NFIP, but NFIP is in need of reform to make it just a more sustainable program, of course.

So NFIP, the most urgent and pressing challenge is always reauthorizing NFIP. So this National Flood Insurance Program, which covers 4.7 million Americans, for the most part, authorized on a short term basis. So its authorization is set to expire on September 30, 2025 so we are hoping for a longer term authorization of NFIP, as well as many additional reforms that encourage flood insurance participation by policyholders, the affordability of the program and the program’s value in incentivizing flood mitigation, of course.

I’m kind of surprised that it only covers 4.7 million people, because it seems like there are more people that live along the coast than than that. And if you count the entire country, it seems like a lot of people live very close to the coast.

I’m glad you called that out. So the fact is that 99% of counties nationwide, regardless of whether you are coastal or inland, have experienced a flood event in the past 30 years. So that translates to all but two congressional districts have had a federally declared disaster. So we totally agree that 4.7 people is not sufficient in participating in this program. NFIP actually used to have 5.7 million participants at its peak around 2008 or 2009 so we’ve seen participation fall off, and we have seen FEMA try to generate more revenue through premiums, premium increases through what was called Risk Rating 2.0 which went into effect in 2021 and increased premiums nationwide.

So those premium increases has led to almost a 5% decrease in participation over the past three years. So this new methodology and the importance of being covered by flood insurance is certainly a goal of our coalition to educate, inform, really, as many people around the country as we can.

Yeah, it seems as though maybe make it a mandatory condition of getting loans or whatever, because every one but two has been hit in the last 30 years, then it’s a reasonable kind of risk mitigation tool that all of us probably should be paying into, and then it makes it cheaper for everybody, if we’re all paying in exactly.

Matt, so there is something that is known as the mandatory purchase requirement, which means that if you are in a special flood hazard area, which is determined by flood mapping, you are required to purchase flood insurance if you have a federally backed mortgage. The problem is that enforcement really so many, many people are required to have flood insurance and do not.

I think studies have shown that only about 18% of people inside these special flood hazard areas have flood insurance when it’s supposed to be a lot higher than that. We also know that floods don’t just occur if you are mapped into a flood hazard area. Actually, about 40% of claims come from areas that are outside of these special flood hazard areas. So flood risk is so pervasive just and this is only one peril that we’re talking about.

From what I understand, we’re talking about probably more floods in the future, and then the weather swings from drought to flood are going to be more extreme. And as we’ve seen over the last 2030, years, this has been happening. So the risk of floods, do we see that increasing? I kind of know it anecdotally. I guess the question is, what are the stats on this?

We do see it increasing. Of course, Hurricane Katrina is the standout event that NFIP was actually, for the most part, profitable. It was making more money than it was paying out in claims until Hurricane Katrina, and ever since, it had a serious debt crisis. So right now, FEMA is in where the NFIP is in $22.5 billion in debt. Again, Hurricane Harvey really contributed to the debt as well, and some of it was forgiven afterwards. But then in Helene and Milton, FEMA had to take out $2 billion more in debt obligations from the US Treasury and FEMA, which we think should also be reformed, FEMA actually has to pay interest to the Treasury on the debt that it holds.

So it pays about $600 million a year in interest payments to the US Treasury, when our coalition believes that that $600 million would be much better invested in mitigation, in elevating properties and flood proofing and installing stormwater management systems on properties to really reduce risk, rather than just send money around.

Well, it seems, though, like every homeowner in Florida should have flood insurance, given the fact that they’re getting hit by hurricanes pretty much every year.

So that is another great point, and Florida is really what’s keeping participation in the program afloat. So if you’ve heard of Florida Citizens Program, this is it’s basically, it’s insurer of last resort. It’s the state run insurance program in Florida that is growing in, or was growing in participation because there was private insurers were not really writing in Florida. So now, if you have a citizens policy, the state will require you, this is state law, to have flood insurance as well, and Florida alone accounts for almost 1.8 million of the 4.7 million NFIP policies. So you have states that only have about 5000 policies. Meanwhile, Florida has about 1.8 million policies.

Definitely a step in the right direction, and they should be probably at 20 million. But who’s but you have certainly identified a need that the four Florida Legislature apparently agrees with.

Okay, well, we’re on the same page there. Tell us a bit about what do you see in the future, as far as positive developments and things that you’re kind of keep you awake at night.

So two really exciting prospects on the horizon. One is another NSF engine proposal called the Disaster Reduction Initiative, or dry dri as an acronym. So this initiative, again, it is about 140 partners and collaborators from across Louisiana and again across public and private sector develop and commercialize technologies that look at risk reduction.

And the goal of this initiative is to develop technologies that can inform decisions that a property owner would make in terms of how to mitigate their property and what types of insurance benefits that they would receive. It would also inform how catastrophe are modeled.

It would also inform how construction occurs and how construction is monitored to ensure that these mitigation measures are installed appropriately. It’s a really, really exciting initiative that is being led by LSU Ag Center, actually, and is trying to not only reduce our risk in Louisiana, but build our digital media and technology economy and our startup ecosystem.

So really exciting to see entrepreneurs, hopefully, if NSF does fund this proposal, get an inroads into thinking about how they can use their entrepreneurial minds and technology skills to bring together risk mitigation and insurance and some tools that would be useful to Louisianians, and products that might be useful to the country and the world.

Well, you’ve mentioned two LSU initiatives, and no two lane initiatives, so I’m a little concerned about this, and wonder if my alma mater is falling down, or you’re just pro LSU. I don’t know.

Absolutely. Not Tulane is an exceptional partner in New Orleans, and ever more so. So Tulane is working on, I think their partners probably on both of those grants, actually, as part of the huge, huge, huge coalitions. But they’re also working on their bio district initiative. I don’t know if you’ve been back in town recently, but all extending up Canal Street is a new medical corridor and is now the new bio district in New Orleans.

That’s not innovating insurance and risk reduction technologies, but but more bio science technologies, like things I don’t even understand, like nerves on a chip, really, really cool ecosystem that Tulane is building in New Orleans, and that’s just one of the many things that they do.

Well, it’s good to hear they’re on top of something. Thank you for being on the show. It’s been great talking with you, Peter, and best of luck in doing the work that you’re doing. And we’ll follow you on social media and try to keep track of that work and tell us where people can find you and contribute to what you’re doing absolutely.

So one thing that we will be working on in the future is thinking about multiple perils. So in the US, we have NFIP, which is a federal solution to flood insurance, and it provides flood insurance, but we do need to think about how we include more risks in more places, to spread risk and make it more affordable to have insurance coverage and incentivize mitigation measures at scale across the country and across risks.

So that is to say that our coalition for sustainable flood insurance will be looking at more than just flood can visit our coalition’s website right now, at CSF, I dot info and please do reach out if you’d like to learn more about our initiatives around flood insurance, and sooner than later, our initiatives to consider what it would look like to address multiple perils, like 12 other countries are doing right now. So that is a study we are undertaking, and would love to involve any listeners in.

Well, tell us a little bit about the multiple perils, just briefly, just so that, you know, we’re all a little bit more educated than we were when we started.

So as mentioned, we have only about 4.7 million participants in the National Flood Insurance Program. We see that decreasing. Meanwhile, we see more and more people go uninsured entirely in terms of their homeowners insurance. So about 13% of homeowners have no insurance nationally now, which is up from like 5% in 2019 so it’s really stark and startling how these premium increases everywhere we talk about insurance, a lot in California, in Louisiana and Florida, but shockingly, you see Nebraska and Colorado and Iowa have the largest premium increases. So this NAT cat effort tries to think about risks across perils.

So if I’m talking to Nebraska, they might shrug me off if I’m just talking about flood, but they may understand cyclone or convective storm or other risks. So we have to consider all perils, and the only way to really get out of our insurance problem is to mitigate against our risk and to spread our risk wider across perils. So we do not have concentrations in terms of geography and concentrations in terms of specific perils. So the goal is to figure out what the benefits of that would be, in terms of savings for the federal government and disaster response, and really how the private insurance market would benefit from this.

Because there are the private insurance market is responding largely to reinsurance costs. It’s a global reinsurance market that private insurers in the US have to deal with, and these global reinsurance costs are increasing dramatically. They’ve gone up over 100% in the past few years. So we have to figure out what federal intervention makes sense in terms of stabilizing the private insurance market, thus stabilizing the real estate market, and thus saving the federal government money at the end of the day.

So because fewer people will go uninsured, and hopefully fewer people will just take their risk as a given, and they’d be more incentivized to actually mitigate against their risk if they are told that, if they are to whether it’s installing a fortified roof or implementing some flood proofing mechanism, that they would receive a discount that is reliable on their annual insurance premium.

Yeah, it is a huge problem, and it’s getting worse and worse here about insurance premiums going up like $7,000 for a house versus what it used to be of maybe under $1,000 or so. It’s just kind of crazy and and the fact that it’s now 13% of all homeowners that don’t have insurance is is, quite frankly, shocking, and sounds like it’s going to probably continue to go up as these prices go. Up and people just can’t afford to pay the bill.

I would just read that there are some zip codes in Florida where the average premium is over $40,000 a year. So let’s talk about this as a country altogether before we are all in that boat.

Wow, 40,000 That’s just insane. So, yeah, so many people just can’t afford to pay that kind of premium. So maybe the insurance industry, or the problems with insurance, are finally going to shock people into hey, we’ve got to do something about climate change, because it is real, and it’s costing us $40,000 a year that it’s like real money.

Exactly, the insurance is, in our minds, the pocketbook issue that really motivates any property owner or any renter to consider the effects of climate change in the near term, and insurance could be the motivating factor to actually reduce our climate risk. So we are hopeful in that regard.

Well, Peter, thanks for your great work, being on the front lines there in New Orleans, and enjoy a Po Boy for all of us who aren’t there, and we’ll keep in touch.

Yes, everything that everyone is doing is helping coastal Louisiana. So please, thank all of your guests for us.

Okay, will do everybody tune in next week, we’ll look forward to having another great guest on the program to learn more about our work at A Climate Change and how you can help us reach our goal planting 30,000 trees in the Amazon this year. Visit aclimatechange.com don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. See you next time.