Now, practically 19 years since New Orleans’ catastrophic levee breaches, there is no such thing as a controversy over the place the blame for these breaches lies. In response to all closing investigations, it belongs squarely on the federal Military Corps of Engineers, not on native levee officers.

Nonetheless, within the speedy post-flood chaos, lawmakers made efficient modifications to native levee governance. The Orleans Parish Levee Board was consolidated with the Lake Borgne and East Jefferson boards, creating the Southeast Louisiana Flood Safety Authority East. It acts as one among two Orleans-area levee boards, together with Southeast Louisiana Flood Safety Authority West.

Most significantly, the governor now not controls who’s appointed to serve on the brand new authority. That was taken out of the arms of the governor and given to a blue ribbon 11-member nominating committee with staggered time period limits.

After Hurricane Katrina, Jay Lapeyre, then chairman of the New Orleans Enterprise Council, helped to spearhead efforts to reconfigure the state’s six levee boards and workers them with impartial professionals well-suited to make selections about flood safety. 

The boards wanted a special degree of experience, Lapeyre believed. So, 17 years in the past, two nominating committees have been arrange by state regulation requiring that the nominating committee create a board that features particular experience, together with civil engineering, hydrology and development engineering. The method was supposed to take away potential conflicts from the choice course of. 

“We separated it from politics as greatest we knew how,” Lapeyre stated at an East Flood Authority assembly final month, as he described the laws handed 17 years in the past. he stated. “We created an impartial nominating committee with a degree of dedication and diligence that may assess every of the board’s candidates.” 

The committees embrace engineering, science and enterprise specialists from universities and civic teams. They vet all nominees and ahead one or two names for every board opening (one identify for some openings and two names for others) to the governor. 

“That course of has labored; the mechanics of what we’ve achieved have labored,” stated Lapeyre, who has served on the nominating committees since they have been shaped. 

For many of these 17 years, he has acted as chair for the committees. So Lapeyre is aware of this course of and its historical past nicely. However now, he’s elevating alarms, as a result of it appears that evidently Gov. Jeff Landry is appearing towards the intent of this post-Katrina laws.

“Now we have a governor who doesn’t actually have an curiosity within the historical past of the system and the processes,” Lapeyre stated, as he described how, lately, for a Jefferson Parish emptiness on the board, Landry opted to not transfer ahead the committee’s nomination of an “immensely well-qualified candidate,” Dr. Norma Jean Mattei, a College of New Orleans civil-engineering professor who additionally has served as president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. 

We expect Lapeyre is true: the governor is appearing towards the intent of the regulation.

As a result of that’s not how the regulation was designed. The post-Katrina laws states that the Governor “shall” appoint the nominee vetted and chosen by the nominating committee. 

As soon as the nominating committee recommends nominees, the governor merely forwards the identify, or names, to the Senate. The governor’s position is to ahead that identify to the Senate. 

The governor’s latest refusal needlessly re-injects politics right into a well-operated nominations course of. There might be no query in regards to the committee’s nominations up to now and definitely little doubt about this candidate’s credentials. Few persons are extra certified than Dr. Mattei. 

Lapeyre reached out to the governor’s workplace for steering, to raised perceive what had occurred. However he has heard nothing. “We don’t know what to do at this level,” he stated. “Primarily, what I believe it does is negate the operate of the nominating committee.”

There isn’t a proof that commissioners chosen by governors previous to Katrina had any position within the flood disaster of August 2005. However we would like that the blue-ribbon committee choose our future flood-protection leaders. Not the governor.

In spite of everything, the very survival of our area hinges on flood safety. 

Sandy Rosenthal is founder and president of Levees.org. H.J. Bosworth, Jr., P.E., is lead researcher for Levees.org.

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