[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 110 (Wednesday, September 15, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9257-S9260]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HURRICANES
Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I rise to speak this morning about a
very important issue for the country, particularly for the gulf coast
region and the State of Louisiana.
Madam President, as you know, although your State of Alaska is not
located in the southern part of the Nation, you and other members of
society are well aware of the devastation that occurred to our coastal
communities, whether on the eastern coast or southeastern coast or the
central gulf.
As is the case this morning, Hurricane Ivan, a category 4 hurricane
bearing down on the gulf coast region, according to the latest weather
reports and indications based on good research that is being done here
by many of our Federal agencies, we can somewhat predict the path of
the hurricane. With our most sophisticated systems, radar and weather
tracking, pinpointing with some accuracy, there is a projection of
where this killer storm, this major storm, may hit. It seems as though
it has turned north and is headed right now to the Mississippi-Alabama
line, but it could move within the next 12 hours to the east or to the
west.
As we wrap up our business here in Washington, the entire gulf coast,
and the State I represent, Louisiana being one of those Gulf Coast
States, Mississippi and Alabama and the panhandle of Florida, is under
a mandatory evacuation. Why? It is because this is a huge storm. It is
a category 4. We hope and pray, and there are some indications, that it
will change to a category 3. But it is a major storm with high winds of
165 miles per hour.
It is not the first time a storm of this size or intensity has hit
the gulf coast. We know by reading history. Several decades ago, some
of us actually lived through extremely powerful and killer storms like
Camille or Betsy in Louisiana and other States throughout the gulf
coast that proved to be very dangerous, with loss of life and billions
of dollars in property loss.
We don't have to be reminded that Florida has just been hit in the
last 3 weeks twice already. This one will be of historic devastation in
Florida, having had three hurricanes hit in such a short period of
time.
I want to speak this morning about what we can do here in Washington
a little better, with a little more energy, with a little more focus to
help the people in Louisiana and throughout the gulf coast area. Not
only do they deserve our help, but because of the energy industry and
the economic benefits they bring to the whole country, they not only
need our help, they deserve our help. They deserve our attention.
As I have stated, the hurricane is to make landfall sometime in early
Thursday morning, sometime between 1 a.m. and 6 or 7 a.m.
The people of Louisiana know the devastation this kind of storm can
bring. Let me show a picture because I think a picture is worth a
thousand words. While this looks terrible and horrible--and it is very
frightening, as you can see a woman, standing water rising over her
waist, trying to get to safety--this is not a hurricane. This is only a
tropical storm. This was Tropical Storm Isidore that hit the gulf coast
in 2002. This wasn't a category 1 hurricane. We are talking about
severe devastation when a category 3 or category 4 or category 5
hurricane pushes that water out of the gulf, out of Lake Ponchartrain
into the tremendously populated areas around the gulf coast.
This is what people have been fleeing from for the last 36 hours.
When I say fleeing, I mean all of the interstates going north out of
Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, and interstates going west, as
people try to leave the east and head for safety toward Houston. They
have been, at times, in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours. People can
walk faster than the rate the cars are moving. Luckily, the Governors
of these States are very skilled and able, the local elected officials
have been through this many times and were quick to see the danger,
even though the path could not be predicted, and were quick to call for
evacuations days ago. This morning, we received reports that the
highways are clearing in some parts along the Gulf of Mexico. Some
families spent yesterday 12, 13, 14 hours in automobiles, going less
than 5 miles per hour as they tried to find safety and shelter all
along the gulf coast to flee a storm of this magnitude.
Again, this is not a picture of a hurricane. This is a tropical
storm. That is why people are fleeing in the gulf area.
I will speak for a moment about energy and about what the gulf coast
contributes to the energy independence and energy security of this
Nation. As millions of people have been leaving their homes to flee to
higher ground, 442 rigs or platforms have been deserted by companies in
the Gulf of Mexico. When I say deserted, not just, of course, left to
wreak havoc, but they have been tied down, secured, supported. All
nonessential emergency personnel have had to move out of the Gulf of
Mexico. This evacuation represents 50 percent of the manned rigs and
platforms in the gulf.
Right now, oil and gas from the Gulf of Mexico and coastal Louisiana
represents 60 percent of the entire Gulf of Mexico production. For the
time being, that has been shut down because of Ivan. I have discussed
with Members of this Senate the importance of our LOOP facility. The
Louisiana Offshore Oil Port sits right out on the Continental Shelf,
near Port Fourchon Louisiana, and is a superport responsible for the
entrance of 1 million barrels of oil a day.
We are in Iraq, in an important battle, but part of our objective
there is to secure an oil supply for the region and for the Nation and
to use that for the betterment of the people of Iraq, for their growth
and development and the security and stability of the world, as well as
to fight for other issues. We are fighting to get 1 to 3 million
barrels out of Iraq, and right here in the Gulf of Mexico, today, we
have a facility that has virtually been shut down because of a
hurricane. Nearly a million barrels is being imported in this country,
and exported, a year.
Port Fourchon is a small port that sits at the very edge of Highway
1. It is unbelievable to view the picture. This is Highway 1 in
Tropical Storm Isidore. That was another storm, not a hurricane. This
damage occurs in a tropical storm. We cannot see the highway because it
is covered with water. The highway leads down to the gulf. Port
Fourchon, the LOOP facility, is right off of this shore where 18
percent of the offshore oil and gas revenues flow into this country
through this little road called LA 1 that we have been fighting now for
several years. With the leadership of Senator Murray and Senator Reid
and others, Senator Jeffords and Members on the Republican side, as
well, we have been able to get a designation as a special highway, but
we are still waiting for the big bucks to help with lifting this
highway and expanding it so we can have a functioning port.
The hurricane is scheduled to hit Mobile or west of Mobile right now.
I just spoke to the Port Fourchon Port Director and they expect this
highway to be underwater by 1 p.m. today--again. This is the major
route of oil and gas into the United States of America. This is Highway
1, Port Fourchon, and the LOOP facility, which is the only facility in
the Nation that imports and exports oil and gas at that rate and at
that level.
My point is, I hope we will again use this opportunity to focus on
the critical infrastructure needs necessary for Louisiana and the gulf
coast of Mississippi and Alabama primarily to protect itself not just
from homeland security threats from terrorists but real threats of
weather.
People might say: Senator, why did they build the port here in the
first place? I understand that. If we could do it again, knowing what
we know now, perhaps that would not have been done. I will speak for a
minute about that because I want people to understand the argument. Men
and women are here because the oil and gas is here. If we
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could figure out a way to have people live in Chicago and commute every
day down to the Gulf of Mexico to get the oil and gas out of the
ground, then people would not have to live here, but we have not
figured that out yet. So real life men and women and children and
families live here. They have to live here to serve as the platform for
the oil and gas that keeps the lights on all over the country. Yet we
ask them time and time and time again to literally risk their lives to
do so, and we cannot find a few million dollars in this budget to lift
this highway so either they can get out or they can be safe.
This is a heavy rain. This occurs in a tropical storm in a heavy
rain. I don't know what will happen with the hurricane. That is why
people are not panicked but are most certainly concerned. This picture
shows the main bayou that runs inland. The only way the rigs can get
out of the gulf, they can either dock along the ports--Morgan City, New
Iberia, Galveston, and come into Houston for some protection, the only
way they can get in is through the Mississippi, up inland, through this
bayou. They cannot get in when this bridge is down. The people cannot
get out unless the bridge is down. So every time there is a storm, the
local officials in my State have to say: OK, kids and families, you all
go over the bridge. And they hold up the rigs. Then they let some of
the rigs through, and they hold up the families trying to get out.
This is outrageous. We have money in the budget to build this bridge
so we can move our infrastructure out of the gulf. And the Presiding
Officer understands the magnitude of the barges, cranes, and sheer
weight and size of the equipment I am talking about. It is not a Tonka
toy. It is not Legos. It is big, heavy equipment that has to be moved
at great danger to the men and women who have to move it to save
insurance companies money, to save taxpayers money, to save
shareholders money for these companies.
Let me talk about what else is going on. Louisiana wetlands are not a
beach. I have spent a lot of my life growing up in the gulf area, and I
have spent a lot of time on the Florida beaches, and I have never seen
anything more beautiful. We in Louisiana support those beaches. We
understand the tourism. We are some of the tourists that go there. But
our coast is not a beach. We do not have a beach unless you want to
count Grand Isle. It is beautiful and wonderful, but does not look like
Destin, Florida. It is a lovely small beach. That is about the only
beach we have. The rest of our coast is not a beach. It is a wetlands.
It is not the wetlands of Louisiana, it is America's wetlands. It has
been washing away at an alarming rate. The difference between a major
hurricane coming out of the gulf in 1940 and a major hurricane coming
out of the gulf this year in 2004 is we have lost thousands and
thousands of acres. The size of the State of Rhode Island has been lost
in the last 50 years, so the buffer has been shrinking that protects
the city of New Orleans and much of the populated portions of
Mississippi. That has been lost.
So the people who live on the gulf coast of Mississippi and the
southern part of Mississippi and Louisiana are at greater and greater
risk because those barrier islands that once existed, those acres and
acres and square miles of wetlands, have been eroded. Why? For two
reasons. One, we leveed the Mississippi River for commerce, not just to
benefit Mississippi and Louisiana but to benefit the Midwest, the
Northeast, the West, to open up trade and opportunity up and down that
Mississippi River. We had no choice.
If you want to go to before the trade and go to when the country
started, we had to anchor the mouth of the Mississippi to literally
create the Nation--unless we wanted to stop at the Kentucky border or
the Shenandoah Valley, which was a choice at one time. We could have
just made the United States go from the east coast to the Shenandoah
Valley, and we could have had a wonderful nation right there in the
East. But we decided to go West. We decided to go all the way to the
Oregon Trail with Lewis and Clark. President Jefferson had a vision,
but that vision could not possibly happen without anchoring the
security of the mouth of the Mississippi River. So we did. We had to
basically try to tame this very wild place, very wet place, very low-
lying place.
But we did it not just for ourselves; we did it for the whole Nation,
with the Nation's help and support. We did not pay for everything, but
we contributed a great deal. Today we continue to give billions of
dollars out of the gulf coast in oil and gas revenues and taxes that go
to this country. We continue to send our labor and our support and our
money to this Nation. Yet time and time again, when Louisiana comes to
ask, Could we please have just a portion of the revenue that we send?--
we are not asking for charity; we are asking for something we earned;
we are happy to share with the rest of the country to help invest in
infrastructure--we are told: We cannot do it this year. We do not have
enough money. It is not a high enough priority.
Well, I do not know when it is going to get to be a high enough
priority. I hate to say maybe it is going to take the loss thousands of
lives on the gulf coast to make this country wake up and realize in
what we are under-investing. Again, we lose a football field every 30
minutes. We have lost more than 1,900 square miles in the past 70
years, and the U.S. Geological Survey predicts we will lose another
1,000 square miles if decisive action is not taken now.
Now, we have made good plans in the last several years to save the
Everglades. We are well on our way to do that. We have plans underway
to restore the Chesapeake Basin, which is an extremely important
ecosystem to this part of the country. We have some preliminary plans
underway in the Great Lakes. But no area--not the Everglades, not the
Chesapeake, and not the Great Lakes--of this great Nation contributes
more economically or energy-wise than the wetlands of America that lay
to the south along the gulf coast. They do not compare to the energy
contribution; they do not compare to the fisheries contribution; they
do not compare to the commerce contribution of this Nation or the port
contribution when you put it together. Yet we seem to be getting less,
not more.
So we have to stop the vanishing wetlands. We have plans in Congress.
We are going to continue to push, with Lamar Alexander's help, on the
Energy bill. We have a new bill moving through Congress called the
Americans Outdoors Act that seeks to dedicate a portion of those
revenues for coastal States, even States that do not produce oil and
gas off of their coast. I think we should be willing to share some of
these coastal revenues for coastal-related issues. Some people
disagree.
The people of Louisiana do not mind sharing. It is sort of our
natural way. We are happy to do that. We do not even want it all. We
just want our fair share. That is what this bill does.
We also have a bill through the WRDA legislation, which is the
traditional funding for the Corps of Engineers, the Federal agency
primarily responsible to keep the waterways dredged, to keep the levees
up as high as possible, to work with our local flood control folks,
particularly our levee boards in Louisiana, which are some of the most
important public entities we have, that literally keep people dry from
heavy rains and from floods and storms of this nature.
But let me also repeat, again for the record, I know every time a
hurricane hits in North Carolina or South Carolina or Florida, other
people who are not familiar with hurricanes say: Why do the people live
along the coast? Why do we let people live along the coast? I think
that is a legitimate argument that could be made for resort
communities. It is not mandatory they live there. They choose to live
there because, of course, the coastlines are very pleasant and
beautiful places to live. In fact, Americans really agree with that
because two-thirds of the entire population of the United States live
within 50 miles of the coast. So that is an issue that could be
debated, and we could talk about that.
But Louisiana people who live in Port Fourchon, while they enjoy
living there, believe me, and while they love to shrimp and they love
to fish, they are there doing a great service for this Nation, working
in an energy industry and trying to dig out of the gulf the resources
this country needs. Where people live along these bayous, they are
fishing and they are contributing to industries. They do not have a lot
of fish
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in downtown New York. They do not have a lot of fish in Chicago. The
only place you are going to catch fish is in the water. So you have to
live there basically to catch the fish. They are living there for a
livelihood.
In addition, New Orleans itself was settled as the security as this
Nation grew. Now people want to say, maybe we should--if a big storm
hits--just move New Orleans. I do not know how you move a major
metropolitan area. But I also say this about my great city, where I
grew up and have represented, still to this day--and in many different
ways throughout my life--the people, the city is 9 feet generally below
sea level. But we have some of the most sophisticated pumping systems
in the world.
In fact, the engineers who built the pumping stations that supply New
Orleans with flood control were the engineers who helped Holland and
studied in Venice. We do not have halfway pumping systems. We have the
best in the world. We have the best engineers, the finest pumping
systems. We are an old city, and we spend a lot of our money to keep
those pumping systems up to date. In fact, the Federal Government has
been a major partner. I am proud to have led the effort. The Southeast
Louisiana Flood Control program has invested hundreds of millions of
dollars, Federal and State money, to upgrade those pumping systems. So
we are not Pollyanna about this. We are not Johnny-come-lately. We have
great engineers. We are smart. If fact, we have taught the world how to
drain floodwaters because we have been doing it the longest, for over
300 years.
But the city can do just so much, when it has a population that is
challenged. We are not the wealthiest State. We are not the richest
State. We need our Federal Government to understand that we are happy
to share our resources and riches with the world, but we do deserve a
greater portion of these revenues to keep our people safe, to keep our
infrastructure intact, and, most certainly, to be respectful of what
the people of Louisiana and the entire gulf coast contribute to our
national well-being and security.
I want to put up another picture. This is another picture of LA 1.
This is on a day when you see the traffic backed up. Obviously, there
was something wrong with the Leeville Bridge. But this is what the
traffic looks like trying to get out before a hurricane: the trucks,
the cars, the schoolbuses, trying to leave a place where they were
working on behalf of not only themselves but on behalf of this Nation.
The least we can do is send a little money to fix this highway and to
keep people safe and high and dry in these storms.
Let's pray, Madam President, that Hurricane Ivan does not hit the
city of New Orleans directly. I am going to submit a front-page article
from the Washington Post for the Record. It is an article about what
that might be like. One of our emergency personnel who has been working
on an emergency plan has stored several thousand body bags in the event
of a major flood in the city of New Orleans. Let's hope that never
happens. But I have to say, as a Senator representing the State of
Louisiana, the chances of it happening sometime are pretty good. If we
do not improve our transportation evacuation routes, invest in
protecting this infrastructure, and focusing on reinvesting some of the
tremendous wealth that has been taken from this area, and reinvesting
it back, we will only have ourselves to blame.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the article entitled
``Awaiting Ivan in the Big Uneasy'' be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2004]
Awaiting Ivan in the Big Uneasy
New Orleans Girds for Major Damage
(By Michael Grunwald and Manuel Roig-Franzia)
New Orlean, Sept. 14.--Walter Maestri, an emergency manager
here in America's most vulnerable metropolitan area, has
10,000 body bags ready in case a major hurricane ever hits
New Orleans. As Hurricane Ivan's expected path shifted
uncomfortably close to this low-lying urban soup bowl
Tuesday, Maestri said he might need a lot more.
If a strong Category 4 storm such as Ivan made a direct
hit, he warned, 50,000 people could drown, and this city of
Mardi Gras and jazz could cease to exist.
``This could be The One,'' Maestri said in an interview in
his underground bunker. ``You're talking about the potential
loss of a major metropolitan area.''
Forecasters said Tuesday night that they expected Ivan to
veer at least 70 miles east of New Orleans before making
landfall early Thursday, somewhere along the Gulf Coast
extremities of Louisiana, Alabama or Mississippi. But Ivan
has consistently drifted farther west than their predictions.
This port city's levees are designed to withstand only a
Category 3 storm, and officials begged residents to evacuate
the area ``if you have the means.''
By evening, the city's few escape routes were spectacularly
clogged, and authorities acknowledged that hundreds of
thousands of residents would not get out in time. The
stranded will not be able to turn to the Red Cross, because
New Orleans is the only city in which the relief agency
refuses to set up emergency storm shelters, to ensure the
safety of its own staff. Even if a 30-foot-high wall of water
crashes through the French Quarter--Maestri's worst-case
scenario--stranded residents will be on their own.
New Orleans is often described as a disaster waiting to
happen--it is mostly below sea level, practically surrounded
by water, artificially kept dry by pumps and levees, rapidly
losing its natural storm protection. But rarely have its
leaders sounded so afraid that the wait could be over soon.
``I'm terrified,'' said Windell Curole, director of the
South Lafourche Levee District in the swampy bayous south of
the city. ``I'm telling you, we've got no elevation. This
isn't hyperbole. The only place I can compare us to is
Bangladesh.''
More than 100,000 Bangladeshis died in a 1991 storm, and
Curole is genuinely afraid that a similar tragedy could
strike New Orleans, most of which sits six to eight feet
lower than the surrounding waters of the Mississippi River,
Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico. Ivan is the
strongest storm to threaten the region since Hurricane Betsy
nailed New Orleans in 1965. It brought more than $7 billion
in havoc at a time when southern Louisiana was less populated
and less exposed.
The doomsayers are quick to add a caveat: Ivan might not
turn out to be The One. The National Hurricane Center expects
the storm to swerve toward the area between Gulfport, Miss.,
and Mobile, Ala. Officials in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi
and the Florida Panhandle were urging residents Tuesday to
leave coastal areas. ``I beg people on the coast: Do not ride
this storm out,'' Mississippi's Gov. Haley Barbour (R) said.
A dozen coastal casinos were shuttered in Mississippi, and
Barbour's evacuation order for coastal areas was mandatory.
In Alabama, Gov. Bob Riley (R) ordered evacuations from Gulf
Shores, Orange Beach and Fort Morgan, and some towns
postponed runoff elections scheduled for Tuesday. Evacuation
was mandatory in parts of Escambia, Bay and Walton counties
in Florida, and most schools in the Panhandle were closed.
Most scientists, engineers and emergency managers agree
that if Ivan does spare southern Louisiana this time, The One
is destined to arrive some day. The director of the U.S.
Geological Survey has warned that New Orleans is on a path to
extinction. Gregory W. Stone, director of the Coastal Studies
Institute at Louisiana State University, frets that near
misses such as Hurricane Georges--a Category 2 storm that
swerved away from New Orleans a day before landfall in 1998--
only give residents a false sense of security. The Red Cross
has rated a hurricane inundating New Orleans as America's
deadliest potential natural disaster--worse than a California
earthquake.
``I don't mean to be an alarmist, but the doomsday scenario
is going to happen eventually,'' Stone said. ``I'll stake my
professional reputation on it.''
The main problem with southern Louisiana is that it is
dangerously low, and getting lower. The levees that
imprisoned the Mississippi River into its shipping channel
and helped make New Orleans one of the world's busiest ports
have also prevented the muddy river from spreading sediment
around its delta.
As a result, southern Louisiana is sinking into the Gulf,
losing about 25 square miles of coastal marshes and barrier
islands every year. Those marshes and islands used to help
slow storms as they approached New Orleans; computer
simulations now predict that the loss of these natural storm
barriers will increase storm surges and waves by several
feet.
On a seaplane tour of the region Tuesday, Gerald M.
Duszynsi, assistant secretary of the Louisiana Department of
Natural Resources, pointed out an area near the tiny bayou
town of Leesville, where he fished for redfish and flounder
25 years ago. Once a solid patch of green tidal marsh, it is
now mostly open water, with a few strips and splotches of
green.
``This used to be perfect, and now look at it,'' Duszynski
said. ``The buffer is gone. Now even the little storms give a
big influx.''
Louisiana's politicians, environmentalists and business
leaders have been pushing for a $14 billion coastal
restoration project to try to bring back those lost marshes
and islands--in order to help protect New Orleans as well as
an oil and gas industry that handles nearly a third of the
nation's supply.
The Bush administration forced the state to scale down its
request to $1.2 billion last year, and a Senate committee
authorized $375 million. But Mark Davis, executive director
of the coalition to Restore Coastal
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Louisiana, believes that even if Ivan bypasses the region,
its scary approach could help galvanize support for a more
comprehensive fix.
``We're running out of tomorrows,'' Davis said. ``God
willing, if there's still a southern Louisiana next week, I'm
not talking about the politics of the possible anymore. It's
now a question of which side are you on: Do you support the
obliteration of a region, or do you want to try to save it?``
On Tuesday, though, most local officials were thinking more
about the potential danger than the potential opportunity. If
Ivan does pound New Orleans tidal surges could leave the city
underwater for months, since its pumps can remove only about
an inch every hour, creating a ``toxic soup'' of chemicals,
rodents, poisons and snakes.
The local officials said they could not order a mandatory
evacuation in a city as poor as New Orleans in which more
than 100,000 residents have no cars, but they urged people to
find some way to escape. ``If you want to take a chance buy a
lottery ticket,'' said Jefferson Parish President Aaron
Broussard. ``Don't take a chance on this hurricane.''
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin seemed flustered as he
pleaded with his constituents to flee, at one point
suggesting that they take shelter in area hospitals. Visitors
were also urged to find somewhere else to go--including
10,000 conventioneers in town for the annual meeting of the
National Safety Council
``This is not a drill,'' Nagin said. ``This is the real
deal.''
But the logistics of exit are quite formidable in the Big
Easy. In 1998, as more than 300,000 people fled Hurricane
Georges, Interstate 10 turned into a parking lot. Similar
miles-long snarls unfolded Tuesday. Flights were canceled and
the airport prepared to close. The town that gave the world
``A Streetcar Named Desire'' idled its streetcars.
The underlying problem, Maestri said, is that the city
never should have been built in the first place. It is a
teriffic location for business but a lousy location for
safety.
``The Chamber of Commerce gets really mad at me when I say
this, but does New Orleans get rebuilt?'' Maestri asked. The
answer, he said could very well be no.
I thank the Chair for the time and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LAUTENBERG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________