BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi officials are asking the federal government to thoroughly study the potential effects of any proposed new levee construction in southeast Louisiana.
Officials in Hancock County, Miss., said they oppose a suggested 24-foot barrier levee that will close or partially close Lake Pontchartrain and protect St. Tammany Parish.
"This is way bigger than us," said Supervisor Steve Seymour. "These son-of-a-guns in Louisiana are just looking to protect themselves. All they are doing is working their way to the east. It's going to end up drowning us."
The study, thus far, is a list of options from the New Orleans District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers developed to resolve problem flooding areas.
Mississippi officials are concerned that altering natural storm surge through levees, gates or other means will affect water levels in coastal areas.
Last month, the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority requested comments on that proposal and others in its New Orleans East Land Bridge Study.
Garret Graves with Louisiana's Coastal Protection and Restoration Department said there are projects being undertaken to protect the shoreline, but that is all that is being done right now.
"There is a larger planning effort to construct some type of barrier," he said. "That could put additional water into Hancock county, but we of course wouldn't do a project that provides protection for Louisiana just to flood Mississippi."
Graves said the planning commission includes several Mississippians to help look for solutions that would be in the best interest of both states.
"We don't have any plans to send additional flood waters into Mississippi," he said.
However, U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., sent a letter to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration asking the agency to identify what impacts south Mississippians would feel if Lake Pontchartrain were closed off.
"When you look at the potential impacts that levee construction in Louisiana might have in South Mississippi, it's extremely concerning. The Sandy Recovery Improvement Act that passed in the House last week included provisions that would require a thorough analysis of mitigation efforts like the ones being proposed by Louisiana," Palazzo said.
Jackson County and the cities of Waveland and Bay St. Louis have all filed letters objecting to the proposal.
"We just want to be kept in the loop and be a part of the process," Jackson County Board of Supervisors President Mike Mangum said Tuesday. "We are concerned and we want more information."
In 2009, the Corps of Engineers issued its technical report on the Louisiana Coastal Restoration Plan. In its review, the Corps noted the possibility of impacts to South Mississippi if new levees were built in South Louisiana.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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