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Members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation are requesting President Biden and Congress provide additional assistance amid Hurricane Ida’s “catastrophic” impact on the state.

“Hurricane Ida moved slowly through Louisiana causing catastrophic wind damage and flooding in numerous parishes and leaving nearly 1,000,000 people statewide without electricity, which experts say it will take weeks to restore,” said the delegation.

“At this time, many communities remain without access to drinking water, food, gasoline, and basic needs, while temperatures remain in excess of 100 degrees.”

The letter came from Republican Sens. John Kennedy and Bill Cassidy, along with multiple House members – and Reps. Clay Higgins, R, Steve Scalise, R, Mike Johnson, R, Garret Graves, R, Julia Letlow, R, and Troy Carter, D.

BIDEN TO VISIT LOUISIANA TO SURVEY DAMAGE LEFT BY HURRICANE IDA

The congress members added that while the full extent of damage was unknown, Congress should provide “substantial and robust emergency appropriations.”

“We are writing you now to alert you to the need for Congress to provide emergency supplemental appropriations to address Hurricane Ida and the storms from last year, as was done following Hurricane Katrina,” the letter read. 

“Without substantial and robust emergency appropriations from Congress to critical unmet needs accounts like the CDBG-DR [Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery] program, Louisiana families will continue to languish as a result of these devastating storms.”

In seven parishes, at least 95% of customers remained without power Thursday. Only 35,000 of the 405,000 homes and businesses in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish had power Thursday, according to the poweroutage.us website. Statewide, about 900,000 customers were without electricity, down from about 1.1 million at the height of the seventh named storm to hit Louisiana since the summer of 2020.

On Thursday, Biden tweeted: “To all those still in harm’s way or struggling to deal with the aftermath of these storms and fires — God bless you, keep the faith. We’re working day and night to help — and we will get this done.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also sent resources to help those impacted. On Wednesday, the agency said 12 urban search and rescue teams were operational in Louisiana.

It added: “Ambulance crews are deployed to Louisiana and Mississippi. This includes 53 ambulances and four air ambulances staged in Baton Rouge, La., with one additional air ambulance in transit. Today, an additional 158 ambulances are expected to arrive in Louisiana and 140 in Mississippi to support impacted areas.”

“FEMA has staged more than 4.5 million meals, 3.6 million liters of water, more than 134,000 tarps and 191 generators. Fifty-six additional generators are staged at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.” 

Bipartisan letter to House leadership urges relief amid National Flood Insurance Program rate hikes

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Reps. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) and Garret Graves (R-LA-06) led a letter signed by 38 bipartisan Members of Congress demanding the National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP) Risk Rating 2.0 implementation be postponed to prevent against unreasonable rate hikes unilaterally imposed by Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) new pricing methodology. In their letter to House leadership, the Members cite concerns surrounding the new methodology for assessing risk, which will lead to double digit rate hikes for certain policyholders. The Members request that House leadership include language delaying the implementation of Risk Rating 2.0 in upcoming legislation this month.

“While we appreciate FEMA’s work to create a NFIP that establishes actuarily sound rates, we are concerned about the burden of potential double digit rate hikes on our constituents by FEMA’s untested pricing methodology,” the Members wrote. “Therefore, we ask you to include language delaying the unfair implementation of Risk Rating 2.0 in any piece of legislation going to the floor this month until a more robust methodology that includes a lower premium cap is in place for policy holders.”

The Members continued, “[t]ime is of the essence with FEMA’s pending deadline to implement Risk Rating 2.0. We cannot accept another short-term extension of the NFIP without addressing these expected rate hikes for our constituents.”

According to FEMA state profiles, nearly 80 percent of policy holders in the eight states (approximately 1,385,759 in Florida, 661,830 in Texas, 394,757 in Louisiana, 170,685 in New Jersey, 155,349 in South Carolina, 157,316 in California, 117,093 in New York, and 104,145 in North Carolina) that account for the largest share of NFIP policies should expect to pay a higher premium under Risk Rating 2.0.

Rep. Pascrell has railed against a rushed implementation of Risk Rating 2.0, which could have disastrous effects on policyholders in New Jersey. In March, Reps. Pascrell and Frank Pallone (D-NJ-06) sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas urging the National Flood Insurance Program’s Risk Rating 2.0 implementation be postponed to ensure transparency in the process and fairness for New Jersey policyholders. Pascrell and Pallone also led legislation to extend the NFIP for five years, address the waste, abuse, and mismanagement plaguing the system, and cap annual rate increases at 9%.

Text of the Members’ latest letter to House leadership is provided below.

September 16, 2021

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi                                      The Honorable Kevin McCarthy

Speaker                                                                       Minority Leader

U.S. House of Representatives                                   U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, DC 20515                                              Washington, DC 20515

Dear Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader McCarthy,

We write because our constituents are in desperate need of relief from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) rate hikes expected under Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Risk Rating 2.0. While we appreciate FEMA’s work to create a NFIP that establishes actuarily sound rates, we are concerned about the burden of potential double digit rate hikes on our constituents by FEMA’s untested pricing methodology. Therefore, we ask you to include language delaying the unfair implementation of Risk Rating 2.0 in any piece of legislation going to the floor this month until a more robust methodology that includes a lower premium cap is in place for policy holders.

While Congress continues to debate needed affordability, fairness, and sustainable reforms to the NFIP, FEMA plans to unilaterally implement Risk Rating 2.0 in a phased approach beginning on October 1, 2021. FEMA’s Risk Rating 2.0 implementation announcement earlier this year has already impacted communities we represent that are still dealing with the far-reaching economic impacts of COVID-19 and recovering from the devastation of Hurricanes Ida and Henri.

There are serious implementation questions surrounding Risk Rating 2.0. Our constituents and those involved in implementing FEMAs rate hikes need more time to get the answers they deserve. The additional burden of up to double digit rate hikes by FEMA for our constituents, especially those in low- and moderate-income communities is too much for them to bear. Massive rate changes should be subject to additional scrutiny and review by Members of Congress in a long-term reauthorization, not arbitrary FEMA deadlines. A delay in implementing Risk Rating 2.0 is needed to allow Congress time to work on a comprehensive long-term reauthorization of the NFIP.

FEMA has already previewed that nearly 80 percent of policy holders in the eight states (approximately 1,385,759 in Florida[i], 661,830 in Texas[ii], 394,757 in Louisiana[iii], 170,685 in New Jersey[iv], 155,349 in South Carolina[v], 157,316 in California[vi], 117,093 in New York[vii], and 104,145 in North Carolina[viii]) that account for the largest share of NFIP policies should expect to pay a higher premium under Risk Rating 2.0. This increase is due to FEMA’s new methodology as well as the existing statutory limits on rate increases.

We appreciate the hard work Chair Maxine Waters and Ranking Member Patrick McHenry have put into developing a long-term NFIP reauthorization, including efforts to recognize the pending rate hikes. Time is of the essence with FEMA’s pending deadline to implement Risk Rating 2.0. We cannot accept another short-term extension of the NFIP without addressing these expected rate hikes for our constituents. We are eager to work together to implement reforms to the NFIP based on the realities experienced in the aftermath of major flooding and storms our constituents have just experienced. Thank you very much for your time and attention to our request.

Sincerely,

Bill Pascrell, Jr.                                                           Garret Graves

Member of Congress                                                  Member of Congress

Additional signers include the following Members of Congress:

Representative Brian Babin

Representative Vern Buchanan

Representative Cheri Bustos

Representative Troy A. Carter, Sr.

Representative Charlie Crist

Representative Brian Fitzpatrick

Representative Carlos A. Gimenez

Representative Josh Gottheimer

Representative Al Green

Representative Clay Higgins

Representative Brian Higgins

Representative Mike Johnson

Representative Andy Kim

Representative Douglas LaMalfa

Representative Julia Letlow

Representative Tom Malinowski

Representative Grace Meng

Representative Gregory F. Murphy, M.D.

Representative Troy E. Nehls

Representative Donald Norcross

Representative Steven Palazzo

Representative Frank Pallone, Jr.

Representative Donald M. Payne, Jr.

Representative Bill Posey

Representative Tom Rice

Representative David Rouzer

Representative Steve Scalise

Representative Mikie Sherrill

Representative Albio Sires

Representative Christopher H. Smith

Representative Michelle Steel

Representative Ritchie Torres

Representative David Trone

Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman

Representative Randy Weber

Representative Susan Wild

After a powerful hurricane tore across Louisiana and plunged the state into prolonged darkness, utility Entergy launched a plan to harden its power network to withstand the devastating winds that had reached nearly 140 mph.

That storm was Hurricane Betsy in 1965, and despite billions in investments made over the following decades, Hurricane Ida still crumpled critical parts of the state's power infrastructure last week, causing outages that are slowing the recovery efforts from the type of hurricane that climate change is expected to make more deadly in the coming years.

Democrats in Congress are planning a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill that includes $73 billion to help fortify the nation's power grid by building thousands of miles of new transmission, streamlining permits for new lines and developing resilient grid technologies. But with the sector facing ever-increasing risks from climate-enhanced wildfires, floods and storms, building resilience into the system is likely to be both difficult and expensive.

"We know that every time there's a hurricane, we have to start all over again and we have to rebuild these power lines — that costs tons of dollars as well. It's kind of pay me now or pay me later," Democratic Rep. Troy Carter, who represents New Orleans, said in an interview. "Bite the bullet, make the investment and make the big hit now, but have the long-term benefits that will last a lifetime, and God only knows how many lives will be saved."

That's a similar idea to what the state and federal government did for flood protection after 2005's Hurricane Katrina submerged most of New Orleans, when they spent more than $14 billion to fortify the levees.

"We know preparation works. We've done it for levees, now we need to do it for the grid," Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy told POLITICO.

Just how to strengthen the grid to keep power flowing remains an open question. President Joe Biden traveled to Louisiana on Friday to survey the damage and meet with state and local leaders, and called for strengthening the power grid to withstand more powerful storms.

"When you guys are putting back up those high-tension wires again — and that's working — you’re not going to put up the same exact system," he told a briefing in LaPlace, La. "You’re going to have to build it better, and its resiliency."

And while the infrastructure question looms large in Washington and state capitals across the country, Louisiana residents are facing an immediate crisis with large sections of New Orleans and the surrounding parishes without power during one of the hottest months of the year.

"Temperatures are 100 degrees, in some cases higher than that, inside people's homes," said Carter. "The importance of working and getting people to cooler air, safer areas is critical. The danger that it has for senior citizens, young children, people with disabilities — it's almost as dangerous as the hurricane itself."

In a 2016 report, Entergy touted its work after the historic Hurricane Betsy to protect the power network. "The decision to take this action decades ago proved justified when [2005's] Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the coastline," it said in the report. "Although Entergy sustained significant system damage, a 2007 hardening study commissioned by the company indicated that 99 percent of the structures located within 20 miles of the Louisiana and Texas coastlines survived the winds."

Among the measures implemented, Entergy said, were building transmission lines using concrete or steel poles within 20 miles of the coast, replacing transmission and distribution crossing structures over major highways with concrete or steel poles, and building new substations to elevations above the 100-year flood plain, as recommended by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Unlike Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ida's danger came from excessive wind speeds that have toppled equipment in eight critical transmission lines and plunged one of those lines into the Mississippi River. That damage left the city with no way to deliver power to homes and businesses.

"The poles are done," said former FERC Chair Pat Wood III. "When I saw that the next morning, I just got sick," he added. "I thought: 'That's not supposed to happen.'"

Entergy has invested billions of dollars in the grid in just the past decade, including $4.2 billion in new transmission capacity since 2014, and has plans to invest an additional $2.4 billion through 2022. Just last year, Entergy completed a $100 million reliability project intended to strengthen its substations.

But whether those investments are able to keep pace with the increased intensity and frequency of storms is another question. Just last year, Hurricane Laura destroyed nearly 500 transmission line structures — a "large majority" of its system, according to Entergy.

"What we've been seeing with hurricanes recently is that they are occurring more frequently with greater intensity. But one of the issues that we've also seen is that you're seeing hurricanes occur within quick succession of each other," said Eliza Hotchkiss, who leads the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory's cybersecurity and resilience team. That leaves communities with less time to recover, she said.

Entergy executives told reporters last week that the hardest hit areas in New Orleans would likely take weeks to recover.

"For many of those areas, this will not be a repair, it will be a rebuild," Entergy Louisiana President and CEO Phillip May said during the call.

The storm has stirred warnings that power providers must make further investments in the grid in a year that has seen cold weather-fueled power failures in Texas and record-breaking wildfires threaten power grids in the West.

"If our society has not learned that making a major investment upfront to avoid the tentative repairs on the back end, if we have not learned that, my gosh, we're not going to learn anything," said Cassidy. "If all you do is slapdash a Band-Aid on top of what you had before, you get the same results," he added.

When it comes to hardening the grid, New Orleans' Carter has advocated for burying the city's power lines underground, using authority under the Stafford Act that governs disaster spending, or infrastructure legislation — options Carter said would increase grid reliability and not pass costs onto ratepayers.

Lawmakers are currently weighing passage of a bipartisan infrastructure bill, H.R. 3684 (117), that would make investments in grid resiliency and expanding electric power transmission lines — though advocates warn the levels are not adequate to meet the challenge facing utilities across the nation.

"We have hurricanes every year. This is not something new," Carter said. "We have hurricane season every single year. We don't know how many, we don't know the severity, but we know we're going to have hurricanes, and every year we put good money after bad putting our infrastructure above ground."

Larry Gasteiger, executive director of WIRES, a trade association that advocates for investment in the electric transmission system, said the cost of burying power lines is "multiples" higher when compared to overhead transmission.

"That's what generally has been the real prohibiting factor for those types of solutions," he said.

While the New Orleans City Council, which regulates Entergy's local subsidiary, said the utility met national reliability standards, the projected length of outages will likely trigger a "360, post-mortem review," according to New Orleans City Council member Joseph Giarrusso.

"There's very little question that this Council is going to open up a wide-ranging investigation to what happened," Giarrusso said. "We have a lot of questions."

Wood, the former FERC chief, agreed that the storm's impact on the power grid "would definitely merit an investigation" from the federal regulator and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation as well. That would include determining whether current reliability standards are still sufficient for the region.

"NERC, FERC and the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council are working together as industry diligently assesses the extent of damage and works to restore power as safely and quickly as possible," NERC said in a statement. FERC is continuing to monitor the impact of the storm on the power grid, FERC Chair Richard Glick said in a tweet.

Environmentalists point out that local groups have been fighting Entergy for years to build more local power generation, including greater deployment of distributed energy resources such as solar and battery storage.

"Rather than delivering what the customers want, the utility fought against that and instead has delivered these gas-fired plants," said Joe Daniel, senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, referring to the New Orleans Power Station, which opened last year. "What that means now is customers are unable to have access to electricity in these storms, and are more reliant on waiting for these big plants to get back running."

Carter also argued that more distributed energy resources, and less reliance on carbon-emitting resources, can strengthen the ability of the grid to provide power during extreme weather events.

"I've preached it for a long time and I'll continue to. We need to lessen our dependency on fossil fuels," he said, adding that "the reliability of having alternative means would make a huge difference today to the nearly million people who are suffering in the heat, because they don't have electricity."

The New Orleans Power Station was controversial: It faced significant local opposition and Entergy was caught paying actors to support the plant at local meetings. The utility has recently cited it as a critical part of restoring power to the city.

Adding more distributed energy resources — such as solar, storage and microgrids — to the power grid can certainly help with resilience, particularly for ensuring critical facilities are able to avoid outages altogether or get up and running quickly, according DOE's Hotchkiss. Mobile microgrids, for instance, can be used for fast restoration and recovery, according to Alison Silverstein, who led the U.S. investigation on the 2003 blackout under FERC, but such technologies are not a catch-all solution.

"You can't say, 'Oh, well, if every house had its own solar and battery system, they wouldn't be trashed,' because if it's going to take off the roof, it's going to take the solar up with it," said Silverstein, who now works with DOE on grid reliability.

One of the major outstanding questions is what system failures were reasonably foreseeable — and therefore could have been prevented. Such calculations are constantly being made by utilities in vulnerable regions, according to Silverstein, and it's ultimately a balancing act of how high a company's risk is and how much they're willing to spend to mitigate that risk.

"Part of the challenge here is that we know that the entire Gulf Coast is in the path of hurricanes, and that hurricanes are merciless," she said. "And a lot of those folks, their regulators do not appear to be ready to spend more money against higher levels of risk."

Though the power remains out for more than 95% of St. Charles Parish residents and businesses after Hurricane Ida, the lights are now on in at least one community.

Power has been restored to Montz, a small neighborhood located on the western end of the parish’s east bank.

“It’s a glimmer of hope,” St. Charles Parish President Matthew Jewell said.

St. Charles Parish was one of the areas hardest hit by the destructive winds in Ida’s eyewall, which raked the area for hours Aug. 29-30, destroying roofs, snapping trees and power poles and wrecking the electrical infrastructure. Entergy is still repairing the damaged transmission systems that left the entire New Orleans region in the dark after the storm.

Parts of New Orleans and Jefferson Parish have already seen powered restored, as has St. Tammany Parish on the north shore. But Entergy estimates that the majority of residents in St. Charles Parish won’t get power back until Sept. 29.

“If customers are on that same network and are able to safely accept power, they would be restored, as well,” Entergy spokesperson Brandon Scardigli said.

The company sent an additional 200 lineman into the parish Wednesday morning, and crews are working to restore power to St. Charles Parish Hospital in Luling, according to Scardigli.

The linemen hitting the streets have been joined by debris collection crews, who began task of picking up after Ida on Sunday.

It's a massive undertaking: The large grappling trucks hold about 100 cubic yards of debris, according to Jewell, and officials estimate Ida left behind about 1 million cubic yards of construction debris, downed trees and branches across the parish.

The crews are starting in areas that are the most accessible. There were still some trouble spots around the parish Wednesday, including Norco, Mimosa and St. Rose, where low-hanging power lines still obstruct the roadways, Jewell said.

The lucky residents of Montz, however, were re-energized Monday because they live near a critical structure, the Little Gypsy power plant, which was re-energized.

Garbage collection has also restarted around the parish, though the going has been slow. Pelican Waste, based in Houma, is having staffing problems, according to parish officials. Jewell said he suspects that many of those employees suffered damage to their own homes and trying to take care of their property and families.

To ease the overflow of refuse at curbs around the parish, officials on Wednesday began rotating dumpsters and garbage trucks to different neighborhoods to allow residents an opportunity to dispose of some of their household trash.

Late Wednesday morning, Marty Pizzitola, 66, was the fourth vehicle to back up to a garbage truck parked in front of the Destrehan spray park on Ormond Boulevard. He unloaded several dozen quite smelly bags of trash from his pick-up truck. Pizzitola was carrying a week’s worth of garbage from two families – including rotting food emptied from refrigerators and freezers.

“Sorry for the stink,” he said, as he helped workers from the parish and Pelican Waste transfer the bags from his pick-up to the garbage truck.

St. Charles Parish residents will receive notification and location through the parish alert system when a dumpster is in their neighborhood, Jewell said.

“We want residents to be patient. I promise, normal trash collection is coming,” he said.

Jewell and other parish officials joined U.S. Reps. Garret Graves, Julia Letlow and Troy Carter on a tour of the parish Wednesday.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra visited New Orleans on Aug. 27 to raise attention to the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to end the spread of COVID-19 and its variants, as part of the White House “Build Back Better” policy. Becerra spoke alongside community leaders in New Orleans on ways to improve “vaccine confidence.”

“We still got a lot of folks out there who if they just had a chance to really connect with folks and hear it with confidence and trust, they’d get vaccinated,” Becerra said at the panel held at Dillard University. “And here is the beautiful thing, we have a president that actually wants us to spend the resources to find those things, and we haven’t always had leadership that had wanted to reach out to corners of the country that are often left behind.”

The event included participation from Assistant Secretary Dawn O’Connell of the U.S. Office of Preparedness and Response for the HHS, U.S. Rep. Troy Carter D-La., Dillard University President Walter Kimbrough and Xavier University of Louisiana President Reynold Verret. During the panel, Dillard University held “Pathway to Normalcy,” a free COVID-19 vaccination drive at its Student Union and Health and Wellness Center. The HHS secretary visited the vaccination drive before speaking with members of the public.

“This Secretary has a very, very robust schedule with a lot of things going on but didn’t hesitate, didn’t blink when given the opportunity to come to New Orleans, to come to Louisiana to express his support,” Carter said.

Prior to visiting Dillard University, Becerra stopped by Children’s Hospital New Orleans LCMC Health to see their COVID-19 response in action. Recently, the federal government sent a“surge team” to the Children’s Hospital to help with round-the-clock care for children in the ICUsuffering from COVID-19. In Louisiana, 81,312 of COVID-19 cases reported are for those in the5 to 17-year age group, according to data from the Louisiana Department of Health. The LDH reports show that despite 5,355,460 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine being administered in the state, only 40.88 percent of residents are full vaccinated. Those who are not fully vaccinated account for 91 percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Louisiana.

Becerra said he wanted to hear from the community about how they could bring equal opportunities of receiving the vaccine to different groups. Medical professionals in various fieldsgave their opinions on how to build “vaccine confidence” in certain communities. Suggestions were made about the federal government having a more centralized message about vaccines to members of the public. Many in healthcare explained that a rise in misinformation has caused many of their patients to doubt their expertise.

For millennials and Generation Z, both university presidents shared how vaccine mandates have increased safety on their campuses. Dillard’s Bleu Troop, for instance, is a student-led initiative for preventing COVID-19. And both universities have required their students to be vaccinated in order to live on campus and attend classes this school year.

“We’re excited to be able to host [the] Secretary here as well as our Congressman for thisconversation about how we continue to work through this pandemic,” Kimbrough said. “I think alot of work has been done in this city and this state through a lot of coordination from the governor, the mayor, and our representatives in Congress.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rank Louisiana as 48th in the nation for vaccination rates. Despite this, the city of New Orleans has the highest ranking in the state for vaccination. According to NOLA Ready, 74 percent of all adults are fully vaccinated in New Orleans.

During the discussion, different faith-based leaders explained to Becerra that Black churches in New Orleans have been crucial for getting the community vaccinated. Numerous vaccination drives and door-to-door campaigns were hosted by churches in order to raise vaccination rates. After hearing about how Black churches have been encouraging their congregations to vaccinate, Becerra questioned whether or not a similar approach was being taken at churches with predominantly Hispanic congregations.

The panelists also discussed who are the best representatives that could reassure the community about the COVID-19 vaccine. Community outreach spokespersons suggested delivering the message through trusted healthcare providers such as community health centers.

“I told my team at HHS that there are three principles we’re going to operate under: transparency, equity, and accountability,” said Becerra on reaching different communities.

“Equity has usually not been part of the mission of too much of government, and if we’re going to do this right, we’re going to have to hear from the folks that know how to reach the communities that are often left behind.”

Becerra said he was hopeful that younger and non-traditional voices would work to ensure that their peers received the COVID-19 vaccine.

“If we’re going to reach some of those people that don’t sit at the table, we’re going to need your help,” Becerra said.

“Here’s my challenge to you: give me an idea where I would harness the young folks, I would harness some of the folks that would never get to be in this meeting,” he said.