Hurricane protection and coastal restoration projects are lowering Louisiana residents’ risks, yet the state continues to see insurance premiums rise.
Chip Kline, former chairman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, says the opposite should be happening. On a recent Biz Talks podcast, he discussed the connection between insurance and the environment. The following are highlights from the conversation:
Many homeowners in New Orleans and surrounding parishes are concerned about rising rates. How have we gotten here and what are potential solutions?
The work that the state’s coastal program is doing is lowering people’s risk all across South Louisiana. For example, in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, the levee system that was constructed over the last several years withstood a 16-foot storm surge, which is a significant reduction in risk, yet you see flood insurance premiums increased by 80%. The opposite should be happening. If you’re lowering people’s risk from hurricanes and flooding, then you should see a reduction in flood insurance premiums.
It’s frustrating because all of the work that’s been done over the last several years is not being incorporated into FEMA mapping because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is not communicating with its sister agency to certify that these levees meet the criteria to provide a 100-year level of risk reduction.
In Hurricane Ida, you didn’t have a single levee that was breached. You didn’t have a single levee that was overtopped. Yes, there were impacts in areas that were outside of the hurricane protection systems, but the federal government is taking a flawed approach to this issue because it’s not providing an accurate depiction of what’s on the ground.
Nine hundred thousand coastal policies are in play here in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, and these Gulf Coast states are going to take a shellacking if FEMA doesn’t get its act together and recognize the progress that has been made over the last several years.
You can build the best levees and restore your land as fast as you possibly can, but if you can’t afford to pay your mortgage or your insurance, people are leaving. And that’s a scary thing to think about.
Do we need to build more resilient structures and infrastructure to withstand stronger and more frequent storms?
There’s no doubt about it. Just look at our electrical grid, for example. I mean, do we still want to put electrical lines on wooden poles in Grand Isle? No. Bury the things! Put them underground.
We need to be building to a standard that proves to be resilient, and that’s why Sen. Sharon Hewitt passed a bill that said if you had an insurance claim and you rebuilt with a more resilient roof, then you cannot have an increase in your insurance policy.
This can be a controversial position, but I do think we need to look at our building standards in the state. Near Baton Rouge, places like Zachary, Gonzales and Prairieville are expanding at rapid rates. They’re going out into what used to be retention areas for water and they’re putting concrete up, and that just allows for flooding. I think we just need to be very thoughtful about how we’re building and where we’re building. This is an issue that’s not going away.
Does the federal government need to change the way it responds to weather disasters?
Proactive investments in flood protection projects ultimately are going to save the federal government money. Look at the ongoing West Shore Lake Pontchartrain project: It will protect St. Charles, St. John and St. James parishes, which were shellacked during Hurricane Isaac and again in Hurricane Ida.
This project was authorized in 1972. Years later, after [Hurricane] Isaac, Congress finally appropriated money for it. Isaac was in 2012, but in 2021, when [Hurricane] Ida hit, it still wasn’t built. And what happened? You had flooding. You had small business loans. You had FEMA appropriate billions of dollars to respond to those things. So yes, it’s expensive to build these types of projects, but you’re saving the federal government money in the long run.
Did you know? Increases in federal flood insurance rates are estimated to reach over 700% in the coming years.
