Behind basin restoration, Maloz leads

Jerry J. Blanchard
October 27, 2011
Lafourche Parish Council slashes permits fees
October 27, 2011
Jerry J. Blanchard
October 27, 2011
Lafourche Parish Council slashes permits fees
October 27, 2011

The adversary is time, an unrelenting accumulation of increments that represents the continual erosion of Louisiana marshland.


Coastal residents are well aware of the problems and officials are closing in on solutions, but implementing innovation requires funding.

Restore or Retreat, a non-profit coastal restoration advocacy group with one paid employee, simultaneously works to extend awareness beyond state lines, advocate for regulatory reform, monitor projects and secure money in the mission to sustain south Louisiana.


Time dictates everything between life and death, and it hangs over the vitality of Louisiana’s marshland like moonlight over a subconscious fantasyland.


Restore or Retreat, the name of the group, plays on the passing of moments. It’s an ultimatum, and it’s threatening, both in the urgency it conveys and in how the pronunciation of its acronym resembles a lion’s growl.

Simone Maloz, ROR’s executive director, acknowledged the latter while en route to Fourchon Beach to survey Lafourche’s southernmost coast after Tropical Storm Lee.


“At first, it was a good name,” Maloz said. “It’s catchy. … Then, at some point, it took on, it was kind of a threat – ‘What are you telling me, if I don’t do this, we’re going to have to leave?’ – and now, it’s kind of reality. If you look before the 2010 Census, at 2000, that was a northern migration period, and those are the people that have the means and the resources to move.”


Although Maloz’s personality mirrors the subtle intensity of the group’s theme, any description of her interpersonal skills would be in sharp contrast to its aggressive interpretation.

An invigorating, intelligent and confident leader with a commanding perspective and sense of humor, the Houma native has mastered the art of tone, timing and emphasis in conversation, indisputably an asset in her conquest to sway the opinions of federal appropriators and policy makers.


In addition to regular correspondence with local and state officials, Maloz deals with the movers and shakers of America, principally through congressional aides and bureaucracy administrators. This is where her social skills are tested, and when confidence and a solid understanding of governmental intricacies are necessary.


She also deals with the region’s dignitaries. Maloz is involved in business groups such as the South Central Industrial Association and Bayou Industrial Group and the chambers of commerce.

Restore or Retreat is not a grass-planting program. Maloz and the ROR board of directors are advocates of replenishing the Barataria and Terrebonne basins, spokespeople for the betterment of a region, a role that includes coercing different parishes’ leaders and residents to work toward shared interests instead of individual wants.


From all accounts, she has been a successful leader for an organization whose successes are difficult to gauge. But her appointment as the face of a non-profit that operates in the background is itself a testament to the requirements of the position and the willingness of ROR’s board to take a chance on someone without a scientific education.


Maloz, now 32, graduated from Nicholls State University with a degree in mass communications. She began her career in the health-care sector, working for Terrebonne General Medical Center and the American Cancer Society before joining ROR.

Now, six years after joining ROR, Maloz points out that it happened by chance and was facilitated by a lack of trepidation during a public speaking opportunity.


Maloz’s father, Charles Theriot, the first and only treasurer of SCIA, was named the Tillman Esteve Outstanding Member of the Year, the group’s highest honor, in 2004. Because he was out of town on a business trip, he asked his three daughters to accept the award in his place at SCIA’s annual banquet.


“So I accept the award on behalf of my dad, who’s not even there,” Maloz said. “Who does that to their kid? I was not nervous like I probably should have been – I didn’t know any of these people. It didn’t matter to me.”

Without an apprehension distracting her or the audience of 400 business leaders and a United States Senator, she flourished.


Roy Francis, a longtime participant in restoration efforts and part of the group that founded ROR, was at the banquet. Days later, he reached out to Theriot to request that his daughter apply for the soon-to-be-vacated position.


“She accepted the award for her dad, and did a very good job,” Francis said. “I thought she had a good presence and was very articulate. I realized from a coastal restoration perspective, we could educate her on different policies, but it’s hard to teach someone how to deliver that message. … I just thought she stuck a landing.

“Through the course of time, she’s become established. She has come to know who’s involved and the decision makers, and I think she has been accepted by the coastal community. You have to grow into any position and I think she’s done that.”


Ted Falgout, who became one of the state’s first participants in coastal zone management nearly 40 years ago, said part of ROR’s purpose is to oversee pending and in-progress projects to make sure they are being done correctly and in an order based on priority.


“It’s a shame that we have to birddog these things that one would think that they would get done, but the many competing uses of a coastal zone caused many of the existing projects to not be utilized to the maximum benefit of the ecosystem,” he said.

Surround Maloz with a team that understands the science, and she is a great fit, her peers in restoration say. But that’s not to say she’s ignorant of the biological impacts of the projects she oversees.


“I think it’s proven that it was a wise decision,” Falgout said. “She has picked up on the science. She has good board members that understand the science, and she’s learned it and used her ability to communicate and build consensus and lead in initiatives. She’s used those qualities quite well, and I think that’s why we’re seeing the success of ROR and continued support.”


“I’ve never had a job where I’ve done just the same thing over and over again,” Maloz said. “Some people like that: They fill out the same paperwork, stamp it, and they like that. I don’t like to do that.”

There’s likely an inherent contradiction among the next seven words, but in a utopian society, bureaucratic guidelines would be fair and specialized for the geography of each project. The politician-trumpeted phrase “common sense” would actually dictate techniques. There would be no bias, and thus, nobody crying out over unbalanced enforcement.


“Bureaucracy” and “red tape” are buzzwords often used by local officials in lieu of progress. Although words or phrases such as this can be used gratuitously as an excuse for shortcomings, the Kafkaesque enforcement of regulations and subsequent fight for reform is very real. The value of common sense is cheapened by statutory limitations. Cost-saving measures can be conceived but not implemented.


Champions of restoration understand this all too well, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to change the system. Maloz singled out Windell Curole, South Lafourche Levee District executive director and leader in the creation of the brilliant Larose-to-Golden Meadow levee system, as somebody who is willing to try new things in the name of frugality.

Last month, Maloz and Archie Chaisson, Lafourche Parish’s coastal zone management advisor, visited the site of a marsh regeneration project at Catfish Lake. While assessing the progress, they explained one of the funding conundrums they face.


On opposite ends of the ring levee, marsh-growing projects have taken form. Both are proceeding according to plan in a natural fashion, Chaisson said, but there is a distinct difference between the two.


On the east side, Curole experimented with uncontained material. Because it was not a federal project, it was allowed and it saved thousands of dollars. Chaisson said that containment costs were around $5,000 per foot at Catfish Lake juxtaposed against sediment pumping costs of $3 per yard.

They chalked it up to different philosophies of different appropriating and permitting agencies. The Corps of Engineers shies away from bulkheads, for example,


“The same rules that apply to the beach don’t even apply right here,” Maloz said from Catfish Lake. “You may need contained in some areas, but here, you don’t. As government agencies, they’re not always flexible like that.”


Environmental mitigation is another hurdle on the horizon advocates will take head-on in the near future.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has declared that two acres must be rebuilt for every one destroyed in order for a project permit to be granted. Stakeholders are given options as to how they choose to mitigate, one choice being paying into a fund that goes toward creating a new environmental reservation.

But mitigation can also be more costly than the projects themselves, Maloz said.


With the “Spill Bill” being hashed out in Congress, coastal states are anticipating the reception of billions of dollars in BP fine money. The belief is the majority of this money will go toward restoration, but the concern is the full potential of the money will not be realized because of the exorbitant mitigation costs attached to the projects.

“The New Orleans Corps District enacted this new mitigation policy, where it essentially comes out to be a two-to-one or even more mitigation, and it’s a policy they applied here,” Maloz said. “It’s something they did in Charleston and in Florida, but they don’t take into account unique coastal landscapes.

“They have to mitigate more for things that are really kind of essentially mitigation as it is, just because all of the rules don’t necessarily fit here. It’s just an example of them trying to put in a cookie cutter policy that doesn’t work here.”

Although mitigation is typically a levee district issue, Chaisson referenced discussions in the long distance Atchafalaya sediment diversion initiative as a way it negatively affects restoration.

“Simone and I sat in on a stakeholder meeting for the long-distance pipeline,” Chaisson said. “This is going to create an untold amount of new marsh and new environment if this thing plays out the way we think it will. We’re about to create 300 acres, and you’re telling me I’ve got to buy into a bank for 30 that I’m going to destroy.”

Falgout said he would like to see mitigation credit be given for environmentally beneficial restoration. “There’s not enough money to do both,” he said. “A lot of times the mitigation costs are higher than the project costs. We’re not going to get where we’ve got to go that way.”

ROR is in its 11th year. It began three years after – and was modeled based on – the LA 1 Coalition, the lobbyist organization tasked with revamping La. Highway 1 from U.S. Highway 90 to Fourchon.

In terms of sustaining Lafourche Parish as the epicenter of deepwater energy exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, a dry and reliable highway is a must, and an elevated roadway is the target.

The LA 1 Coalition has proven vital to Port Fourchon, which services about three-quarters of deepwater oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. The highway-in-the-sky, stretching from Leeville to Fourchon over waning marshland, is a striking symbol that testifies to the group’s value.

“This is one of the busiest energy ports, and it’s unbelievable, the open water, the vulnerability,” Maloz said. “It’s almost an oxymoron to have a big bustling thing here. It’s like an island.”

The coalition is fighting the same opposition (erosion) and faces the same issue in overcoming it (money), but it has an attainable mission, one that is simple to understand: Ensure the port’s security, ensure connectivity between the “island” and the mainland and ensure Lafourche Parish doesn’t lose the exploration service industry.

When Leeville’s elevated highway connects to the segment of Highway 1 that is tucked neatly behind the South Lafourche Levee District’s masterpiece of a ring levee system, it will take the burden off the unprotected and sinking portion of Highway 1 and go a long way toward ostensibly accomplishing the goal.

ROR’s mission is to replenish the Barataria and Terrebonne basins, an infinitely broader objective that can be flummoxed the next time a hurricane makes landfall. Realistically, its goal cannot be reached with a massive structural accomplishment. The Morganza to the Gulf system, if ever realized, would attach to the western end of the ring levee.

The coast is bunkering in, with the SLLD masterpiece serving as the lynchpin. But the marshland on the east side of the system, the majority of the Barataria Basin, for example, will always need additional projects and more work to prevent erosion of state land as far north as Des Allemands.

“This is not just a two- or five- or even 10-year effort,” Falgout said. “As long as people live here, there will be a need to battle and restore.”

As the battle rages on, ROR continues to move forward. The group has a membership of about 120. It collected upwards of $140,000 in dues and donations last year, including $35,000 at its annual fundraiser. Its 503(c) non-profit status means the group can’t hire a professional lobbyist to work in Washington, but donations are tax deductible.

ROR will hold its 10th annual fundraiser tomorrow in Lockport. Titled “Barnstorming to Save our Coast,” the event will run from 6 to 9 p.m. at Charlotte Bollinger’s home.

Tickets to the event are $50. It will be catered and includes a silent auction while the Hurricane Levee Band will provide entertainment.

Of course, Restore or Retreat isn’t the only local champion of restoration. There’s the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. The Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program deals with the protection and preservation of wetlands and monitors ecosystems. The Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration offers state support and is in the process of designing the 2012 Coastal Master Plan, which will be a roadmap of future projects.

The numerous groups attend the same meetings. It has been an escalating initiative for 40 years, but not much has changed – yet – except for the state coastline, according to Falgout. He said he has tried to solve the same problems and heard the same arguments while sitting next to the same people.

But the people he sits next to have begun to change. Maloz, who made the jump from the healthcare sector six years ago, is an example. There’s also Archie Chaisson and Greater Lafourche Port Commission Executive Director Chet Chiasson. There’s Nicholas Matherne, director of coastal restoration with Terrebonne Parish. They are all young, and all fairly new to the restoration effort.

“I feel a higher level of comfort today than I did 10 years ago that we have a good young crop of very interested and talented people that want to support and carry on these initiatives,” Falgout said.

The guard is changing. It’s not to say Falgout, Curole and BTNEP Executive Director Kerry St. Pe are going to abruptly stop working toward restoring the coast, but most people experienced in restoration have realized that this is a permanent issue and that somebody will have to continue the work when they can no longer.

“A lot of them, almost all of them have helped us,” Maloz said. “The new ones come in, and it’s not even an old versus a new. You can see it. That’s reflected in the port (executive director post), with a Ted (Falgout) to a Chet (Chiasson). At some point, it all has to be handed over.

“There’s another difference between the older guys and the younger guys. Some of those dudes, they’ve been doing it for like 30 years, and they’re like, ‘Nothing has happened,’ and so they are kind of, maybe a little bitter or jaded, and we still have the, ‘We’re going to do something. We do have the power to make a difference and we do have the power to change things.'”

The comment wasn’t meant to be derogatory or insulting. Though its purpose may be apparent without explanation, context is often jumbled in print: Falgout, Curole, St. Pe and a number of other pioneers in the restoration effort, the forefathers of advanced hurricane protection, the backroom advocates who paved the path for Maloz, Chaisson, Matherne and others are frustrated by the big-picture results, the Morganza system’s ever-pending status, the fact that their native land, the only home they have ever known, is more vulnerable today than it has ever been.

“Many, I think, have gotten very discouraged,” Falgout said. “When I go to meetings and almost hear the exact same comments that I heard in 1974 when the Coastal Zone initiative was just beginning – identifying what the problems were, identifying major projects that were necessary. We’re still talking about those same things right now, and that’s been very disappointing to me because I’m a lot more aggressive than how that program has evolved.”

Growing marshland at Catfish Lake isn’t going to end erosion, and the debate over whether uncontained marsh material can effectively regenerate won’t stop families with means from migrating north. It does, however, illustrate to appropriating agencies that once-dreamt solutions to the problem are available, and they have been proven in practice.

How significant are the small victories to restoration? In the race against high tides and vanished grass, most milestones are hard to identify, and thus, hard to rally around.

Maloz said she doesn’t even know how to truly measure ROR’s successes, a particularly troubling dynamic during her fund-raising efforts. “To tell somebody, ‘Oh, well, I made sure this was included in the master plan?’ You know … Really? But what that means is later on down the line there is a payoff. It’s really, really hard to measure, and I hate to take credit for things because I don’t think I’ve ever done them by myself.”

Sure, replenishing the Fourchon shoreline would prompt a celebration fitting of an unprecedented major accomplishment in the fight against wetlands loss, but it’s riding along the ring levee system on a Thursday afternoon to sharpen perspective and awareness, representing a regional focus in project monitoring and prioritization, fighting for reform in environmental mitigation, unleashing cost-effective restoration techniques, and securing land rights and local matching money for pending projects that prime the coast for future existence.

This, it, is Restore or Retreat.

 

Restore or Retreat Director Simone Maloz and Lafourche Parish
Coastal Zone Management Administrator Archie Chaisson overlook the
Fourchon Shoreline as they survey the damage from Tropical Storm
Lee.

ERIC BESSON

Simone Maloz sits in her office at the South Louisiana Economic
Council headquaters on the Nicholls State University campus.

ERIC BESSON