Graves talks coastal restoration challenges

Nicholls will have month to create new budget
April 7, 2015
Our View: Future eroding without coast fixes today
April 7, 2015
Nicholls will have month to create new budget
April 7, 2015
Our View: Future eroding without coast fixes today
April 7, 2015

The Bayou Region’s newest congressman came out swinging at federal agency plans which, he warned, would have dire effects for Louisiana, during a speech last week to members of a coastal advocacy group.

U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, was critical of a proposed federal seizure of states’ share of offshore oil money, and lambasted the Army Corps of Engineers while addressing the coastal conservation association Restore or Retreat, at Nicholls State University last Wednesday.


Graves, the former chairman of, spoke to members of Restore of Retreat during their annual meeting last Wednesday at Nicholls State University.

“To see the budget request that came out from the White House in February that suggested or is proposing to cut the GOMESA program, the offshore energy revenue sharing, before the dollars even start is an absolute travesty and demonstrates complete ignorance of any understanding of what’s happening down here , the crisis we face and how principled the investments have been in the coastal program over the last several years,” the former chairman of CPRA said.

The Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 distributes 37.5 percent of money earned from certain federal offshore leases to Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas “based on a complex formula,” reads a U.S. Department of the Interior document.


The president’s proposed federal budget will take the states’ share of that money starting in 2018 and devote it to federal conservation programs and to “support other national priorities.”

In 2006, voters devoted all of that money to the Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund with the intent of restoring wetlands, conservation and hurricane protection efforts.

Louisiana received $1.4 million through GOMESA in 2014. Total GOMESA collections by the federal government in 2014 was $10.4 million according to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue.


Graves also said that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers represents a government “monopoly” of coastal restoration work and that “there is no incentive to be efficient.”

Graves used the Corps’ study of the Morganza to the Gulf Project for 23 years, at a cost of $72 million, before ever starting construction as an example of the agency’s inefficiency.

“The Corps of Engineers talks about doing things but never gets them done,” state Rep. Joe Harrison, said. ”We have so many projects that have been on the books for years and the only people making money are consultants through the Corps of Engineers.”


U.S. Rep. Garret Graves addresses Restore or Retreat members during their annual meeting at Nicholls State University.

 

JEAN-PAUL ARGUELLO | THE TIMES