Recovery Plan seeks input from Houma residents

They were not supposed to come, but they did.

Representatives from the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA), the government agency created by Governor Blanco to orchestrate hurricane relief initiatives, gave a formal presentation in the Terrebonne Parish Council meeting room Wednesday night on efforts being made by Louisiana Speaks, the privately-funded arm of the Authority.

Louisiana Speaks launched what it calls the Regional Plan to coordinate local recovery programs in south Louisiana.

Although Houma is one of five urban centers in south Louisiana which are part of the Authority’s recovery efforts, Louisiana Speaks did not intend originally to present a formal workshop on the Regional Plan in Houma like the group gave in Lake Charles, Lafayette, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, according to Houma lawyer Danny Walker, who is an informal representative of the Authority.

Louisiana Speaks decided to present the workshop in Houma only after Chet Morrison, the owner of Houma oilfield-construction company Chet Morrison Contractors and president of the South Central Industrial Association, was seated on the LRA board, Walker said.

The group sited the fact that Houma didn’t suffer the same amount of damage from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as New Orleans and Lake Charles, as a reason for the oversight.

“Katrina and Rita created unprecedented challenges,” said Hal Cohen, director of planning for the Center for Planning Excellence, which is a non-profit partner of the LRA. “The scope of this has never been done in the U.S. before.”

He predicted in the next 10 to 50 years, New Jersey and Florida will get hit, and “they will look to us.”

Cohen described the Regional Plan as a way to advance a much larger effort.

“You can’t coordinate efforts unless you have a larger plan,” he said.

The Regional Plan conducted an extensive survey of south Louisianans during spring 2006, called the Regional Vision Poll, in which Louisiana Speaks representatives asked 23,000 respondents what their priorities were concerning hurricane recovery efforts.

The poll drew a larger response than a similar one conducted in New York following the 9/11 attacks, according to Cohen.

Levee building, coastal restoration and shoreline stabilization were all given as priorities by respondents in the survey.

Ninety-three percent of respondents said that coastal restoration was extremely important, and few people stated that property rights should trump restoration, according to the survey.

“People wanted balance,” Cohen said.

The Regional Plan designates population centers like Houma, Thibodaux and Raceland, as “reinvestment centers.”

“If you’ve got an urbanized area, those are the first places to put dollars,” he said.

The Regional Plan describes two kinds of economic development areas. Zones such as Thibodaux and Houma are on higher ground in more defendable places, and are centers for community and social services. Areas like Cameron and Fourchon are vital economic engines, but were unavoidably established in vulnerable locations.

“We need to manage that risk,” Cohen said.

Walker contends that the Regional Plan gives predictability to people who want to invest here.

“My biggest role is to stress that everyone locally take an interest in the plan,” he said. “Every time we walk down the halls of Congress, we’re faced with the ghost of corruption in Louisiana. In a regional plan like this, it gives us credibility in Washington.”

Walker claimed the survival of the area is at stake.

“We need to get this project through,” he said. “It’s going to be a generational effort.”