 All right We'll go ahead and get started Good morning everyone or no good afternoon everyone Sorry, it's not the West Coast. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you very much. Let me start by saying Thank you very much to our host today Representative Cedric Richmond, and we're joined by our friend China in his office, and she's Nice enough to say a few words to welcome us all here today. Thank you, China Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for being here and thank you to our panelists and on behalf of congressman Richmond We would like to thank you all It's going to be very informational. I hope you enjoy your time here. Thank you Thank you very much Thanks for joining us today. We're going to learn today about community-centered resilience efforts underway in Louisiana And we really have a terrific panel today not just in terms of substance But I've spent most of today with most of them and there's a wonderful chemistry on this panel And so I'm really really looking forward to the interplay that I've seen in some meetings that we've had this morning It's a great way to learn about this LA safe effort in all of the different facets And we especially appreciate their willingness to travel from Louisiana These are community-based community-based resilience experts and we're really fortunate to have them with us today For those of you new to EESI we were founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to help educate and inform policymakers stakeholders and the general public about the benefits of a low emissions economy in 1988 EESI declared that addressing climate change is a moral imperative a Sentiment that has since guided our work today We're fully engaged in the climate change policy debate and committed to work with Committed to working with Congress to find solutions to what I call the terrible problem of a rapidly warming planet lately EESI has been increasingly focused on the issues of resilience In a great way to learn about resilience is to see it and hear about it in action at the community level where its impacts are most immediately felt We're looking all across the United States for resilience stories to tell and today. We're focusing on Louisiana But if you want to learn more about other regions well Good luck for you because you can find summaries as well as videos of past briefings on different areas of the country at EESI org When we read or hear about the effects of climate change very often it follows or is accompanied by video footage of extreme weather Hurricanes flooding scorched planes tornadoes in the lake and this is reflected in how we talk about it Just the other day at an EESI briefing about a new report from the global Commission on adaptation I fell into that trap. I talked about more frequent and destructive storms And then of course when we talk about post event recovery efforts We often envision long lines of utility trucks and FEMA trailers big Mobilizations of resources that are more reminiscent of a major military build-up than anything we would normally want to see moving through our communities Yes, climate change is a cause of these more frequent and destructive storms But it's also more insidious than that It creeps up on us slowly inch by inch and sea level rise Fraction of a degree Fahrenheit by fraction of a degree Being resilient in the face of climate change needs a lot more than just long lines of trucks after big storms to be really resilient Our communities have to be better equipped than ever before to deal with the problems and challenges of climate change every day Regardless of whether a governor issues a disaster declaration or sends in the National Guard or an appropriation Supplementals on the house floor to rebuild infrastructure and help you get people's lives back on track Resilience requires vigilance every day and to have strong communities our To have resilience our communities have to be fully engaged They are literally the front lines and they're also the first resources people depend on in the face of a storm or other Climate change event and today we're going to hear about the community-based resilience efforts in Louisiana from today's panel We're going to leave plenty of time at the end for questions So please hold your questions until then and we're going to go ahead and get right started we're going to begin with We mixed up the order and I didn't have that We're going to begin with my friend Matt Sanders. He's the resilience program and policy administrator for the state of Louisiana's Office of Community Development Louisiana received a 92.6 million dollar award in conjunction with the HUD funded natural national disaster resilience competition Including 40 million dollars to support its resilience policy framework Louisiana's strategic adaptations for future environments or LA safe and a 48.3 million dollar award To resettle and this is where my Louisiana pronunciation will leave a lot to be desired But I'm going to try really hard the ill Dijon Charles Yeah, community and terribone parish Huh, not bad Matthew was the state senator governmental lead for its NRDC application And is currently the principal in the development of both awarded projects So with that Matt, I'll turn the microphone over to you and I look forward to your presentation. Thanks Thank you everyone It's truly a pleasure to be here today and to have the opportunity to address you all wait Oh, there's the beginning of our slides So I'll just lay a little context in groundwork before we really dive into what LA safe has been so It's probably not a news flash to anyone in the room to learn that Louisiana is an extremely disaster prone state The imagery that I'm displaying here is all of the hurricane tracks from 1918 54 to present There is a state under there somewhere. I promise And just to further illustrate That reality the office of community development that I represent We have a 17 billion dollar community development block grant Portfolio emanating from Hurricanes Katrina Rita Gustav Ike Isaac and to cloudburst rain events in 2016 We understand that some of that risk specifically our surge flood risk correlates with a land loss condition in the state of Louisiana So we suffer from relative sea level rise seas seas rise the land sinks And so we have an enhanced effect in Louisiana compared to other places Just to highlight what that looks like in 1960. We had this really nicely defined shape of Louisiana. We call ourselves the boot As we move forward to 2017 That boot is no longer. It's this skeletal condition that you see here And as we move out projecting 50 years We would expect to lose more land over that period of time now the green that you see here represents projects from our state's coastal master plan, which is you know, truly I think a groundbreaking effort on behalf of the state to Directly correlate our propensity to experience disasters with our land loss condition and so that's a series of large-scale restoration efforts and structural risk reduction projects but the basis of this effort LA safe is the output of all of those Efforts from the coastal master plan. So if we understand that the coastal master plan is limited in what can be restored at least over a 50-year time frame Then we need to think from a planning perspective about land uses and development patterns reflecting the reality that we're anticipating Obviously as we lose land that correlates with specifically search flood risk So the easy way to read this map is the the darker the blue the The more prone you would be in a 100-year event And so if our condition today is somewhat dire reflective of the the disasters that we have Been subject to in Louisiana as we project out the next 50 years even with the master plan You know, we would expect that Condition to get worse worse at least in some of our coastal communities Just to highlight what we're facing in Louisiana So there are a few hot spots for repetitive lost properties in in the United States Obviously the Louisiana coast Miami area New York, New Jersey But if you think about the population density of the of those other locations places like Miami places like the New York Metropolitan area compared to the relatively low density area that is coastal Louisiana It I think it lays out a stark contrast that on a per capita basis. We're experiencing a lot more flooding than other places And as we've experienced those flooding events our population has has already started to react right so we've been able to Chart population losses in our most vulnerable environments and as those population losses have taken place along our coast Meeting incomes have also declined precipitously. So there's a social aspect to how people are reacting to Disaster risk in that You know those that have the financial ability to move somewhere higher and drier in many cases are taking up That opportunity while those that don't have the same opportunity are Unfortunately subject to a higher degree of risk By virtue of where they live So that leads me to LA safe so This was funded by the National Disaster Resilience Competition as Dan mentioned And it focused on a six parish area in Louisiana now. We think this six parish area was a pretty good Target area to roll out this concept prior to Harvey and Maria in 2017 we calculated that this six parish area, which is exclusive of Orleans parish Had represented eight and a half percent of all historic payouts through the national flood insurance program so We thought this would be a good place to work and roll out an idea that says well How do we think about a future land use pattern? How do we think about future development based on what we know and the conditions that are currently on the ground? so as we Approach the public with this idea we wanted to launch this regional planning effort We wanted to emphasize the fact that we were going to work together right and so Government does some things. Well, we have good ideas, but without that interaction without a feedback loop between Government and the grassroots. We really didn't feel like we could gain traction And I think that ultimately got proven correct as some of my fellow panelists will talk about later This was an effort that encompassed 71 different public outreach events and More than 2,800 individual participants. So this doesn't count people that showed up to To more than one event And the promise that we made to the public was to say look we're going to lay out The information that we have at our disposal and we're going to work with you to develop policy proposals planning efforts and projects Reflective of the input that we get from you and we're going to keep going back to you over and over again And ask you whether or not the work that we're doing Validates the information that you've provided us and how do we continue to build on that information over a period of time? So it took us a year just going through the the public outreach and engagement process and building out the concepts that ultimately became a final plan About halfway through that outreach and engagement effort We put together what we refer to as our crowd-sourced land use plan And so this came from the public directly based on solely the mapping of disaster flood risk now and into the future and so what what this really illustrated for us is that The public is super smart and just laying out risk as we knew it to the highest degree possible We asked the public to tell us how we should use land now and in the future And it ended up being a really intelligent articulation of what a land use map should look like I am a planner by profession and I couldn't have done a better job than what the public did But that was really a watershed moment for us to understand that with the benefit of good information The public is really really smart So from there we kept going back to the public over and over again And we continued to refine these concepts continued to refine from a land use perspective from a development perspective What the the current in future? Incarnation of our communities should look like And as we continued to refine those ideas Over time and through multiple rounds and getting more input and refinement We finally landed on a series of project proposals now Once we got to this point in terms of how we decided what we were ultimately going to make investments in You know from the state's perspective We didn't really care what we ultimately funded because all of the ideas were relevant. They were all good And when it came down to it We just went back to the public itself and asked the public directly. What should we invest in as a state now? I think this is really important to highlight because you know as a planner I will tell you and you probably know this in your own right a lot of plans are developed and end up collecting dust on shelves right and so the ability to connect a Public planning effort with the promise of project investment at the end based on that effort was really a catalyst for people to get involved and Support the project itself So We ultimately are now investing in 10 separate projects that came from the LA safe effort And they all match Concepts that were then evolved into ideas and then tangible project proposals Through that year-long process of outreach and engagement Along with the 10 projects I just want to make sure that I highlight the thing that I think is really interesting So we developed final planning documents one for each of the six parishes and then a final document for Taking a regional approach all of the concepts and best practices that we developed throughout The planning effort and it started to highlight from a macro perspective How we need to think about development in Louisiana, right? So there's a there's a small purple thing kind of on the bottom of that map on the right That's Port Fushon. It's one of the biggest LNG terminals in the country That's a facility that really has to survive at least in the present the present-day condition For Louisiana's economy, but if that's a facility that we need to maintain access to how do we think about the supply chain? How do we think about where people live to commute to that facility? And that was really a conversation that we wanted to effectuate through this process Conversely in some of those areas that are higher drier better protected by their very nature per their location You know, we wanted to ask the community How should we think about future development opportunity in these places that are not yet developed out, right? And so to start that process early on knowing the populations are already moving to our high ground areas in Louisiana I think has been really effective for us to get a lot of interest from the public Like I said, we finished this planning effort earlier this year. We released plans in April. We've got a couple of copies here They're all available online if you're interested to review the findings. Thank you very much Thanks Matt can I ask a quick follow-up question on one of your slides? You had little coins with a zero one or a two. What what are those? See does this work? Yeah We kind of developed a voting System by which people that came to our last round of outreach and engagement They could illustrate their preferences for the projects and they could rank Ranked them one two and three and so we were able to compile Their preferences through that different effort that effort and ultimately make funding decisions And that's what the tubes were you can put your okay. That's cool. That's very cool Our next Panelist is Liz Russell Liz manages the development and implementation of strategies to support communities and economies influenced by land loss in relative sea level rise across Coastal Louisiana With a background in training in architectural design landscape systems and urban planning Liz incorporates the complexities of the developed urban ecosystem to promote equitable opportunities in areas altered and Affected by land change Liz directs the activities of the foundation for Louisiana's coastal resilience leverage fund Managing coastal grant making areas with community-based advisors allies and relevant partners while improving and increasing opportunities for regional collaboration Thank you, Liz Good afternoon. Thank you so much for being here for taking the time to be part of this conversation As Dan mentioned, I'm Liz Russell. I manage the climate justice portfolio at foundation for Louisiana We are a statewide philanthropic intermediary that initially was founded in the days following Hurricane Katrina And meant to be a resource that could pull in resources from a diverse set of spaces and get them out to support communities on the ground Most impacted by that disaster Within the context of this specific portfolio Our work has always been grounded in what frontline community experience looks like with an understanding that existing inequities are Exacerbated by any climate event and by often our responses to them institutionalized responses to them So our involvement in this work goes back to 2015 where we had some specific funding to ensure that Frontline communities most impacted by sea level rise and by land loss and by climate change more broadly Actually, we're key designers and decision makers from point zero in planning processes and in project selection It's actually invest to adapt to them In that process, we were really always hearing from our community partners Look by the time we see a plan all of the decisions have already been made outside of our community And they're brought to us for sort of an up or down feedback that may or may not be considered We also heard trends of look I had to evacuate for Hurricane Katrina I couldn't come back to my house for four months by the time I got back My employer had found an employee from elsewhere And so how do we think about coastal land loss and restoration and also think about our economy and our job access at the same time How do we think about the reality that we see? residents with resources picking up and moving and that those Changes impact everything else we care about as our tax basis shift We also see declines and ability to provide social services such as education or health care We see inability in some of our parishes to maintain Existing infrastructure much less to invest in new infrastructure required to reduce our flood risk over time So these challenges in Louisiana had before the LA safe process really been viewed as environmental How do we think about wetland restoration when in actuality those environmental challenges and opportunities? Spread into every other sector every other thing that our community is our constituents Our family our friends our neighbors our colleagues know and love So what does it actually look like to center that community voice is part of This process that we're speaking about today So LA safe would not have been possible without bringing together a wide array of public private philanthropic non-profit and community partners This was led as an initiative co-funded and co-managed by the foundation for Louisiana and the Office of Community Development But would not have been possible without the many organizations You see on this slide as well as the many other hundreds of residents that chose to engage in this process Before we actually designed and launched this planning process One of the things that we said when we heard this I don't want to see a plan after the decisions have been made is What would it actually look like to bring folks together from point zero to design a planning process together? Logistically, what does that look like in terms of the content? What does that look like? So logistically obviously we talked about how many meetings you have are those meetings at a parish wide scale Are they at a community scale? Are they regional? How do we think about? Barriers that keep people out so we provided child care and transportation transportation food that folks liked We thought about the literacy rates and language barriers and the technical nature of flood risk information All of the meeting materials were designed to be used for a fifth-grade reading level Conscious of where our constituents can be and where the barriers to actually being a part of design and decision-making Processes actually show up Most critically we also talked openly about the reality that people don't want to hear Information about whether their communities will exist or not from people from outside of their community And I want to be clear and underscore Some of the maps that Matt showed With the 2017 coastal master plan, which is the third coastal master plan in Louisiana to have been unanimously Passed through our state legislature. It's the first time that we have Openly admitted that we don't expect to build land more quickly than we're losing it Right. It's the first time that we have openly as a state said there are some communities that are here now That may not be here 10 years from now or 25 years from now and 50 years from now And so having those conversations was tough, right? That shouldn't probably be held by somebody Who is not from that area and that's what we heard from our constituents and our resident leaders and partners is We want to hear this information and discuss this information with people we know and trust Which brings me to one of the most pivotal early stage parts of this process our lead the coast program The foundation for Louisiana launched this program prior to the launching of LA safe It is essentially a four Saturday leadership and development program over the course of those four Saturdays It includes coastal and climate 101. How did we get here race power and privilege? Who are the government players that are involved and what do they actually do? When do I go to FEMA? When do I go to OCD? When do I go to my local parish planning office? It also includes facilitation training organizing training and advocacy training So by the time we launched the planning process of LA safe in March of 2017 We had had three cohorts of lead the coast graduates We then partnered with Bisco later on that year and you'll hear from elder Donald shortly To actually run that program more deeply in community and in partnership with community-based organizations The graduates of the lead the coast program were then eligible to be facilitators of the public meetings Foundation for Louisiana was able to provide stipends of $15 an hour And include transportation costs for those graduates to actually be the holders of the conversation So when you get into our second or third round of meetings out of that five that Matt showed Where you're talking about Ten years from now Maybe we're thinking about ourselves in the room ten years from now but 25 years from now Most of us are going to be thinking about our kids or our grandkids 50 years from now Which is the planning horizon of our coastal master plan most of us in the room are not thinking about ourselves We're thinking about our kids and our grandkids and the generations that come after us and when it comes to conversations around the realities of land loss and the realities of some of the most catastrophic changes that we are already seeing and expect to continue to see and We use that conversation as a way To to sort of back into the toughest parts of the dialogue But the lead the coast graduates and all of our community partners really made this possible Foundation for Louisiana was able to provide grants to individual community-based partners to do outreach or engagement work We were able to support different types of involvement where organizations felt like they could show up And so that meant that these conversations were not just being had at government meetings But that they were being had in communities. They were being had around dinner tables that they were being had At Sunday brunches and so that's something really important to come back to you also see in the slide those tubes again The question about the voting Matt mentioned at the start of this process. We went around To get essentially the blessings to work in each parish we met with all of our elected officials We met with senior leadership And we spoke about this process will be one that invests in a project in your community And we don't already have those projects. We want to design that with you And that was really important to get folks to play ball I would say at the same time that 40 million dollar bucket was also really important from my perspective You know a five to seven million dollar project range is enough to get people to care But maybe not enough To incite political arm twisting that might begin to Encourage where that money might flow So this voting process not only did we have these tubes with the coins and we had them wrapped for the entire meeting And it was a big reveal. This is what you see in that middle right picture at the end of the meeting The big reveal at the end of the meeting. We also had an online portal That was active for three weeks after that meeting Where residents who weren't able to come to the meeting could get online and indicate their preference So, you know, we're a foundation, right? We are a statewide philanthropic institution And I'm really struck by the ways in which philanthropy is able to show up in these spaces I think it's really important for us to think about the ways to leverage resources leverage relationships and Build together something that is more cohesive Philanthropy has lots of money often to fund research or to fund Planning processes, but never really has the money to implement the projects So what does it actually look like to partner in a way that is accountable to one another? to ensure that decision-making and Ownership of these ideas is locally based is a really interesting opportunity I think there's a really critical reality as we build out and expand our lead the coast program We've actually secured funding to scale that program coast-wide. It started in one parish It's scaled to six then it was at 12 and over the next 18 months We're going to be going to all 24 parishes across the coast With over time plans to develop funding and secure funding to expand that program to the inside of the state and to the Entire state of Louisiana. So what does it look like to build out civic engagement? Infrastructure and support local leadership. How do we support? Residents connecting their personal experience of environmental change because that personal experience of the flood risk that comes along with Heavy rainfall that we're seeing with climate trends, you know, what does it look like for that personal experience to be connected to different data sources? We also are supporting different research and advocacy Analysis to begin to develop some recommendations for policies So how do we pay attention to climate-induced migration which is ongoing in Louisiana? This is not a future scenario How do we pay attention to where? Those population trends are going what impacts that has to Capacity to provide local services and government funding and what tipping points might occur related to insurability The ability to finance or bond ability in certain areas And then how does that also connect to other issues like affordable housing or like public health care? Transit options because all of those conversations are starting to happen in Louisiana And finally, how do we lift local stories and support our local leaders in actually building out a new narrative? About what this work actually looks like about what the critical needs are and what the immediate things are on the horizon There is so much work to be done. We could all spend every day for the rest of our lives doing it What would it look like for us to actually be better coordinated? And actually leverage the activities of our partners friends neighbors family allies. Thank you So I'm I always have questions and I have a follow-up question for you quickly Liz The template that you used here. It's really remarkable and it seems like it's Was this a template for the lead the coast was this something that you that your organization borrowed from a previous effort or Because of the sensitivity of some of the discussions. Was it something that you created specific for coastal community-based coastal resilience? Right there we go So that's a great question The lead the coast program was a spin-off of the foundations together initiative, which was another leadership Development program that was less issue specific we Created this initial run of the program in 2016 and actually spent most of 2018 working with an advisory committee to refine and revamp that program So now there's actually an entry level an intermediate level and a fellowship emerging We're actually are about to announce our five fellows for the next year. So it's very exciting But it would not have been possible without bisco and nine other Organizational partners that we have brought into the fold And that are critical parts of this work going forward, but when we initially started it was just us The lead the coast program has been a way for us to build trust build relationships and grow capacity Simultaneously, so as we expand coast-wide and increasingly statewide It will once again be kind of just us and then seeking out new partners developing new relationships Connecting to skill sets and capacity that already exist in those regions and hopefully Increasingly building out statewide relationship infrastructure Well, I hope it catches on because it's pretty pretty remarkable And you mentioned bisco and that leads us to our third panelist elder Donald Bogan, Jr Donald coordinates activities around local state national issues and policies that affect communities and lafousian terbone Parishes he serves as a liaison between bisco pastors in the organization Donald was the key organizer for the community's Gulf oil spill prayer service in which 20 interfaith pastors Participated with 400 people in attendance in addition Donald is a licensed minister of the Christian Church of God in Christ and the executive director of master builders community center He has been with bisco Since 2009 and Donald I'm really looking forward to what you have to say Thank you So you guys sort of heard Matt talk long The funding process you heard let's talk about The process of guiding people, but I'm here to talk to you and most of you are here to see whether or not the LA safe process work So being a participant in the process I won't call your attention to this quote attributed to one of the members of our communities and it says When you have to relocate It's like a death It plays on your mental and physical where I'm being And this survey funded by the national association of religious you can see that one in every four One in four no family who have left our four and ten no Neighbors our friends who have left so the reality is real our friends and our family They are leaving because of the loss of our coast So LA safe long-term impacts on social networks So before we talk about the long-term impacts on the social networks, we have to look at the total process The thing that was unique about the LA safe process is that it focused on relationships it started with the lead the coast effort which was a space created for Community members fake leaders politician and gets healthy debate in this space. We was educated on the issues was educated on the opportunities available to us to solve these issues and It helped us build new relationships and deepen other relationships So let's think about this process The community leaders was brought in educated trained Healthy debate. They was then asked to participate in the LA safe process Now the important part about that is now that you have individuals That knows the issues knows the limitation of governments and now they're asked to go into the community and have those difficult debates You don't have a bureaucrat going into the community and tell people hey Look at this map. You might have to leave So these saying community members relationships was leverage So mac just can't come into my community and say hey, I want to do this But if madden I go into the community and because I have existing relationships in the community And now I have been part of a process that have educated me on the issues and the limitations of government I can have that conversation more affected with my community So When we look at government-led planning It's no secret that it's hard for government to include citizens Now I want to speak from my personal experience particularly hurricane Katrina After hurricane Katrina, I went to meeting after meeting And there was a lot of solutions put forward and each time we would put for the collude solution to get our community back up But running we was told no No No, and finally we asked why why can't we do it? Well, something called the Stanford act or Stanford act or whatever it was you can't do it because of these policies and these laws And so what often happens was that When you told no And then you invited to a comment meeting where you get to offer public comment But you wasn't at the sea for the planning you become frustrated And oftentimes their frustration spilled over to those public comment meetings So you'll get a community member like myself that'll go up there and we event about how unfair the process was Why we should have been included in the process? And in my opinion, that's the waste of space because you're not adding anything to that public comment, which is essential to your community But because we didn't have a seat at the table That's often what happens. I found myself in more public comment meetings than I found in planning meetings And I'm not saying that government doesn't have rules doesn't have laws doesn't have guidelines But if we was proactive and we had people in the community Educating community members or leaders on the limitations of government and how they could get involved Then when there's a disaster you would have a more formal more educated community So Now you have community members That's aggravated community members that's upset And community members looking for answers And government officials oftentimes says hey look the the people don't want to see the sauce is making business You know, it's too complicated The people don't know how the process work And that's used as a crutch that's used as an excuse in my opinion Because if you educate and Matt highlighted this if you educate the community, they can come up with some of the best solutions they are local experts And I believe that it is not only my job To educate my community, but it's also my elected officials to help me educate my community So the LA safe approach was it effective? Well, hopefully by now the answer to you as it is to me is yes It's very effective This is a win-win situation Why you say that donald? Because you gathered different people into a room You have a series of meetings referring to lead the coast a series of meetings educating them on depressing issues That's a lot of issues in our community. People are multi issues Right My wife won a new car. That's an issue But that might not necessarily be the issue that's facing my community So you get us into the room Well, we can highlight and agree on the issues that we have to solve then you give us resources To solve the issues Right, and then you invite us into a larger meeting for us to go into our community and bring them Into the room and then as leaders in the community we have these difficult conversations It's also a win for our elected officials It gives them an opportunity to be in the room or same representatives into the room and let us know what they're fighting for And how we can be inclusive in that fight Don't tell me you fighting for me. Let me fight with you So yes, the LA safe approach was effective It helps bring the community together and help us identify Help us prioritize the issues and the problems that we're facing Now as I take my seat, I want to say this I've been organizing for well over a decade And oftentimes it might be a journalist It might be a university that might want to come and have me fill out a survey Give me $25 gift certificate or a card It might be a university after the vpr spilled I might want to draw blood from our pregnant women's or take hair samples so they can be studied long term These people coming to our communities. They take our stirrer. They take our data and then they leave I was a big step before about this process I thought that just was another person or another group of people approaching my community looking to take from it But I'm pleased to say they didn't fly in kiss babies and shake old people hands They stayed on the ground. They continue to be on the ground. They help us deepen our relationships Go back into the community and weave those Broken relationships mend them back again Put us into a room where we could debate put us into the room where we can highlight our issues The enemy of my enemy is the friend coastal land laws is threatening my whole community This process Highlights what we have in common I'm gonna say that again this process highlights what we have in common And so if we're looking for jobs, we're looking for good schools. We're looking for education for our kids Then we have to look at those maps that matt had up there early and say where are you going to live? They didn't make me a lie When I presented them to my community, they didn't leave and I wasn't a lie Yeah, I told my community that it would say to help and they still gotta help. Thank you Thanks, donald. You said something in one of our meetings this morning that I thought was really interesting The the question came up or I think the question you brought up was, you know, why is the church involved? And you said well, that's where people get together Right, you have regular meetings and I was wondering in addition to your congregation I was in the interfaith community that came together. I was wondering what other congregations You work most closely with and seems to me like a sort of another great example of how, you know This process brought people together that, you know, may not disagree exactly but but may run in different circles So this goes multi-faith. So we work with a host of fake leaders whether it be cablet, Baptist, non-denominational We're able to put aside the ideological differences by emphasizing the needs that we have Like I said, people are multi-issues. So sometimes we might be working on the local garbage pickup We might be working on stop sign issues local state and federal issues But the ability to highlight relationships when you get people in the room And you're able to get people to prioritize the problem Then you're able to come about solutions Thanks Our final panelist is something here's right here sneaking up on me I guess it's because the chairs are so close. I took me a couple of panelists to get figured that out But I figured it out Dr. Justin Kozak is currently a researcher and policy analyst with the center for planning excellence a non-profit planning organization in Baton Rouge, Louisiana His work includes writing community adaptation and resilience plans Developing planning guides and most recently developing an educational game on watershed management He is a certified flood floodplain manager His phd is an environmental resources and policy from southern illinois university And he was a national science foundation Eigert Eigert fellow in watershed science and policy looking forward to hearing from you, Justin Thank you, den So when I was asked to come speak here It was kind of short notice and I'm happy to be here And I'm glad you guys all kind of touched on some of the points I'll I'll be bringing up on this first off center for planning excellence We're mission-driven non-profit as he dan said we're in Baton Rouge, Louisiana We're committed to driving positive change throughout Louisiana And really trying to bring strategies to address all of the the challenges we're facing One of the unique things about our organization is that we work at the state level and we work at the local level So this gives us a broad perspective for a lot of planning efforts Which is why we were really excited to work on the la safe plan because it we as we heard It really merged those two things together in a really nice way that was really effective And so from this broad perspective and from our experience with la safe We've kind of we I was been asked to talk about like the need for transformative policy and governance Right like why did this work? Why did other things not work? So, you know, we talk about Developing plans with the community and how they was established buy-in and ownership, right? They're educational. They they you know get local innovation. They're also politically palatable, right? That's important But as matt was saying the foundation for that was the good data and modeling that came from the cpra This is data and modeling that if we didn't have this large state effort would not have been available to these communities On which to build that plan off of But most importantly as donnell was talking about they didn't make him a liar, right? This data comes in matt presents it and community members are sitting there and tying that to their own personal experiences Right, they look at that and they say, oh, you know, this data is right I recognize my community in that data So, you know it provided that common space with which to move forward with But la safe with a unique program, right? It had a unique funding stream There's almost always a disconnect in doing something like this, right? So you can create that plan, but there's a disconnect between adoption of those plans Yes, those best plans are made at that community level But most places at the local level lack the capacity to develop a plan like this even fewer have the capacity to To implement a plan like this and even fewer have are able to actually like Continue it and monitor and maintain like those policies and programs that are in that plan over time And every place is different and all of our local planning efforts. We always hear of same version of the common statement. It's you know We're just trying to keep the lights on right, you know, there's a backlog of work There's immediate needs in the community. They don't have the luxury of planning long term But that kind of long-term thinking is exactly what we need for adaptation planning, right? You know, rome wasn't built in a day, but neither were our levels of risk and vulnerability, right? It took a thousand decisions to get where we are today And you know, if we can't start making decisions that buy down that risk and vulnerability over time You know, how are we going to get to a point where we can have more resilient communities? And that kind of goes back to what matt was saying about like how we have uh, you know, the cpra data And this range of time horizons and multiple scenarios to consider That cpra data allowed us to look 10 25 and 50 years into the future Now if we had come in and just said hey, here's a 50, you know, let's put together a 50-year vision It's not really workable, right? People don't think that far ahead of time, right? The biggest investment most of us will make is a 30-year mortgage You know, maybe your kids are growing up and out of the house in 20 years You're maybe thinking about buying a new car in five, right? Those multiple timescales allowed us to put it in a perspective to really look at how this is going to change over time And most importantly prioritize the next steps that need to be taken. It made it real. It made it feasible Um But one of the there's another challenge we have associated with like the timing of this, right? And that's that adaptation planning is looking long term, but hazard mitigation disaster recovery efforts And the funding streams are tied to those efforts. They're attached to like these singular events, right? They're largely tied to hurricanes wildfires floods, right? Those happen immediately. They're highly visible The immediate needs of people is pretty obvious to understand And because of that we're used to these disasters and we're pretty good at responding to them Part of the reason for that after disaster everybody's in the same room together, right? So you have You know, they hunker down and at the EOC and whatever issue pops up There's probably the person you need to talk to right there in a room with you But that level of coordination collaboration communication falls apart as you go from Disaster response and people leave the room and you move in a disaster recovery And then when you're talking about long-term planning where you're not just planning for the next disaster But you're trying to plan across disasters You know, how do you maintain that level of collaboration and communication? So that really goes to the point of you know, these drivers of change that we're looking at sea level rise You know land use decisions. These are slow moving drivers of risk and vulnerability And that the speed of that results in a lack of urgency, right? Oh, this is something that we can put off You know, it doesn't have that immediacy doesn't have that feeling of we need to take care of this now um And so, you know, like the migration of people that we see moving away from the coast That's a a lot less noticeable Uh than a storm surge that inundates that community You know the thousands of land use decisions that result in a more vulnerable population and at risk infrastructure That's a lot less noticeable than a fire or flood that destroys that that place Um, so, you know now these decisions There's another important point here these decisions those land use decisions each one individually you could argue Are rational decisions, but every one of those decisions adds up to an irrational result So in a country where most places don't have the capacity to plan long term How do you know and connect the dots of all of these rational decisions that are leading to this irrational result? How do you plan for a future and you know stepping back? How does the state and federal levels? Support those efforts And even if you do get that support there's another challenge, you know Uh state and federal agencies their processes They don't really align with local adaptation needs, right? They there's crossing a lot of boundaries. There's a lot of You know interconnected issues that we're dealing with So agencies aren't set up for that. They've got specific missions They try and stay in their lane. They try to avoid mission creep. They can also be pretty territorial But the multi-dimensional challenges that we're trying to fate you're trying to address with plans like LA safe That overlaps a lot of these issues So this rigid structure isn't conducive to this long-term planning that we need to address You know to address these issues So like that really is a fundamental challenge for us. We need these institutions to be you know, uh stable But adaptation requires them to have a built-in flexibility So i want to go back to the slide that matt brought up I think liz had it too where we're looking at this population movement from the coast to to higher ground Right So matt mentioned you know these places that are losing people they they're uh lower income lower median income And uh older right that changes your disaster response But how many of the school districts or you know departments of education are looking at maps like this or looking at data like this And uh thinking about their future investments Are the receiving cities the ones that are growing or do they have a plan for maintaining acceptable class sizes? Do they have a development framework that can absorb that population without putting them back into a high-risk area? As people move away from the coast as health and human services looking at this data and thinking about how their services need to Shift to change this demographically different population more fundamentally Looking at a picture like this. How do you invest in a high-risk area that's losing people? How do you disinvest from that area and leave people behind? How do you justify an investment in a receiving community when you know? There's other places that demonstrably have a greater need Um, so those are just a lot of the questions that we you know, we grappled with in la safe At cpex, we're working on a way of trying to rethink the state's approach to adaptation planning And to align state agency efforts but At the start of this we kind of had to step back and think like how do we think about this this challenge? Um, so along with some colleagues of ours That are helping us think through this we kind of realized we're not really dealing with one emergency right that one challenge We're dealing with three of them The first one to the tip of the iceberg here. It's the real emergency Right. This is the ones. We're all familiar with I had pictures of them up there Uh, this includes dealing with the immediate aftermath as well as the consequences of taking action or not Not taking action when a when a disaster hits Right. Uh, these real emergencies are highly visible Um, these are the destroyed homes the damaged livelihoods the economic losses The visibility of these makes real emergency of real emergencies Allows political capital to be gained because as you respond people see that um And when we we're dealing with these our question because it's immediate needs it's like Are we doing things right? Are we responding to this immediate emergency the right way? But then just below that just below the tip of that iceberg just below the surface the thing you can't really see Is that conceptual emergency right as sea level comes up? It's changing our our our benchmarks It's changing how we how the land works and uh how storm surge hits us Right at some point Business as usual isn't going to work anymore Should we build it back? What do we do if we don't build it back? So this conceptual emergency is like how to manage this highly interconnected and rapidly changing system And not leave people behind and build that resilience Um, it makes us reconsider our responses to these things Um, overcoming is difficult though because they're less visible And it's not just challenging the status quo, but it's actually finding a way to change that When we're dealing with this We don't we no longer ask are we doing things right? We ask what are the right things? You know, should we build it back? And then finally there's that existential emergency right at the bottom of it Um, I know donald mentioned a few things that kind of touch on this Um, it involves shifting worldviews. It's it's uh the changing cultures assumptions and mindsets Uh, it's addressing. Uh, it's questioning deeply held assumptions such as what constitutes progress and development At this point we're asking ourselves. What is right? So take the bayou communities of louisiana for example Where much of the la safe work occurred they have an outsized influence on the culture and identity of the state of louisiana When you go to new orleans those are by that's that's a lot of bayou culture there But they're losing land and flood risk is increasing and faced with repeated disasters population loss disinvestment School closures shifting industries. It's under threat The red on these maps represents land loss As lis mentioned even under a best case scenario for louisiana, there are communities that in 50 years are not going to exist What kind of questions would you ask yourself if you knew your childhood home? The home your parents grew up in your grandparents if it wasn't going to be there in 50 years So that's kind of what we're dealing with in louisiana But again as matt said our unique geography puts us ahead of the curve on this Which isn't exactly a great place to be but it allows us to come here and talk to you about things like this So what's next how do you incentivize those big ideas like la safe? Well, there's no real script for this type of planning right adaptation planning isn't super new But the scale and the scope of the problems that we're dealing with that's pretty unique So we don't have step-by-step instructions You know we have different weather patterns changing climate an altered landscape every land use decision We make changes the hydrology of how a flood is going to respond Like I said the sea level rises literally changing our benchmarks So we can't even look to past strategies to address future ones But because every place is a different context There's not going to be like a recipe for this But we can point out some key ingredients the first we heard right off the bat You need good data and modeling and I will point out this is the easiest part of all of it, right? It's you just you you get some people together You get some bright minds you model it out you have the best data and then you you ground truth that you verify it And Louisiana is fortunate to have the cpra, but that wasn't really a result of forward thinking on our part Um, there was the result of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, right? It pushed us straight past that real emergency of responding to it and to that conceptual emergency of asking What is the right thing to do here? Uh, and part of the answer to that was we need better data and modeling so that we can anticipate And we can start to restore and and put in protection projects to help protect the state of Louisiana But above all the most important thing that that Conceptual emergency gave us It was a clear-eyed view of what we're facing right some people had warned us of it But there wasn't consensus on it and Katrina and Rita really drove one home that point That this is a big challenge and it's going to change the face of the state for a long period of time so projects like LA safe that rely on this data that rely on that modeling and use it to engage the community More that's needed in Louisiana Next you need to start the conversation Liz did this and with lead the coast donald continued it as he was a still one of the people involved in lead the coast You know They had those difficult conversations. They straight up went in and said restoration and protection isn't enough You know, we need to do more. There's no question. We have to adapt We need to understand what's coming and plan for it. We need to find a way out of this So that from top to bottom We're all understanding what we're dealing with and can consider what those right things to do are And I touched about on this a little bit earlier, but we need that we need to build in flexibility to a lot of these programs Adaptation planning is going to require us to work at multiple scales across jurisdictions That traditionally aren't worked across. We're going to need every tool in the toolbox And part of the reason for that needed flexibility is because as we start that conversation People are going to ask questions that we haven't thought of yet And if people are asking questions you haven't thought of yet, you're going to get answers that you also haven't thought of yet And that's why you need that That's also this need for flexibilities. Why I have a personal vendetta against the word solutions in this sort of You know this job, right? It's not a solution if it only works until it doesn't it's a strategy Right words matter. So a strategy also has that connotation And it acknowledges that adaptation is a process that resilience is a moving target That's why we need strategies to address these challenges is we and we need to revisit them often And finally you need leadership Matt and ocd were able to win this grant money and come in and provide that leadership But if matt had come in and and said what he said in these meetings Without liz's work starting that conversation without donald working to start that conversation without the cpr good data and stuff He might have gotten rotten fruit thrown at him Probably made a gumbo out of it. But anyway But with that leadership and with that good data and modeling with Started with that flexibility built into this unique funding stream and with starting the conversation Matt was able to come in and provide this vision right this common purpose that everybody then was able to sit down Debate strategies about it, right? They're not debating the data that data exists They're sit down they debate strategies and what those next steps should be and how to prioritize it and what they see in The future for their community I'll stop there Thanks, just so that was great I'm going to leave my follow-up question for the Q&A because and I'll start with you because I you kind of led into it a little bit but One thing that I noticed looking at those presentations is the photos The photos of these events were not seas of chairs with people in them They're people like engaging with each other over tables pointing at things I just really really powerful photos and I think I can I wasn't there obviously, but I think I can imagine just how How impactful and productive those conversations had to have been It's obviously no surprise that the LA safe has been so successful I'm going to get started with Q&A And like I said, Justin, I'm going to start with you and this is something that you kind of hinted about a little bit Maybe it's the professor or the former teaching assistant in you But you had lots of questions and now I'm going to make you have lots of answers And then we'll go down the line and then we'll open it up, but Of what you've seen in the LA safe If you were going back and creating curricula for people who were in your line of work What would you institutionalize? What would you want to take from LA safe that worked the best and just make sure That every one of these activities every one of these processes from here on out has what what are those kinds of qualities? I think for me it's the the broad approach right so we talk about resilience and you know you you ask 10 people What the definition of resilience is and you get 10 different answers? but We didn't you know the LA safe team didn't come in and say we want to talk about this specific thing and put people in a box Right, we said here's this problem. Here's this challenge And how do you want to address it? What do you think the needs to do are and we can support you with data? And the modeling and we can support you with planning effort and visualizations and these activities to try and Get some of that creative energy and get conversations going But it really was the you know, we have this foundation that we can build from and we There's there's a definite need in the community for this And just leaving that open and letting people run with it I think that was one of the biggest strengths and one of the and from a public meeting perspective One of the most fun things about it was just seeing how people can take it and run with it Donald, what do you think? What would you like to see? Institutionalized whether it's in a resilience context or maybe other issues that's facing, you know, you're southern Louisiana community The the relationship building process I think that is key the key element to it is that before you can come up with any strategy or solution You have to have those relationships a quick story. I'm from southeast Louisiana in harrowing with storytellers Two individuals one rich one poor both needed needed a life Saving surgery one doctor the doctor saved the poor man when asked Why did you save that poor man when that rich man offered to give you anything you wanted? simple The poor guy was my son-in-law relationships matter Fair enough Liz you're you're coming at this from a funder's perspective So you have you know the golden rule you have the gold you make the rules What would you want to see your sort of future fundees your future grantees? Implement from the la safe experience. What would you like to see institutionalized? so um I think in terms of the collaboration and coordination between organizations That's something we can influence with our type of philanthropic resources But when you ask, uh, you know, what would you like to see institutionalized? This was a one-off process. This was a process that had a particular federal funding stream That without some type of institutionalization at the state level We may not see again. Of course, there are lessons being learned in some ways and being incorporated into various state activities but there's not actually any solidification of this type of meaningful engagement or thinking about the continuation Of this work. Um, it's just another one off And that you know, we've had Katrina Rita Gustav Ike Isaac the BP drilling disaster And then two cloud burst rain events in 2016 and every One has has had a separate process to response respond to it in terms of planning and deciding what steps are next and it feels Uh exhausting there's so much planning fatigue in our communities because there's always folks coming down and asking But there isn't necessarily a thread that comes through that pulls The work from LA safe into the next thing In terms of of actual law and policy that would allow it to do so And I think we're always going to be in this this cycle and and sort of exhaustive Rhythm unless we actually take those steps to institutionalize some of the meaningful participation community involvement in design and decision-making processes and sectors that aren't Environmental to be required to really consider the impacts of environmental change Whether that's human decision-making or whether that's climate change But what does it look like to actually make sure those things are systematized? Thanks and Matt from your perspective, what would you like to see institutionalized from your experience with LA safe? um well I'll turn around and say I was in a conversation earlier today in one of our representatives offices and and they asked well You know, how should we think uh from the capital hill perspective about? You know nationwide building standards And I said well, you know, I don't know if it's really appropriate to try to answer that question at the at the national level On capital hill, right? What might be applicable and most appropriate in Louisiana may not be most appropriate in oklahoma and so on and so forth what I think can be institutionalized is streamlined information, right? So as everybody has mentioned we weren't able to do this without good information that our state invested in to help us understand Specifically our surge flood risk over a period of time I think if we invest in The resources and the tool kits necessary by which we have a commonly accepted set of information regarding all kinds of disaster risk Whether it be floods in Louisiana or fires in california Then we're providing tool sets to practitioners on the ground to use their basis of knowledge to the greatest extent possible And develop implementations that work best at the local level Thanks, um, let's open it up. I know we have a question here in the front row Savannah will come over in just a moment with a microphone and that's so that the people who are Following us online will be able to hear as well Thank you. Thanks so much for the presentation I'm with the georgetown climate center And I know you work with with my colleagues, but i'm also from oplusus, louisiana And i'm just really thankful for the work you're doing and thankful for the engagement You you have and I i'm thinking about finance issues and financing and um You know there's a limited amount of money and i'm concerned about You know insurance premiums rising credit ratings falling and wondering What's going on with that if is la safe dealing with that? Are you seeing any any of Are you dealing with any of those issues? I guess and how big are they in louisiana and what the solutions might be? Um, whoever wants to jump in thank you Yeah, I'll I'll go first and then turn things over to my colleagues. Um I you know the direct answer to are we dealing with it? You know, we can't help but not deal with it in louisiana I think as you know, um, so we have you know as a matter of of tradition in louisiana. We have familial owned real estate so a lot of people have The entirety of their own personal wealth Invested in real estate equity that over a period of time has declined in value by virtue of the fact that it has Been subject to repetitive disaster events and an inclining sense of risk Now I think one of the the challenges that we face in louisiana is that You know, we're not adequately pricing risk in louisiana or anywhere else and that's largely tied to you know, some of the I guess indecision regarding the the future of the national flood insurance program, but um One of the things that we face is that you know Over the long period of of time should nfip be nfip be reformed in such a way in which it's no longer heavily subsidized Everybody's being rated on a true actuary table um You know, you're going to see a precipitous evaporation of real estate wealth in places like louisiana Instantaneously and I think people are starting to understand that but the unfortunate part of it is We're still seeing investments made That are ultimately going to be if not worthless significantly diminished in value Whenever the economy changes relative to this problem so you know, there's kind of a You know a first do no harm mantra and that we need to think about the future development activities we're engaging in But there's also a current condition where people already know they're underwater and they don't really know what to do about it So The answer is yes, we're dealing with it by necessity, but I don't think we have Good resources or answers to to provide the the public that is That is living in this dire set of circumstances as of now I would also add That every investment at the state level Should have an analysis about what's revealed in the coastal master plan regarding those Current assets existing programs future investments I mean at the state level we have Department of transportation that hasn't historically paid attention to the horizontal movement of water in their planning of roads and Transportation and other development policies We have a Louisiana economic development that hasn't necessarily been thinking about what it looks like to incentivize Inclusive economic growth in areas poised to remain high and dry over time Our department of health hasn't necessarily historically been thinking about what it looks like to Manage our public health infrastructure either that already exists in asset form Or that needs to exist because we're seeing Uptakes and suicide rates and mental health care needs and some of our parishes losing the most land So one of the biggest steps that we need to take And I would love for Justin to speak to some of the work cpex is doing in more detail to engage other agencies Is actually ensure that every investment increasingly has a lens and an understanding of those current and future environmental risks And I would say as our constituents are becoming more and more informed They're also consumers that are making decisions That are aligned with what they're learning But that also will have rippling effects into the private sector past the public sector, of course The last thing i'll say is that We know and we you saw this on our population movement maps That residents with resources are the ones who are able to pick up and move Um the residents with resources are the ones able to think about adapting and able to finance their own adaptation And so unless we are Making sure that every single wetland restoration green infrastructure Adaptation investment is actually creating small business opportunities locally local job opportunities and workforce opportunities The growth of new and emerging sectors We're actually missing the opportunity to use those projects to in fact start to finance The wealth of the people who will actually have to start making making decisions to adapt Those two things are not separate Yeah, and so just to speak to a little bit of the work that cpex is doing we had a Last october we had a resilience building workshop. We had the governor for several hours But we had his chief of staff his cabinet The head of every state agency and their their top bureaucrat uh in those offices and in those two days We talked about you know, what are the drivers of change in louisiana? What uh like and we centered it around the good data modeling of the Coastal master plan right we said are you thinking about this data when you make a decision in your agency? And even at that state level we got that you know, we're just trying to keep the lights on right We're just we're trying to do this and so You know the answer to that isn't isn't more government, right? We don't need to get them more it but the answer there is you know, how do you adjust their missions? How do you adjust their day-to-day processes so that that resilience lens that? You know that understanding of this long-term challenge is built into it And so we're in like the exploratory phase now doing interviews and looking at you know The overlapping issues that they deal with not necessarily like they're duplicating work You know, they all have their their own You know lanes that they stay in but you know these issues are no longer single-purpose issues They they go they cross a lot of boundaries And so you know liz touched on quite a few of them there It's you know, you need to be looking at this data and you know the the master plan process Which used to be every five years. I think it's every six years now that provides a good opportunity for you know These agencies to look at this Consider it you know provide input maybe provide, you know their own chapter or like uh, you know a two page You know, here's how we see our work fitting into this and and how we're going to not just Be uh, simpatico with the master plan but actually contribute to helping build that resilience Along alongside of the restoration and the the the risk mitigation projects that the cpra is doing Donald did you have a response? Uh short answer is yes. I remember years ago. I was running around with papers and showing people estimates So what they fought flood insurance might be up man? Look, you're gonna be paying paying $28,000 a year Look, you're gonna be paying $5,000 a year for flood insurance and my neighbors My friends and the pastors I work with laughed at me. Oh, they'll never let that happen I said man there were the past the biggest water act, right? So it's very important that our community is educated on the process educated What's going on with the process because that was already law And no one in my community had any idea how they was going to be impacted So yes, we hit we hear those things Um, traditionally in the disaster prone area people just cope with the issues they take it as it comes Uh, other we have a question here One moment. We'll wait for the microphone Thank you Can somebody um describe some of the components of this coastal land use plan and some of the projects that were You said they were voted on right? So i'm not sure in terms of the plans that are ongoing The state has the coastal protection restoration authority, which was established after hurricanes Katrina and Rita And produces as Justin said every six years a new coastal master plan our most recent iteration is 2017 The projects that are included in that plan include mostly wetland restoration As well as structural risk reduction measures like levees, dykes and dams and non structural risk reduction measures like buyouts elevations and flood proofing the LA safe process Included 40 million dollars of investments in 10 projects that were selected by the public This process from the state side was managed by a different state agency And those projects really spread across sectors from a business incubator to expansion of mental health care services green infrastructure a safe harbor for fishing fishing boats and Of resilient affordable housing prototype so lots of different sectors But matt maybe you could speak to i know all of those projects are not necessarily ocd's wheelhouse in the long term but yeah, so think about it this way so If the coastal master plan is is louisian has answered the question of over a 50 year time frame How do we restore as much of our coast as possible? And how do we implement large-scale infrastructure to provide as much risk reduction as possible? And what we've started to do here through LA safe is to say well What is the 50 year housing plan relative to our climate future? What is the 50 year economic development plan relative to our climate future? What is the 50 year transportation plan relative to our climate future? and within that paradigm we have a series of demonstration projects that 10 in total that embody all those ideas right so we have A what we call a resilience piggyback project in la fouche parish And what that is it takes a model that we have already used at the office community development to blend low-income housing tax Credits with community development block grant funds But we did in such a way that we wrote into the funding opportunity to our our affordable housing development community very specific Requirements relative to site selection that takes into account everything we know about our climate data moving forward Takes in very specific accounts relative to building standards so that any conceivable flooding event We can think of over a 50 year time frame in other words the lifespan of the asset right? How are they designing that structure to account for that 50 year time horizon right? So that's one example from a housing perspective We've got something called organza to the gulf in terra boom and fouche parishes that is designed to be this massive risk reduction structure that will protect larger metropolitan environments. Well LA safe asked the question What about those people that are permanent residents that are on the wrong side of that morganza line right and so in response We have a bio program that is strategically targeted to those people that are permanent residents outside of morganza right transportation networks so la 61 commonly known as airline highway runs through a place called st. John the Baptist Parish it is both A high ground corridor around which new economic activity can and should be coalesced But it's also a place that suffers from periodic flooding in and of itself So we have a street revitalization project that builds out attention retention and detention of water Along that that particular corridor while also incentivizing economic development along that same corridor So I can't answer your question to say that you know la safe is any one thing or the projects themselves embody any one thing But it's an approach to development that we would hope to be scaled and replicated in mass Um other we have a question over here Mike will be right with you Thanks Yes, good afternoon great panel. My name's john bird with the national society professional surveyors nsps My question goes at the data issue that impacts nfip and several other Agency programs for surveying and mapping and geospatial data There's a Louisiana politician that once told me that elevation is a salvation of inundation And the national elevation program in in the country is run by usgs It's known as a 3d elevation program. Just curious as Because FEMA contributes to it. No other core How much from la safe's point of view? Is that the kind of data that you you're utilizing for resiliency for surge modeling All the other kind of mapping opportunities out there Is that something that y'all are familiar with or would leverage at the state and local level as well? Well, so I we actually had this debate amongst ourselves last night and the question was You know, how many states have statewide lidar that was shot relatively at the same time? Um, and so the the question is not I think relative to the the availability of data and toolkits like you're alluding to It's the consistency thereof across jurisdictional boundaries So in Louisiana, for instance You know, we have kind of this haphazard system where you might have one parish that has a flood insurance rate map that has lidar That was shot in 1988 right next to a parish that has lidar shot in 2001 Now if those two parishes want to work together and figure out how their respective development patterns impact one another That is a virtual impossibility with the current information. Uh, that's available So, you know, the short answer to your question is yes and that we combined all of the good information We have in Louisiana and even even though I would say that we have better information than just about anybody It's still inadequate So the answer is yes, and we need to do a whole lot more Justin did you have something? Yeah, I was going to say I think all of those data sources are Brought in to bear and and you know checked against what cpra has but cpra so brings them in Um, I would also add that like Noah is a great source of that data. I mean I was working in a project in genre feet Louisiana and they got funded for some seven foot title levies and shortly after that announcement came out Noah had already incorporated them into their their digital coast viewer And so it's been it's been nice to see how responsive that is at the federal level But again, you know the ability to look at that and then to do the type of planning that's needed Right like so you can look at that and then you know, maybe if you print it out You could draw on it and say, you know, here's uh, you know developments that are at risk or here's some transportation corridors That are going to be at risk from this So it provides that snapshot, but it doesn't really allow you to plan too comprehensively with it Thanks. Now. I think I heard you talking about it earlier. There aren't that many states that have Recent lidar, right? You you were saying maybe a couple I think we were talking statewide coverage like how many states have like a full statewide coverage of it We think california and maybe illinois Okay Yeah, I was wondering why is that the case? Is that something is that a state? Is there an estate impediment? Is that a federal policy shortcoming? Like What's preventing that answer from being 45 out of 50 states? I mean matt will probably add to this but my guess is that lidar is kind of done on an as needed basis Sometimes you you know I know in grad school there were times when it was done based on a grant that a professor had gotten or You know in illinois where I went to school The illinois state geological survey is also their floodplain managers And so that's why I think they have statewide coverage because it's been driven largely by an academic institution as well So i'll just add to that to say, you know, the short answer is it's extremely expensive And the secondary answer is it doesn't have immediate utility unless that data is then used to facilitate some type of risk pricing at the insurance level And I would also add that that risk pricing could have ramifications for valuation of existing real estate which might add A disincentive to invest in that because it would increase in some cases the insurance costs for those areas Even as it could help to inform where certain investments were made to reduce flood risk Great. Thanks. I think we had a question sir. I think you're next Yes Ken feeling with uh storm center communications or geospatial mapping geoclaborative mapping technology Also from louisiana from new warlands go tigers. We're gonna tell issue My question went um elderberg and bogan. Sorry made its presentation your first slide said that relocations like depth Okay, how does the louisiana safe master plan or the coastal master plan? How does it address that crucial question who stays who goes who like relocates who doesn't how are that conversation? I guess of Of moving and relocating people and that decision. How is that made and and who makes that decision? How did that conversation come about? So prior prior to the la safe process That was communicated through maps And it's exactly how it went This is where we at This is what we were going to be Then it's up to individuals like me to go back and study those maps I'll find experts to help me understand the maps to go back into the community and say hey Guys, we need to pay attention to this because in 20 years 30 years 40 years 50 years. You're going to be at risk Since teaming up with ffl and working with lead the coast and le safe Really putting people together in the room bring the experts in the room and introducing people to tools like the flood resiliency tool Where they can go online and put in these zip code or the address and be able to find out what programs are I mean, excuse me projects from the state master plan in the area and what they flourished is so Prior to me being involved in this project It was basically going to meetings because the state is not going to have that difficult conversation And that's why it's important to have people in the community on the ground having those conversations So going to the meetings Figuring out where my individual we call them leaders the people we work with Well, my individual leaders was in my community what it was on the map and helping them Decide or figure out their risks So I'll add to that just to say that and most of My fellow colleagues in government thought I was insane when I went and did this So we showed up to our first series of meetings and we showed all this dire information And people would come up to us and say well, what are we going to do about this? What are we going to do about the fact that you know I might have to move away or my kids might have to move away from this location And my response was I don't have any idea And you know government just doesn't like to show up In local communities and and admit that we just don't have all the answers And it was important for me to do that because what I was trying to do is start a process by which to say A I don't have the answers and b it's really not appropriate for me to come into your community and try to dictate to you What you should do about this dire scenario So, you know, what we've really tried to do is say we've got a problem We all have a vested interest in solving it. Some of us have more of a vested interest than me I am not likely to ever be subject to a severe flooding event by virtue of my economic status and where I've chosen to live But what I can do is go into the communities that are subject to those types of risk And make an equity investment in those places and in those people so that they can begin to to think through What the future of their communities will look like And if I could just add this is I just want you guys to imagine this when you when you mentioned the quote by the community member Moving the stuff My dad continued to live in the same community the house I was born and raised in My dad floods He provided the opportunity for me and my siblings to have a better life. I don't flood But that's still my dad So it's just it just shows you how the culture changed how the community changed and individuals that are less fortunate Or a lot of elder people who have made their investments into their homes are primarily stuck in those communities Uh to more specifically answer your question around the flood risk mapping The cpra coastal master plan has a set of non structural projects and in those projects which typically are within a parish but a Uh shaped file essentially of a certain geographic area Every one of those non structural projects includes flood proofing of businesses that will receive water less than three feet Or are expected to receive water less than three feet elevations of homes that would be between three and 14 feet and voluntary acquisitions of properties that are 14 feet and above meaning obviously that you have to opt in to that program and That that has to be a choice that you would make in terms of the logistics of that whether those buyouts would occur In groups for everyone that was eligible at one time whether they would be staggered what that would look like The program is is very much still in design phases And there's an initial pilot going forward in southwest Louisiana south of lake charles and kakuju and camera parishes So they're they're basically designing out how that program would work In particular so the cpra has one suite of those projects My understanding is that gocep also has some Relocation projects and and also that our colleagues at ocd have some additional Uh relocation projects I think we have time for one more Please just mike. Oh, um, i'm andy feene. I'm uh Retired environmental journalist Actually a right for a publication called the washington socialist right now But i'm here as an individual. Um I one of the questions of one of the issues that I got out of this Is just how much money I was wondering what kind of resources it costs To do the kind of planning the community outreach planning that you did and my sense from from Liz williams russells Presentation is that this wasn't cheap And this isn't common Um, how much how much would it cost to scale this up? All right, list You can go first. That's the key question, right? That's the key key question Um, we spent about a million dollars on our part of this process across six parishes About a million and a half including Time spent ahead and since And that's for six parishes, right? But also we didn't provide the costs for the private contractors that were doing the planning work So that's a question for the state You know our very our respective teams were sort of going, okay You know, we could pay for things that the state can't And then the state could pay for things that we couldn't So what would it what did it look like to actually go back and forth on that? But matt, I don't know if you want to speak to Yeah, so on the state side, uh, we had a four million dollar investment So on the whole and ended up being about a million dollars a parish Now that said, I think there are certainly efficiencies that could be achieved should we embark on a similar effort In the future, there was certainly no blueprint or template for how this should work But that doesn't avoid the bigger point that Investing in community and investing in people is hard. It's expensive It's ugly sometimes people don't really want to do it I have no idea how many miles I've put on my car or how many Generally sleepless nights I've had trying to go from one place to another And so yeah, I mean it's a big investment and I don't just mean that in a monetary sense It's a big investment in terms of labor and people and emotional capital and everything else. So It's something that I think desperately needs to be done, but it's not cheap I would also add, um, you know, one of the reasons why we're deepening our investments in the lead the coast program and other programs to lead on climate is Because if we have, uh, deeper relationships far in advance of these processes I mean, we can do different things. Uh, frankly across the six parishes We had very different relationships in Sarabal and LaFouche and Plakamans than we did in St. John, St. Tammany and Jefferson And frankly the conditions of urban to rural In each of those parishes are different and the nuances of how folks identify and Which people they trust in order to show up to a meeting or Or or want to be engaged in something varies So I would say one of the most critical things is actually expanding investment in that civic engagement infrastructure The organizing support support for Relationship building and and opportunities to advocate together For things. I mean, we're now In relation with folks who are calling each other four parishes away to activate on certain issues That would have never really frankly been in that level of relationship or trust Without this process And so this is where you know, we're trying to leverage what we've already built And hopefully expand that because in terms of Reducing the cost over time. It also You know the speed of trust is slow and the value of that investment is Indescribable I want to want to add something really quickly So as in a conversation earlier today with one of our congressional delegation offices and Justin and you can probably elaborate on this a little more than I can start talking about how this gentleman named Jonathan 4a Has been very involved in the LA safe process and then subsequent to that He procured a grant from somewhere to develop educational curriculum across a four high school area in terrible and parish And there's some competition and prize money associated with something The upshot is I had no idea about any of this. I have no idea what it is I have no idea what he's doing and that's the greatest compliment I could ever receive and so That's the type of catalytic investment that we've tried to make here, right? So you invest a million dollars in a place and in a series of communities Um, and then if it grows legs and people expand upon that idea in their own right Then I think you've you've leveraged those resources in a way that that is really Not able to calculate frankly Yeah, I'll speak to that the comment I did want to make though is yes This did cost some money, but it's probably cheaper than not doing anything Um, but yeah, so and I was going to add to that Of Jonathan 4a, uh, he was one of the lead the coast folks and you know, he said he goes I didn't like what matt came in and told all of us But I really appreciated him for telling us that and so the LA safe process inspired him He wrote a grant to the national academies of science Currently there are four high school senior environmental science classes in terribone parish Ellender hl bourgeois south terribone and I'm forgetting the fourth. Sorry to whoever that is But there's a month-long curriculum. It's tied into the state standards So these teachers don't have to sacrifice time did not teach to like to that test and and we wrote the curriculum for them And we introduced the the you know the coastal issues the coastal challenges we're dealing with and then we wrote a You know we brought in adaptation materials the la safe plans This kind of idea of like building resilience But the best part about it is the best part about la safe is that each of those high schools has $10,000 That students are going to develop a project that gets implemented on campus to address something that they think Accomplishes a resilience building So in a couple of weeks, I'm going to start seeing these proposals and I gotta say I'm pretty excited about it That's cool Donald you're welcome to have the last word we're gonna right before we get your On the record saints falcons picks, but you're welcome to have the last word Yeah, just to add to that that And it just speaks to the educational piece Starting off with the youth educating the youth and teaching them to be resilient at an early at an early age I think that if we can start by making those investments The easiest way I think you could explain to people is when you see on tv And you know like a hurricane is coming and in an old lady all the old man is in their home and they say look I'm not leaving Right, and then you always walk away from the news broadcast wondering after the storm did they make it Right and the reason why they stayed is somewhere along the line Someone didn't have their relationship or didn't have that trust to convince them to stay Convince them to leave not stay Great. Thanks very much. We're a little over, but it was well worth it Let's give our panelists a round of applause And do you have picks we've talked a lot about saints falcons today now's your chance I don't know what the line is, but it's double digits. I'm sure go tigers. Okay. Oh, okay fair enough fair enough Thanks Uh, well, this was this was great before you all take off. Uh, let me just thank again represented richman's office for Being our um our host today. Thank you, john Um, thank you to esi staff Anna amber george melody savannah Jeff dan o and then um ellen and omri who are on vacation this week So thanks to everybody for pulling this off Uh, if you want more information about this or other issues visit esi.org Uh, the video will be posted the slides are outside We have a briefing next friday on the us renewable energy mix And then the friday after that the 22nd We have one on uh legal pathways to deep decarbonization So we'll hopefully hopefully we'll see you there as well And those are just the november briefings. Don't get me started on december Thanks very much for everybody for taking your time out of your day to join us today and again Thanks panelists this remember what I said about chemistry. It's a pretty great panel. So thanks so much for joining us today Thank you. Yeah. Oh, thank you