Water Resources Development Act of 2016--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the thousand-year flood that hit my State of Louisiana a few weeks ago. It is not named, so we call it the Great Flood of 2016, in which 13 people lost their lives and $8.7 billion in damage occurred in just a few days.

As an example of the enormity, here are the power outages that followed the flooding. This is baseline before the flood. The lights went out, and all of this reflects homes substantially flooded. There is no substitute for witnessing the aftermath of the disaster yourself, but I will try to paint a picture of the damage of this terrible event and the situation from which my constituents are currently trying to rebuild.

Again, it was an unprecedented weather event. The National Weather Service deemed it a once-in-a-thousand-year event. There was no way to prepare. It was not as if there was a storm system off the coast of Africa that was proceeding across the Atlantic Ocean. Less than a quarter of the population had flood insurance and not because they were supposed to and didn't. Most weren't supposed to because it wasn't supposed to flood, and they were not required to have flood insurance. Again, the flooding occurred in areas more than 50 feet above sea level where folks were told they were not in a flood zone or were at low risk. That is one example.

Thursday afternoon, residents were warned of a possible flash flood from a weather system moving into the area, but even the National Hurricane Center had no expectation of how devastating the storm would be. It was missing key cyclone characteristics, and these parishes, never having been hit by a flood such as this, felt all was well. The first parishes to be hit by flooding had no time to evacuate or prepare.

In just the first 2 days, as much as 2 feet of rain fell in South Louisiana. This record rainfall statistically had a 0.1-percent chance of occurring; thus, it is described as a thousand-year weather event. Again, this is baseline--grass, trees, roads. This is the same street. All that brown is water.

In parts of Livingston Parish, within 15 hours, 31 inches of rain fell. By the end of the third day, Baton Rouge, the capital city, had 19.14 inches of rain; Denham Springs, within Livingston Parish, had about 25 inches of rain; Watson, LA, saw over 31 inches of rain.

We received more than three times the rain that Louisiana saw from Hurricane Katrina. The recordbreaking rainfall led to recordbreaking river crest. For example, the National Weather Service recorded the Amite River's height at 46.2 feet--5 feet higher than the previous record.

Again, this is all pretty apparent. This is baseline where you have dry land with some lakes in between and now that is water. This would be the river, and the river bleeds out into the surrounding land. The Comite River was at 34 feet--4 feet higher than the previous record. As water poured out of these overflowing river systems, currents were so strong that 14 stream gauges, used to measure the height and current of the river, were broken.

When the rain ended, 13 were dead: William Mayfield, Linda Bishop, Brett Broussard, William Borne, Richard James, Samuel Muse, Kenneth Slocum, Earrol Lewis, Stacy Ruffin, Alexandra Budde, Ordatha Hoggatt, and two others who have not been identified.

Many were swept out into the current of the water. Most were caught completely off guard by the speed at which the flooding occurred. These parishes are more than 50 feet above sea level, and they were not prepared. The majority of the 20 parishes that were declared Federal disaster areas were considered low risk for flooding. In Louisiana, only about 12 percent of homeowners living in low-risk areas have flood insurance. FEMA has already documented over 60,000 homes that were significantly damaged. The number is expected to increase to more than 110,000 homes. Less than 20,000 of those families and individuals had flood insurance.

This is debris piled up in front of homes. After 3 days of heavy rain, 20 parishes--one-third of the State--were declared Federal disaster areas. Among these, East Baton Rouge had 35 percent of its homes and businesses damaged. Ascension and Livingston Parishes had about 90 percent of their homes significantly damaged or declared a total loss.

You walk the streets, and entire lives are lined up by the curb. Imagine almost 100,000 people having to start from scratch. Imagine right now owning only the clothes on your back and a waterlogged home, which may cost more to repair than you can hope to repay. It is fair to say that this region is in crisis.

A significant portion of our State's population has lost everything. In many cities, thousands had to be rescued by boat or airlifted-- taking nothing with them and forced to leave everything behind.

The good news is our community is strong. Neighbors are helping neighbors slowly put pieces back together, but there are challenges repairing infrastructure, sending kids to school, and disposing of large amounts of debris.

Aside from that, we are still in hurricane season. We don't know what might come next, but another storm hitting Louisiana before recovery is complete would be devastating.

Right now my office is working in tandem with the entire Louisiana congressional delegation and our Governor on securing expedited authorization and funding to build the Comite River Diversion and other mitigation projects to keep this from happening again. This is critical for rebuilding and preventing this level of damage from occurring with future storms. Remembering that our State has experienced severe flooding in 36 parishes in less than 6 months, our delegation is requesting a 90-percent to 10-percent cost share between FEMA and the State of Louisiana. We are also asking for supplemental appropriations of disaster recovery community development block grant funds to help with the long-term recovery.

Louisianans will work tirelessly, as we have for weeks, to rebuild. We are so lucky that we have had volunteers from out of the State come to help. Hopefully today, by increasing the awareness of this disaster, more people are encouraged to volunteer and donate in order to help fellow Americans recover.

Mr. President, I yield back.

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