Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASSIDY. Madam President, I rise to speak about the Great American Outdoors Act or, more particularly, about the absence of a coastal resiliency amendment that I wish to have included.

Let me begin by congratulating Senators Cory Gardner and Steve Daines, from Colorado and Montana, respectively, of their pending success in passing the Great American Outdoors Act. It takes lots of work to build enough support to get legislation to this floor for a vote, and even more to see that it passes. The people of Montana and Colorado should be proud of how their Senators fought and delivered billions to restore their national parks. I commend my colleagues.

Those who have followed the debate know that I have opposed the bill as written. National parks are national treasures, but what led to my opposition is, I believe, that the Senate had the opportunity to help the more than 135 million Americans who live in a coastal parish or county by concomitantly funding flood mitigation and coastal resiliency projects. I fought hard to include a provision that would have invested in the coast to fortify against hurricanes and other catastrophic flooding events. Funding coastal resiliency would have passed as part of this legislation. It is an opportunity lost, but I have been reassured that enough Senators care about the issue, and perhaps they care about the issue because of the arguments that I have made.

I will review these arguments first for the Nation and then for the area of the Nation most affected by coastal erosion, which is Louisiana, and then speak about possible solutions.

First, over 272 million Americans live in coastal States, and 134 million Americans live in a parish or county directly on the coast, and they know sea levels are rising. Because sea levels are rising, they are increasingly exposed to flooding. Now, if Congress does not act on coastal resiliency, these Americans, their lives, their communities, and livelihood will be increasingly in danger.

By the way, the American taxpayer will spend billions in disaster recovery because the Federal Government declined to invest in prevention on the front end. Just to make this point, I will show my first poster.

These are major coastal flood events since 2003, and these are only the named storms. It does not include the flood events that were not named, and some everybody remembers. Ivan was $20.5 billion. Katrina was $125 billion. Ike was $30 billion. Sandy was $65 billion. Isaac was $10 billion. Harvey was $125 billion. Irma was $50 billion. And Maria was $90 billion. If you are in one of the States affected by one of these storms, to say that name brings to mind friends that were lost, communities that were devastated, and lives that were overturned. This is merely the accounting, which totals, since 2003, that the Federal Government has spent $617.9 billion in recovery after these storms, and that does not include unnamed flood events.

Just as examples, people along the coast, wherever you are on the coast in the United States, including the Great Lakes, are at increased risk for large scale devastation, in part, because of sea levels rising, and natural barriers to absorb storm surge are eroding away.

Let's just go around the Nation. Let's first look at the Alaskan village of Kivalina, located on an island that is literally vanishing because of sea level rise. There you see kind of a rock jetty around it, but the rock jetty is kind of missing over here. But you can imagine, as sea levels rise, and waves, which in this picture are not there but you know in that area of the world are high at times, this will fulfill the Army Corps of Engineers' prediction that in 10 years, this island will be uninhabitable.

Alaska's Senator, Lisa Murkowski, recognizes the threat to her State should barrier islands disappear. I thank her for her support during the debate on the Great American Outdoors Act for increased funds for coastal resiliency.

That is our northern part. Let's go to the Virgin Islands.

Erosion has eliminated many trees and water vegetation that are vital to absorbing storm surge. These problems were compounded by Hurricane Irma, meaning that the next major hurricane could be worse. Could it be worse than that? Look at the American Virgin Islands after Hurricane Irma. If it is worse than that, then this may be as the island is in Alaska--threatening to be uninhabitable.

Rising sea levels are threatening beaches up and down the coast of California, eliminating barrier islands in North Carolina and Georgia, and causing property values to fall and insurance rates to rise where cases are at their worst.

But let me speak of the worst-case scenario of sea level rising and land receding. Unfortunately, from my perspective, the worst area is in Louisiana. By the time I am through with this speech, Louisiana will have lost about half a football field of land from the coast; it is washing away that fast. To date, we have lost land equal to the size of Delaware. At the current rate, Louisiana will lose about 640,000 more acres by 2050. That is like cutting Rhode Island out of the eastern coast.

I mention Rhode Island and will take that opportunity to thank Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island for recognizing the challenges coasts face and working with me to provide more support for more resiliency. He actually came down and looked at our plan.

Wherever you see red, in a very reasonable scenario, that land will be gone by year 50. And you can see that New Orleans effectively becomes an island. Can you imagine what the Federal Government would have to pay if a big storm came through without any wetlands to decrease the intensity? That would damage not just New Orleans but all the ports that inland United States depend on to get their goods to the rest of the world. I will have more on the importance of that port system later.

As the marshes sink into the gulf, Louisiana is losing more than our treasured wetlands and the wildlife that call them home; we are losing natural barriers that save populated areas from the full brunt of hurricane forces.

According to NOAA, peak floods can be reduced by up to 60 percent in watersheds that contain 15 percent wetlands. These wetlands act as natural sponges for floodwaters and buffer storm surges. The wetland vegetation holds sediment in place with their roots, and this preserves the land and further helps to absorb waves.

What I just described is a dire forecast, but it is also a reality that is playing out. We had a storm a week ago. Tropical Storm Cristobal struck Louisiana. Here we see images of a damaged levee system in Grand Isle, where storm surge completely washed away 2,000 feet of protection.

Yes, those are buildings. Yes, that is a street. Yes, that is water in the middle of the street between the buildings. I will add that Grand Isle has lost about 9 feet of elevation over the past decades.

When this washed away, it exposed what is called a burrito levee underneath, and that was damaged as well.

Mayor David Camardelle recently told the Times-Picayune--the newspaper in New Orleans--that the damage Grand Isle suffers ``is a crisis situation. I'm worried this island will be cut in half.''

Cristobal also flooded the old Mandeville neighborhood. This is Mandeville, and this is Cristobal. This shows how Lake Pontchartrain, which is the lake north of New Orleans, and the streets ashore basically merged for this storm event.

This is just from a tropical storm. Imagine if a bigger hurricane had landed instead--except we don't have to imagine. We can look at what happened. And unfortunately it will happen again.

What is at stake in Louisiana without more investment in resiliency? Let's start with lives. Hurricane Katrina killed 1,833 people and damaged or destroyed 800,000 homes. That was in Louisiana, in Mississippi, in Alabama, and in Florida. That is just one storm. We have actually seen loss of life worse since then in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria claimed 3,057 lives. As I mentioned earlier, the dollar amount was greater in Sandy, which hit New York and New Jersey, and the most recent flooding events--Hurricane Harvey, for example, in the Houston area flooded so many homes. It is not just my home State; it is across the Nation.

By the way, impacting my home State impacts the rest of the Nation.

This is a picture from Hurricane Katrina. This Congress was very helpful in the aftermath. But let me speak about what will happen if we don't address these issues.

The Nation's energy infrastructure is threatened. The Gulf of Mexico generates about 90 percent of the funds used to pay for the Great American Outdoors Act. Oil and gas development, particularly in the Outer Continental Shelf, is that which funds this bill. Failing to secure the energy infrastructure can result in devastating damage to the heart of America's energy production center should a major storm destroy the roads, ports, wells, and pipelines that keep America running.

There is a certain irony that this bill, which chose not to fund coastal resiliency, relies upon funding from an infrastructure that is endangered by the lack of coastal resiliency. But this, in turn, threatens America's heartland.

Trade from America's heartland to the rest of the world flows. Agricultural products are shipped down the Mississippi River to the Louisiana ports and then internationally--that is, so long as the ports keep functioning.

Again, let's look at the results of the damage to those ports--just the Port of New Orleans--after Hurricane Katrina. Damage to the Port of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina resulted in corn exports falling 23 percent from the heartland--not from Louisiana but from Iowa, from the heartland, from Missouri, et cetera. Barley exports fell 100 percent. Wheat exports fell 54 percent. Soybean exports were down 25 percent. Total grain exports were down 24 percent

It is clear that the United States benefits as a whole when Louisiana's coastline is fully functional and secure, both its energy supply--its funding for the Great American Outdoors Act--as well as the ability of farmers in the heartland to ship their goods internationally. But now the coastline is not secure. Aggressive action is needed to save the coastline--not just in my State but all around-- to protect it from erosion and to protect it from flooding.

In Louisiana, the money generated from revenue sharing of offshore energy production by an amendment in the Louisiana State Constitution is invested into coastal resiliency. I am trying to make sure that we have the resources to continue to do so.

That brings us to revenue sharing. As I have said before, oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico generates 90 percent of the funding for the Great American Outdoors Act, and the gulf coast contributes billions of revenue to the Treasury annually, but the amount of money that is shared with our coastline is quite small relative to what inland States receive.

I bring this up because someone said: Well, Louisiana does get money from the coast.

Let me just kind of explain this slide. In this slide, this is the total amount of revenue for the Federal for fiscal year 2018 from oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico. You can see there is close to $5 billion generated. These States here--Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas--share $375 million of that money.

Let's look at the inland States. Here is all of the revenue from the inland States. The best I can tell, in that same year, New Mexico got about $1.25 billion. Wyoming got $1.15 billion. Colorado did pretty well; it looks like they got about $400 million or $500 million. So the Gulf Coast States split between them $375 million from a total of about $4.8 billion. New Mexico gets 50 percent of the money generated in their inland areas, and so they get close to $1.25 billion. Louisiana could do so much with $1.25 billion to protect and to rebuild its wetlands, the infrastructure for energy, the infrastructure for ports, and I could go on.

So folks are right. We do currently participate in revenue sharing. It is a shadow of what other States get with far less of a total amount.

By the way, our amendment, which I have written with Senator Whitehouse, is based upon what is called GOMESA, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act. In that, Gulf States keep 37.5 percent of the revenues, up until a cap of $375 million. I have mentioned that cap already. Additionally, there is $125 million put into the Land and Water Conservation Fund, that which is now going to receive an additional $900 million annually from the Great American Outdoors Act. My coastal amendment would remove that cap, meaning that Gulf States would have a more equitable share of the revenue we produce.

The LWCF would continue to get the $125 million it would receive, but there would be another amount of money that would go into the LWCF portion of this that would, under our amendment, go into a coastal resiliency fund. That coastal resiliency fund would be used all around the Nation. It could be used in Florida, in Georgia, in Maine, in Alaska, in Washington State, in Hawaii--you name it. Where we have beach communities threatened and coastal parishes and counties regularly flooding, this money would be available.

What I am asking for is fair treatment for the States that put in the work and contribute so mightily to the rest of the country. Hopefully with this, we can turn the tide of land loss.

By the way, the amendment we have is also combined with revenue sharing for offshore wind. This is Sheldon Whitehouse's idea. So in the immediate and intermediate, there would be revenue sharing from oil and gas development, and in the long term, there would be revenue sharing from offshore wind as our Nation transitions to more of that as an energy source.

I have talked a lot about gloom and doom in this speech. Let's end on a hopeful note. Not all is lost. With smart strategies in funding, we can turn the tide on erosion, rebuild land, and strengthen the coastline.

There are examples of what is working. Terrebonne Parish is in South Louisiana. It is right on the Gulf of Mexico. It has a new flood wall, which recently saved 10,000 households from flooding. We invested in flood protection, and we saved 10,000 families from flooding. We saved money for the National Flood Insurance Program. A community is intact. Kids still go off on Saturday and play ball, and people still go to their jobs on Monday. Investing on the front end saved a heck of a lot on the back end--lives, communities, and money for the Federal taxpayer.

Let's look at a coastal rebuilding project we have. Davis Pond is an area along the Mississippi that has eroded. This is Google pictures. Here, you can see that in February of 1998, erosion had occurred such that all of this, which is along the coast, had eroded. You can see kind of a big lake right there, and you can see kind of a breakup of the land. You have a sense of an unhealthy nature. Even though this is a black-and-white photo, nonetheless you have that sense.

A diversion was built so that Mississippi River water could flood this area. In the 20 years since, you can see that the lake has filled in, that it is still wetland, it is still marsh, but here you have vegetation growing. Back here, if you stepped out of the boat, you sank into water. Now, you step out of the boat, and the vegetation is so thick that it supports you as you walk along. This is what can happen with wise management.

Look at this community. This community is now protected because we now have a barrier of wetlands. So rebuilding wetlands saves communities. It allows nature to do its work. It saves the taxpayer dollars in the long run.

I am going to show another example--Mardi Gras Pass, a naturally forming distributary of the Mississippi River that is building new land. Mardi Gras Pass has grown by 13 acres since 2012.

Let's see if I have my pictures straight here. Here is the Mississippi River, and here is where the river kind of spontaneously broke through right in this area right here.

Since then, as it continues to flow through, we have something which doesn't look very healthy here, which increasingly has vegetation. Here is a bayou, which increasingly is building up vegetation. I am not sure these picture do it justice, but now you actually have trees growing, and you have such a density of land being built that you now again have oak trees, which Louisiana is famous for.

We can rebuild our coastline. The Mardi Gras Pass delivers fresh water, nutrients, and sediments to 15,000 acres of coastal marsh.

These projects take time, but they never get started without the type of funding I advocated to be included in the Great American Outdoors Act--the amount we could spend on the front end and save lives and dollars for the Federal taxpayer compared to the expenses required for storm recovery.

Let me conclude. I end the day by once again commending my colleagues, Senator Gardner and Daines, for getting their bill passed, but I also end by saying that we must continue to fight for dollars for coastal resiliency. The need is far too great around the country. Lives and our economy depend on finding that solution.

I hope the Senators who said they recognize coastal needs will join the bipartisan coalition of Senators who now are asking that we invest in the coastal parishes and counties where 82 percent of Americans live in the States and 42 percent of Americans live in a parish or county, where spending money now can save lives, communities, and billions in taxpayer dollars later.

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