First Report from the NRC Committee on the Review of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration (LACPR) Program (2008) / Chapter Skim
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First Report from the NRC Committee on the Review of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration (LACPR) Program
First Report from the NRC Committee on the Review of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration (LACPR) Program
Pages 1-24
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From page 1... ...
The LACPR study team is to be further commended for attempting to integrate all of these measures -- some of which go beyond traditional agency mandates and expertise -- into a single planning study. The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration draft technical report, however, does not provide clear recommendations with regard to preferred choices of hurricane protection, risk reduction, or restoration alternatives; nor does the main body of the report clearly provide cost estimates of the various planning alternatives presented there.
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From page 2... ...
Nonstructural -- The LACPR draft technical report calculates risk reductions from nonstructural measures assuming 100 percent compliance by residents of the region. Yet, participation in these programs will be voluntary and actual compliance is likely to be far less than 100 percent.
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The background section describes the effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and how they led to the appropriating legislation for the LACPR study; the section on congressional intent and project goals and objectives discusses the language in the appropriating legislation and how it has been interpreted by the LACPR study team in preparing its draft technical report; the section on study assumptions discusses the issue of presentation of key physical, socioeconomic, and other assumptions with the LACPR draft technical report; the section on coastal dynamics, sediment budget, and restoration plans examines issues surrounding coastal dynamics and sediment transport, deposition, and availability in coastal Louisiana; the section on hurricane protection and population distribution in southern Louisiana examines issues of induced development behind flood control structures, the LACPR plans for structural and nonstructural components, and Corps of Engineers regulatory authorities; the section on monitoring, learning, and adaptation discusses ways in which scientific uncertainties might be addressed as part of LACPR program implementation; the section on federal-state cooperation examines the importance of cooperation federal, state, and other governmental bodies in effective implementation of restoration and protective measures, and; the section on plan formulation and evaluation examines the LACPR study team's efforts at employing a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach to eliciting stakeholder preferences.
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From page 4... ...
109-103) states: Provided further, That using $8,000,000 of the funds provided herein, the Secretary of the Army, acting through the Chief of Engineers, is directed to conduct a comprehensive hurricane protection analysis and design at full federal expense to develop and present a full range of flood control, coastal restoration, and hurricane protection measures exclusive of normal policy considerations for South Louisiana and the Secretary shall submit a preliminary technical report for comprehensive Category 5 protection within 6 months of enactment of this Act and a final technical report for Category 5 protection within 24 months of enactment of this Act: Provided further, That the Secretary shall consider providing protection for a storm surge equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane within the project area and may submit reports on component areas of the larger protection program for authorization as soon as practicable: Provided further, That the analysis shall be conducted in close coordination with the State of Louisiana and its appropriate agencies.
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From page 5... ...
CONGRESSIONAL INTENT AND PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES Congressional Legislation and Hurricane Protection Ideally, the LACPR study would be conducted with a set of clearly understood goals, which would be reached through the accomplishment of specific, measurable objectives. The choice of goals, in this case, is properly a matter of public policy and social decision-making.
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From page 6... ...
Given that changes in the patterns of Gulf hurricanes have considerable implications for coastal Louisiana, future versions of the LACPR study should include more explicit explanation of the evolving science of possible changes in future hurricane patterns, and how this might affect planning. Beyond the complexities of categorizing hurricane hazards, the appropriating legislation directs the Corps to prepare its report "exclusive of normal policy considerations." The LACPR draft technical report further explains this clause: "Congress also directed a technical report rather than a reconnaissance or feasibility report as described by normal USACE policy" (USACE, 2008, p.
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From page 7... ...
The congressional language, despite ambiguities, does request "…analysis and design." The LACPR draft technical report provides no clear recommendations to Congress or to the State of Louisiana with regard to preferred initial choices of hurricane protection, risk reduction, or
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STUDY ASSUMPTIONS In preparing the LACPR draft report, the project team had to make many assumptions. Some of these concern physical constraints such as the stability of the present coastal configuration, the role of wetlands in attenuating storm surge, projected sea level rise over the course of the project, and the validity of using current Atlantic and Gulf hurricane statistics in projections of future conditions.
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From page 9... ...
Coastal Restoration within the LACPR Draft Report Sediment Mass Balance Many coastal restoration measures are proposed within the LACPR draft report as a means to counter the effects of relative sea level rise and to help reduce risks from hurricanes. Coastal restoration is put forth as one of the three major components of hurricane risk reduction (the other two being structural measures such as levees, and nonstructural measures such as buyouts and relocations)
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From page 10... ...
. However, the LACPR draft technical report contains no discussion of plans for compiling "sediment budgets" for the state.
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FIGURE 1-1 100+ Years of Land Change for Coastal Louisiana.
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From page 12... ...
The LACPR draft technical report does not consider seriously the option of major lower Mississippi River realignment, stating: "the alternative was considered to be beyond the scope of the current effort and could not be adequately evaluated within the scope of this effort." It is not clear, however, that this alternative is beyond the scope of the LACPR study. Major realignment of the lower Mississippi River naturally is a controversial measure and there has been reluctance to consider the measure carefully.
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From page 13... ...
has not consistently considered the limitations and unintended consequences associated with levee construction. This section examines the phenomenon of land development and population growth behind protective structures; the LACPR draft report plans for implementing structural and nonstructural measures; and the relevance of regulatory authorities to future development.
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From page 14... ...
Structural Measures A major portion of the storm protection plans within the LACPR draft report call for the construction of levees protecting different cities and municipalities. New Orleans is one of the nation's largest metropolitan areas protected by levees and many of the structures within its hurricane protection system are being raised and strengthened in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
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From page 15... ...
Future analyses should explicitly include probabilities of failure or inadequate performance, and should also consider possible effects of human actions such as improper operations during an emergency. Hurricane Protection for the City of New Orleans The LACPR draft technical report defines Category 5 protection as falling in the range of a 400-year storm to a 1,000-year storm.
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From page 16... ...
Nonstructural measures are an essential complement to structural measures and a crucial part of a comprehensive flood risk reduction program. The LACPR draft technical report properly includes discussion of many of these nonstructural strategies, and the LACPR team should be credited for evaluating such measures.
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From page 17... ...
. The LACPR draft report does not suggest the use of either of these permitting programs to help achieve hurricane protection goals by minimizing new development in flood-hazard areas by limiting the conversion to urban uses of wetlands within newly constructed levees (i.e., limit induced development)
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From page 18... ...
The LACPR draft technical report acknowledges this, noting that "a new approach is required" to implement nonstructural measures. In its work to improve hurricane protection for greater metropolitan New Orleans, the Corps of Engineers and the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET)
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From page 19... ...
The LACPR draft report provides little discussion of the details of the federal-statelocal cooperation that will be necessary to fully implement nonstructural measures of the integrated Multiple Lines of Defense Strategy proposed in the technical report. The LACPR study team, working with the State of Louisiana and parish- and other local-level entities, is encouraged to explore further the institutional and administrative needs regarding effective implementation of nonstructural (and other)
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From page 20... ...
Project locations can be obtained from figures in the LACPR draft technical report and in the 2007 Plan Formulation Atlas, but detailed descriptions of each plan are not provided. An important observation is that only those combinations that include coastal restoration projects are included.
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From page 21... ...
The LACPR study team has stated its intention to repeat the weighting process using the swing weight method. Properly applied, this method holds the promise of producing more credible and representative evaluations of alternative plans.
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From page 22... ...
Combining the several monetary metrics into a single measure -- at least for evaluation purposes -- is a preferable approach. The kind of MCDM approach taken in the LACPR draft report generally is a feasible and appropriate way to rank the kinds of alternative plans under consideration.
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From page 23... ...
2007. Integrated Ecosystem Restoration and Hurricane Protection: Louisiana's Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast.
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From page 24... ...
24 Water Resources Council (WRC)
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