Whoops!

 Shot (September 10)

New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board Director Ghassan Korban said Tuesday the city’s pumping and drainage system is in a “good place” ahead of Francine.

Ninety of 99 drainage pumps are working across its 24 pumping stations, he said, and the city has 70 megawatts available to power its drainage pumps, above the 44 needed to run the system at peak demand.

Korban said 70 megawatts “is probably one of the highest numbers we've seen in a long, long time ... Today, this is the best that we can all really count on.”

Chaser (September 11)

The large generators the Sewerage and Water Board uses to supplement its turbines and provide power to its drainage system went offline for about 15 minutes late Wednesday as Francine battered New Orleans, leading to widespread flooding.

Canals were high in Hollygrove, Lakeview, Gentilly, and New Orleans at 10 p.m., and over 30 locations in the city were flooded, according to Streetwise NOLA.

Nobody could have predicted... 

 

20.5 of those 70 megawatts are carried by overhead lines from four east bank frequency changers, which themselves are well over 50 years old.
12.5 MW come from EMDs which are wildly unreliable.
T4 (18 MW) failed in December and February when it was called upon. https://t.co/PuprII1ws5

— Matt McBride (@Matthew67052126) September 10, 2024

We'll know more tomorrow. But tonight there is widespread street flooding both in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes. Right now I'm listening to Helena Moreno tell Channel 4 that Sewerage and Water Board had problems with the EMD generators and that it lost Entergy power a couple of times during the night.  She has used the phrase "whack-a-mole" several times.  She says there are Lakeview and Gentilly residents reporting flooding where there hasn't previously been flooding. 

Anyway, we'll see about all that later. Meanwhile, just keep in mind that Francine ended up being, basically, a direct hit on New Orleans. Here is a picture of the eyewall approaching a little after 7:30.  We're actually lucky that it was already being torn apart by wind shear at this point. If this had been a major hurricane there could have been catastrophic damage. 

 

As it stands, the damage looks to have been significantly annoying at the very least. (Approximately 350,000 without power, for example.)   Anyway, we'll know more about all that later.  One thing we can't say at this point is that we're in an especially "good place."

Not ideal

 Old Francine. 

Tropical Storm Francine has formed in the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to further develop into a hurricane and impact Louisiana later this week, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Monday morning. 

The storm is expected to make landfall in Louisiana on Wednesday evening as a Category 1 storm, though forecasters say there is a bit of uncertainty as to Francine's exact track.

As of 1 p.m., Francine had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph. The storm is expected to turn north-northwestward over the next day, turn more east and intensify before making landfall on the Gulf Coast as a hurricane.

Cat 1 predicted as of this afternoon but some of the weatherfolk are concerned at the accelerated pace of its organization. 

Not liking the look of things this afternoon. #Francine appears poised to strengthen even quicker than expected. Already seeing hints of an eye trying to clear out in visible satellite imagery. pic.twitter.com/NmSc1bRijW

— Steve Caparotta, Ph.D. (@SteveWAFB) September 9, 2024

That isn't great news given the path of the storm.  Drawing a bullseye bead on Lafayette is not great. Also it places SE Louisiana's highly vulnerable coastal marshes and heavy petro-chemical infrastructure on the "bad side" of the storm. If the intensity forecast gets any greater than it is this would be a very bad track.

 

 Anyway, let's hope this reasoning holds up. 

In a forecast discussion issued Monday morning, the National Hurricane Center in Miami warned that models are showing a heightened possibility of rapid intensification Tuesday through Wednesday. Then, after the period of intensification, high vertical wind shear could cause the storms intensity to plateau before it makes landfall on Wednesday, according to the NHC.

Both those predictions influenced the NHC's forecast that the storm will hit Louisiana with Category 1 winds.

In addition to the shear, the storm is expected to pull in dry air from Texas, which could serve to as another check on the intensification process, Louisiana State Climatologist Jay Grymes said.

Together, those two factors may prevent Francine from becoming a monster storm.

"I wouldn’t say its not on the table, but it seems to be fairly unlikely," Grymes said, though he cautioned that the storm will still bring dangerous conditions that residents need to prepare for.

 

 

Death stars and carbon bombs

In most of the country, Labor Day Weekend is where we make the psychic turn from summer to fall, even if the calendar doesn't quite yet agree. In Louisiana, September is a liar. School is back in session. Football has kicked off. The Halloween decorations have been up at Rouses for weeks now. But outside, the heat and humidity remain. And, of course, Hurricane Season moves into its most active period. The August 29 date marks not just the anniversary of Katrina, but also Isaac and Ida, so the seasonal transition can be an especially traumatic one.  This year the temporal ecotone delivers us into peak storm season from the most brutal heat most of us have experienced in our lifetimes. The state is still so hot and dry that the Governor is warning people not to fire up the grill for the holiday. We'll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, as we head into the marquee part of Hurricane Season, the Washington Post greets us with a predictably depressing update on Louisiana's sinking coastline. 

A group of scientists at Tulane University have also been investigating the situation. They found that across more than 200 wetland monitoring stations, seas are almost always rising faster than wetlands are able to grow — meaning that most wetlands are in a state of “drowning.” Their work, which is unpublished, tracked changes between 2009 and 2021.

“The number of the ‘drowning’ sites is much more than I thought before I started” the research, said Guandong Li, a PhD student at Tulane who led the work. “About 90 percent of these sites are unable to keep up with this recent high rate of sea level rise.”

"In a state of drowning."  I'm petitioning for a bill next year that let's me buy a license plate with, "The Drowning State" printed on it. Anyway, we know this information all too well now.  The current effort to protect and rebuild the coast is proving to be no match for accelerating sea level rise.

Sea level rise is driven both by land sinking — or subsidence — and the rising of the ocean. In the case of the current Gulf Coast surge, research suggests it is occurring in regions with and without major subsidence, implying a dominant role for the ocean.  The faster seas rise, the less effective the state’s widely praised plans to protect its coast will be.

In 2012, Louisiana projected that, if sea level rise and other environmental threats remain modest, it would be able to rebuild land within 50 years. But a new plan released this year assumes faster sea level rise more consistent with current trends and shows considerable land losses by late this century — even in more optimistic scenarios.

“Over the period of 10 years, the state has gone from potentially being in a net gain situation to potentially being in [a] very significant net loss situation,” said Alex Kolker, a coastal geologist with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. “And that’s despite the best efforts of some very dedicated people.”

Those "best efforts" Kolker is talking about end up being cancelled out by all the carbon bombs 

In 2016, the U.S. exported its first tanker of liquified natural gas, or LNG, from Cheniere’s Energy’s Sabine Pass terminal in Cameron Parish. Since then, fossil fuel firms have built four more export terminals in the Gulf South with plans for 20 more. Even before the terminals were built, the initial emissions estimates to regulators were so alarming that some environmental advocates described the planned facilities as “carbon bombs.”

Now, it seems that the reality is more grim than the predictions. All five of the active LNG export terminals in the Gulf South have leaked pollutants. People who live near the export terminals say the facilities are belching higher levels of toxic and climate-warming pollution into the air than originally estimated – which threatens the air quality of communities already burdened by pollution. 

For example, Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass export facility, in south Louisiana, exceeded hourly emissions limits of its air permits more than 100 times in 2022, according to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, which sent the company a consolidated compliance order in June, warning that fines were possible. 

Industry marketing campaigns tout natural gas as a “cleaner” alternative, because burning it produces about half as much carbon dioxide as coal, to generate the same amount of energy. But leaks and emissions can erase those benefits, because natural gas is primarily composed of methane, the potent greenhouse gas.

It's a real boom in these bombs. It makes me a little bit sentimental for the days of the Bobby Jindal regime when the Wall Street Journal heralded the coming of "Qatar on the Bayou."  At that time, Louisiana's industrial tax credit subsidies promised to bestow on us gleaming corridors of "fertilizer plants, boron manufacturers, methanol terminals, polymer plants, ammonia factories and paper-finishing facilities," up and down the Mississippi.  That article (yes it's paywalled but trust me) featured commentary from the fossil industry's resident.. uh.. fossil in Louisiana, economist Loren Scott who promised that once the 10 year tax breaks expired, our school districts would "find themselves with a bonanza" on their hands.  But fast-forward to this year and Louisiana public schools are seeing crashing enrollments, a drain on public funding that benefits private schools, and a superintendent who panders to the hate groups coordinating book bans. Some bonanza. 

Nevermind the formal education, though. Louisiana is more proud of its entrepreneurial spirit anyway. Just look at these creative solutions we're applying so we can make real progress here in 2023, the hottest year on record. 

Instead of lowering their emissions, two Gulf Coast LNG facilities, one in Louisiana and one in Texas, have asked state officials to make the situation right by increasing the amount of pollution they are permitted to spew into the air.

All together, in the United States, 25 planned projects to expand and build new export terminals will produce more than 90 million tons of greenhouse gasses annually, according to “Playing with Fire: the Climate Impact of the Rapid Growth of LNG,” a 2022 report from the Environmental Integrity Project that based its conclusions on the projected emissions given to regulators before the facilities were granted permits.

“That’s almost as much climate-warming pollution as 18 million passenger vehicles running for a year,” the report noted.

But uh oh. There's trouble brewing, says this Times-Picayune article. The precious boom in carbon bombs might be slowing down as the market becomes saturated. You might think it's time to rein the established players back in on all that methane and CO2 they're allowed to blow off into the air.  You'd be wrong, though. We're doing this instead. 

The Lower Energy Costs Act — which aims to speed up environmental review processes for LNG terminals and other energy projects, among myriad issues — passed the Republican-led House earlier this year but hasn’t moved in the Democrat-controlled Senate. The legislation was spearheaded by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Republican Rep. Garret Graves, both of Louisiana.

Loosening the regulatory burden would help the smaller projects that can’t handle lengthy reviews, though it would further exacerbate environmental risks for Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, Slocum said.

“If you remove that FERC regulatory process, and you allow some of these smaller scale facilities to basically just take your local zoning board out for a steak dinner and you got yourself your building permit and you can start construction the next day and you can finish it in 12 months, obviously that’s a big advantage,” Slocum said.

Critics of Scalise and Graves's bill have been calling it the "Polluters over People Act" (missing an obvious opportunity to call it the Steak Dinner for Polluters Act.) It would place limits on the time and resources available to federal regulators charged with approving or rejecting fossil fuel infrastructure projects.  It would also limit the law's ability to protect communities from the inevitable harm these facilities produce.

Such inevitable harm includes the 360 wildfires currently raging across the state due to an unprecedented drought brought on by fossil fuel driven climate change. It also would include a different kind of fire set off at the Marathon Refinery last week in St. John Parish, itself only the latest example of the tons of toxic chemicals released into Louisiana's air and water each year.  And of course who could forget the even more desecrated and faster sinking coastline wrought by all of this activity as well.

But the consequences of the boom are most visible on the Gulf Coast, mostly on the rural fringes of the Louisiana coast.

Grist reviewed dozens of state and federal records, and found that, even as regulators from state agencies like the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) hasten to greenlight new terminals, the handful of terminals that have begun operation are exposing residents of coastal parishes to dangerous levels of air pollution from flares and leaks.

Louisiana environmental regulators recently cited numerous violations at Venture Global’s LNG terminal in Cameron Parish in southwestern Louisiana. But five hours away, on the southeastern edge of the state, they are allowing the company to move forward with the Delta LNG plant near McAnespy’s home in Plaquemines.

In places like Plaquemines, gas exporters are building their plants on eroding swampland, where there is an increased risk of catastrophic accidents and explosions during floods and hurricanes. People like McAnespy, who live in neighborhoods surrounding the terminals, are right in the blast zone.

“It’s not just that each of these facilities is like a giant death star on sinking land, it’s that there’s so many of them,” said Elizabeth Calderon, a senior attorney at the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice who has worked on cases challenging LNG terminals in south Louisiana.

“This is how sacrifice zones are created,” she said.

And there's Louisiana 2023 in a nutshell. For the mere price of a few well placed steak dinners, you can deploy your very own Death Star to carbon bomb our sacrifice zone.  

But anyone can tell you there's a ton of money to be made in wartime for the savvy investor regardless of which side is actually winning. And why should the war on climate change be any different? Insurers understand this. They're already planning to win the next battle. There might not be much of a future in writing policies for homeowners in South Louisiana or Florida.. or California.  You know what you can insure, though?  More Death Stars. 

The companies no longer insuring Louisiana homes are well-known, but those insuring LNG terminals are not. Government agencies require proof of insurance for fossil fuel projects, but those documents are often shielded from the public as developers claim confidential business information exemptions, even going to court to prevent insurers’ names from becoming public.

In early June, anti-fossil fuel campaign Insure Our Future got a rare look into one gas export terminal in Texas: Freeport LNG. First published in E&E News, Freeport’s insurers are largely specialty or reinsurance companies, but a few are also involved in the property market, including Liberty Mutual, AIG and Chubb.

Most insurers and LNG companies contacted for this story – including AIG, Chubb, Liberty Mutual, and Venture Global – either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. While no insurance information for terminals in coastal Louisiana has become public, their insurers are likely to come from similar kinds of companies.

Oil and gas projects along the Gulf Coast have long been “a major market” for specialty insurance carriers, Keenan says.

This is how climate policy is formulated. Insurers, and investment capital firms are making decisions about what is viable. Such decisions carry massive impacts for ordinary people but allow them no input beyond their limited role as consumers. And, in accordance with the dictates of our capital de-risking matrix, anyone who can't afford the increasing costs of living along a sinking coast of a rising sea is allowed to fall off and fail on an isolated individual basis. Political factors, we are told, has no consideration here.  Most convenient for elected policymakers, these problems are all off their desks. The real choices are abstracted away to private investors and explained simply as market determinants. 

And the market has determined that we do not need to invest in sustainable equitable and healthy communities in order to generate profit. Those things, we can happily sacrifice in the fire or in the flood, whichever comes first. The net effect is a re-calibration of who and what can survive where. In this way,  New Orleans becomes a boutique resort where nobody actually lives.  Grand Isle can "boom" but only as an exclusive fishing camp for millionaires. And towns all up and down the bayou can be swallowed whole by extractive industry. 

Now here is where we have to remind ourselves not to go too far overboard with the "market decides" rhretoric. Remember, we're supposed to be moving past neoliberalism.  We're doing something called "Bidenomics" now. But mostly what that means is we are seeking the same sorts of policy outcomes as before but being slightly more explicit about the fact there's intention behind the program. Did you know, for example, that Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act "includes a bonanza for the carbon capture industry?"  That's what this headline says, anyway. And, hey, there's that "bonanza" word again. As we've already seen, that can only mean one thing.  More massive state subsidies for environmentally damaging heavy industry. 

The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed the Senate on Monday and is poised to pass the House on Friday, includes a dramatic change in a crucial tax credit for the carbon capture industry—increasing the government subsidy for capturing CO2 from polluting sources from $50 to $85 per metric ton. Developers say that raising that incentive could tip many projects that once weren’t worth the investment over the financial finish line. The new bill also simplifies the process for receiving those tax credits, and opens the subsidy to smaller carbon capture projects, which together essentially fulfill a full industry wishlist for new carbon capture legislation. 

“The fact that [the legislation] actually happened isn’t a big surprise,” says Adrian Corless, CEO of CarbonCapture, a direct air capture startup. “The fact that it actually came out in such a good form and actually came out [so soon] is much better than we expected.”

What Democratic Party political consultants mean for us to get from this is the Biden Administration is directing a bold new industrial policy that fights climate change. What's actually happening, is much less impressive. In practice, Biden's initiatives are working out about as well for Louisiana as Bobby Jindal's program of industrial expansion did.  Consider that most carbon capture projects are "greenwashing" exercises. That is to say they are an elaborate token mitigation measure that allows polluting industries to carry on with business as usual.  

CCS does not do a good job of capturing and storage carbon. It struggles to exist, and when it does, it struggles to function. When it manages both, all it does is capture a tiny fraction of high-emitting process, supplying or burning fossil fuels, and the carbon it captures gets sent straight back to work worsening the climate crisis by jimmying the last dregs of oil from depleted reservoirs.

On top of all of this, it serves a rhetorical function; worsening the climate problem through the empty promise it provides.

And it's working. Joe Biden's carbon capture "empty promise" is enabling new projects in Louisiana.  A gas company called Air Products has, over the objections of local residents, already begun drilling a carbon pipeline that would inject waste material deep beneath Lake Maurepas.  Already they seem to have imploded a groundwater well in the process.  All of the new LNG carbon bombs and Death Stars are enabled by carbon capture promises as well. Maybe we're not quite ready to declare the next Qatar on the Bayou but you can see where we're going.  

Perhaps the biggest boondoggle in all of this, though, are so-called "direct air capture" projects like this one in Calcasieu Parish. 

Louisiana will receive up to $603 million in Department of Energy grant funding to create a direct air capture hub in Calcasieu Parish that is expected to generate about 2,300 total jobs, federal officials said.

Dubbed Project Cypress, the direct air capture hub will attempt to pull more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide annually directly from the atmosphere and sequester it deep underground, according to the Department of Energy.

No it won't. It will not do any of that. In the above cited article, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm enthuses that direct air capture projects are like “giant vacuums that can suck decades of old carbon pollution straight out of the sky.”  In reality, they are ineffective net energy consumers likely to produce at least as much carbon as they could ever remove. Ten days after the above article praising the supposed 2300 jobs (100 permanent jobs max) promised by Project Cypress, the T-P followed up with this explainer where we learn the dubious process is "like trying to mop the ocean." 

It is “a little bit like trying to mop the ocean,” said Jane Patton, plastics and petrochemicals campaigns manager at the Center for International Environmental Law.

Patton noted that Louisiana emitted somewhere between 211 million and 219 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2018, according to LSU’s most recent greenhouse gas inventory. At best, Project Cypress will sequester 1 million tons annually.

“We’re talking about a very big planet here and very small filtration mechanisms,” she said.

Patton said prior direct air capture pilot programs have missed their carbon dioxide sequestration goals while using more energy than promised. In addition, the filtration systems rely on amines and ethylene oxide, which are “very toxic.”

Patton is also wary of the injection aspect of both direct air capture and carbon capture, which requires liquefying carbon dioxide, transporting it via pipeline and injecting it deep under cap rocks within Louisiana’s “sinking geology,” as she put it.

“That has not been proven to work reliably anywhere in the world at the scale that industry is promising,” Patton said.

The very toxic inefficient process that has not been proven to work might not be good for de-carbonization.  But, as we've already seen, that's really beside the point. The Bidenomics bonanza here is in real estate. 

Ohio-based Battelle will be the project owner and will partner with Climeworks Corp. and Heirloom Carbon Technologies Inc. to develop the sequestration technology. Gulf Coast Sequestration will transport the carbon dioxide and bury it deep within Calcasieu Parish land owned by Stream Companies. Both Gulf Coast Sequestration and Stream Companies are led by W. Gray Stream.

Heir to a large oil fortune (and son of country singer Lynn Anderson), William Gray Stream is a well known Louisiana business and land baron with heavy political ties. Bobby Jindal appointed him to the state Board of Regents in exchange for a $10,000 campaign contribution.  He has also dabbled in the tech start-up world, having spent much of the past decade attempting to prop up the ill-fated Waitr food delivery app. Despite much cheerleading from the local press, that venture seems to have reached its ending last year. 

But it's the land investment where Stream is positioning himself for the real windfall. The land holdings corporation he has inherited and the "wetlands recovery" business he owns are primed to receive federal subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration, as well as any future attempts to prop up the waning carbon offset market which seem all but inevitable. And so, in this way, federal funds ostensibly meant to fight climate change are just being sucked up... kind of like a giant vacuum.... by a politically connected Louisiana failson.

Meanwhile the Drowning State, under attack from an arsenal of Death Stars and carbon bombs remains in a state of drowning.  And as Hurricane Season enters it peak, we may yet see another munition deployed. 

The heat dome responsible for record-breaking temperatures and drought in south Louisiana may have also created a ticking time bomb of "ridiculously warm" waters in the northern Gulf of Mexico, which could rapidly intensify any tropical storm approaching the state’s coastline, scientists say.

As the peak of hurricane season approaches — generally considered to be around Sept. 10 — conditions in the Gulf will be a major focus of concern for storm trackers.

"All of the shallow waters, including the coastal waters and tidal lakes, are ridiculously warm right now. So it’s primed for anything that works its way in," said Ben Schott, director of the National Weather Service office covering the New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas.

We got a look at this Hurricane Idalia rapidly intensified to a category 4 storm before making landfall in Florida last week. Hopefully we won't get to see the Gulf "time bomb" explode anything in our path this year. We're doing a fair enough job at blowing ourselves to bits as it is.

Cycling insurance subsidies

These little emergency patches to the failed market are going to keep happening. This one is about to happen twice, in fact. 

Donelon said he will ask the legislature to approve more cash for a second round of grants during the regular legislative session set to convene on April 10.

Insurance companies who get grant money have to match the value of the grant dollar-for-dollar and write twice the sum of that amount in premium every year. For example, if one company received a $10 million grant, it would contribute an additional $10 million in surplus funds and be responsible for writing $40 million in premiums every year in south Louisiana parishes.

Donelon noted on Friday that the program was all but a "verbatim repeat" of a grant initiative spearheaded after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita wreaked havoc on the state in 2005. This time, though, insurers are not required to take policies directly from Louisiana Citizens.

Each time the new emergency turns the ratchet, the subsidies only "incentivize" insurers to remain in the market. But they do so at newly increased rates and less favorable terms for policyholders. So the true effect of each rescue plan is just gradual acclimation to ever-worsening circumstances.  

Maybe it should be the job of the democratically elected Insurance Commissioner to figure out a better solution to all of this.  But that seems hard. And, really, who even wants that job anymore?

They're still thinking about it

This site was never a great store of content anyway but if anyone is wondering why it's been especially sparse lately, it's because I just am using the phone to do short posts (sometimes) until the laptop is fixed. But most of the time if I have my phone in my hand and a link to share, I just end up tweeting it out. I know this is riveting. 

But I do like to use this blog to make notes when I can so can remember stuff later. It's much better for that purpose than Twitter, which can be kind of a black hole.   For example, I am right now using it to post this story from yesterday's T-P about the continuing victimization of people by the Road Home program some 16 years later. 

In 2008, the state of Louisiana offered Matthews $30,000 through the federally funded Road Home program to elevate her house to reduce the risk of future flooding. But her home was still unlivable, and she desperately needed the cash for repairs. To her relief, she said, a Road Home representative told her she could use the elevation grant to instead pay for repairs. So she did.

Now, more than a decade later, the state wanted the money back.

Only the latest reminder of the cruel stupidity of the regime people live under here. Poor people pay the costs of corruption. Every time.

Louisiana has sued about 3,500 people — about one in every nine people who received an elevation grant — for failing to use the grants to raise their homes after hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck in 2005.

The real problem, however, wasn’t that people ignored the rules, according to an investigation by The Advocate | The Times-Picayune, WWL-TV and ProPublica. It’s that the state Office of Community Development and a contractor it hired in 2006, ICF Emergency Management Services, mismanaged the program. For more than a decade since, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has insisted that the state recoup the money from people who are noncompliant.

 Y'all remember ICF, right? Only Katrina kids know.  Jarvis DeBerry wrote this seven years ago. 

Who's really to blame for homeowners getting more money than they ought to have received: ICF or the state of Louisiana itself? In some cases it may be ICF. In other cases it may the state. But none of that matters to homeowners caught between these two warring parties. If they've been mailed letters suggesting that they acted fraudulently when they didn't do anything wrong, then they should be provided documentation that clears everything up, a letter that gives them permission to never have to think about Road Home again.

Yeah, well, turns out that in 2022 they still gotta think about it.  

Also here's one more thing from that story to think about as we approach another hurricane season.  The costs of each disaster, and its associated mishandled response is only getting worse. 

 

Welcome, again, to the shitty part of the year.

All the Hurricane seasons are above average

And this one is no exception. 

Another busy hurricane season appears likely, with an above-average number of storms predicted this year, according to a forecast issued Thursday by Colorado State University.

The forecast called for nine hurricanes, where an average season has seven. Of these, the forecast says to expect four to be major hurricanes, which means storms with winds of at least 111 mph, or Category 3 or higher. An average season produces three major hurricanes.

If the forecast for this season holds, it would the seventh above-average season in a row, said Philip Klotzbach, research scientist for Colorado State University's Tropical Meteorology Project, in a presentation Thursday to the National Tropical Weather Conference.

Where we are now

 Seems about right.

RACELAND, La. —

A fire that started from a pile of Hurricane Ida debris is burning faster than firefighters can control in Raceland, according to the Lafourche Parish President.

The fire is mainly affecting areas near Highway 190 and Highway 182. 

According to Archie Chaisson, the fire has been burning for more than a week and started in a state government dump. No homes or structures are being threatened, but smoke is causing a problem. 

Actually there is some better news on the disaster relief front.  Earlier this month it looked to all the world as though Louisiana would have to forego federal help in order that the US could send more bombs to the Ukraine war zone. That turns out not to be the case, exactly.  This week they found $1.7 billion in the couch cushions somewhere.

Hopes had been all but lost in the Lake Charles area for further long-term relief after Congress approved a massive federal spending package earlier this month without it.

But given the state’s stark needs, federal officials decided to grant additional money to Louisiana out of a previously approved amount set aside for disaster relief nationwide. Ida aid was expected to eventually come from that, but at a lower amount. Graves and Kennedy criticized the allocations as taking too long.

HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge noted that a primary goal of the funding was to help low- to moderate-income families recover and rebuild more resiliently.

Keep in mind this is mostly to deal with the still un-met needs resulting from Hurricanes Delta and Laura. The Governor says they're still looking for another $2.5 billion for Ida. Until then, keep the fire going, I guess.

 

How we are buying the bombs

Joe Biden announced today that the US will contribute the following to the growing pit of death and destruction in Ukraine.

The new $800M package includes:
- 800 anti-aircraft systems
- 9,000 anti-armor systems
- 7,000 small arms
- 20 Million rounds
- Unmanned aerial systems
And more.

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 16, 2022

It surprises no one to learn that this expenditure did not immediately elicit a chorus of "BUT HOW WILL WE PAY FOR IT" howls from the psychopaths who dominate American media and politics.  They do love to yell that. But only when it refers to expenditures on things like food or medicine for poor people.  It's fine when we spend the money on murder. That's what our enlightened rulers enjoy most. 

So, anyway, how will we pay for it?

Next week, the White House says it will start to wind down a COVID-19 program that pays to test, treat and vaccinate people who don't have health insurance.

It's one of several immediate impacts after Congress declined to add $22.5 billion in funding to a broad government spending bill passed last week. President Biden signed the bill into law on Tuesday, hailing it as a bipartisan achievement without mentioning the lack of COVID-19 funding.

The COVID-19 funding request met with political pushback from Republicans and concern among some lawmakers that the White House has not fully explained how trillions in COVID money has been spent so far and what funding remains. Republicans in particular have been unwilling to agree to new spending.

Ah okay we've given up even pretending to care about COVID and kicking millions of Americans off of Medicaid. That's plenty money right there. What else, though? 

The bill also does not include further Hurricane Ida aid, but time likely remains to appropriate more dollars for that storm, which hit in August and affected a range of states, including New York, whose congressional delegation holds strong sway.

Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, sought an amendment to include $3 billion for 2020 and 2021 disasters, but the proposal was rejected. He said that while he supported the billions appropriated for Ukraine, and noted aid being sent to Haiti and elsewhere, needs here should be taken care of as well.

“How do you do that and not provide aid for our own citizens, for people that are in need?” he said. “You’re treating people of other countries better than we're treating our own. I want to be clear: I'm not necessarily saying that with Ukraine. We're not under missile attack right now. But for some of these other countries, that’s exactly what's happening.”

Garret Graves isn't "necessarily saying that with Ukraine" but I will.  It is unconscionable to let people suffer the effects of multiple major hurricanes in order to send even more instruments of death into a war zone. Despite what the hunky Ukranian guy everybody loves says, the US can still choose to do some actual good things for people instead of helping him start Word War III.  But in American politics it's always easier to kill a million people in Europe than it is to figure out how to feed and clothe them here.

Staying for the storm

 Well, you know, once again, here we are.

And not a minute to spare, either. 

Mayor LaToya Cantrell on Friday said that with little time left before Hurricane Ida reaches Louisiana, residents should get ready to hunker down and ride out the storm.

She told a news conference there wasn't enough time to establish the highway contraflow procedures necessary to move all residents out of the city before the storm's expected landfall Sunday afternoon. 

"We are not calling for a mandatory evacuation because the time simply is not on our side. We do not want to have people on the road, and therefore in greater danger,” Cantrell said. 

She reiterated that New Orleanians inside the city's levee protection system are safe, but said that residents outside of the levees were under a mandatory evacuation order and should get out as soon as possible.

There are a couple things to say about this.  The first, I suppose, is that the mayor is correct about the timing. Calling and executing a mandatory evacuation that activates the city assisted service and highway contraflow system takes far longer to accomplish than the basically one day they had to throw it together after getting a bead on what this storm was going to do.  During the Saturday afternoon press conference, a Washington Post reporter hit LaToya with a dumb hypothetical "what would you have done if everything was different" question.  She handled it okay by talking nonsense in turn. But expect more of that kind of thing if something goes wrong over the next 48 hours.

This does not mean the city has done a terrific job being on top of things. One of the Cantrell Administration's biggest weaknesses is its inconsiderate treatment of its working class residents and that has again been on display in the pre-storm planning. It doesn't do very many people any good to call for "voluntary evacuations" without also making sure that they have the time and certainty necessary to plan those trips. On Friday, the mayor recommended voluntary evacuations for anyone who might feel they need to get out.  “If you have medical needs or wish to voluntarily evacuate on your own, now is the time to start,” she said.  However, no one heeding the mayor's call at that time was given any certainty that they were in fact free to go, nor were they given any guidance for when best to return.  City offices had not yet been closed.  The public schools were still in session.  If you were a parent, a teacher, or a city employee looking to voluntarily evacuate, you had none of the information you needed to do that.

A city executing its emergency plan should have closures and estimated re-opening dates already in place by the time it issues any sort of evacuation order. It should set the standard also for private businesses responsible for dismissing employees and guaranteeing their return as well.  But, because the Cantrell Administration views workers as problems rather than as people, none of this happened.  There's no doubt the mayor is going to come in for a lot of unfair criticism from bad faith or just plain ignorant commenters from outside of the city. That always happens in these situations. But she also will receive far too much credit from local libertarian types who share her abusive boss mentality. Hopefully the stakes of this remain in the realm of the frustrating political rhetoric we're used to seeing happen around this administration and do not extend to anything that actually affects life and death during the emergency. 

But the default implied position of policymakers is as close to, "y'all are on your own" as they can possibly get away with.  At several moments during her press conferences over the past few days, the mayor has stressed this talking point. 

“What we learned during Hurricane Katrina is we are all first-responders,” Ms. Cantrell said. “It’s about taking care of one another.”

She seems to enjoy that one.  And it sounds kind of nice at first run.  It's colored with the suggestion of community spirit and mutual aid.  Those are laudable values for the public to promote among themselves. But when you hear the government charged with actually providing these services use it as an excuse to fob off its responsibility, it becomes something more sinister. Ultimately what we are being told is not to expect help from a regime that does not respect its end of the social contract. We are expected to obey orders we are not given the tools to fulfill.  

Evacuating is hard enough as it is. It's definitely not the right call for every person. It can be dangerous for many reasons. Perhaps your vehicle (if you have one in the first place) isn't in highway shape. Perhaps you don't have anywhere to go and stay.  Hotels are expensive. Gas is expensive. Running off into an open ended trek into the unknown is really not something you want to do unless you absolutely have to. People who don't live through these events might not understand this. 

We've decided to stay this time and I think our reasons  for staying now are good.  I have a strong bias toward staying through almost any storm but there are still some factors to consider in order to get to that decision logically. Here is how that breaks out. 

1) Can the levees handle the storm surge?

It's about 11 pm on Saturday night while I'm typing this.  The latest track forecast is bringing the storm closer to New Orleans than it has all day. Yeah we're a bit worried about that. But what has not changed at all has been the storm surge modeling. The prediction there has consistently called for 7-11 feet along Lake Borgne and 5-8 feet in Lake Pontchartrain.  The flood protection system protecting New Orleans is supposed to be able to handle 25 feet.  The system ("in name only") that failed during Katrina was far worse and Katrina's surge was over 20 feet.  Anyway, even if we do not have the utmost faith in the new system, it's well within reason to expect it will do the job. 

2) What about the pumps?

Again, the storm surge is the big worry with any hurricane. But the more familiar sort of flooding we've had to deal with in recent years is caused by our fabulously dysfunctional drainage system. Over the last few days, we've been repeatedly assured by the SWB wizards that they expect to supply sufficient power to the pumps running on an improvised combination of the recently repaired Turbine 5, the somewhat undersized Turbine 6, and a series of temporary generators and frequency changers.  PLUS they just might still be able to revive our old friend Turbine 4 in the nick of time which would be very exciting indeed. They say they don't absolutely need it but sometime a turbine wants to be a hero and who can deny it that chance.  

Now maybe SWB is full of shit about all of this. It wouldn't be the first time.  But there are some mitigating factors.  It's worrisome to be on the "wet" side of the storm, and Ida could drop over 10 inches on us.  But it's worth noting that Ida isn't expected to stall over us so that rainfall projection is a maximum.  And under those circumstances, hurricane rainfall isn't as likely to cause the kind of flash flooding that a typical summertime thunderstorm does around here. Very likely, the pumps can handle it. Most importantly, our street has only flooded badly from rainfall once. And even then all we had to do was move the cars up onto to sidewalk for a while. So, again, as far as we are concerned, it's reasonable to expect we can handle whatever street flooding might occur in the event of a pumping failure. 

3) The winds will go whoooosh, though!

Yes, this is the scariest part.  Especially now that we might get some intensity in the city.  But most likely we won't see any sustained winds here exceeding tropical storm range. The gusts will be higher than that and it will probably be a bit rough at times. But if you can tolerate a little excitement, then it's still a better deal than the massive headaches that come with an evacuation.  That doesn't mean there is no danger. There is a chance of damage to the building. But even then, I prefer to be where I can keep an eye on things; seal up a broken window, put a bucket under a leak if need be. 

4) The power will go out

That does suck.  After Gustav in 2008 we were without power for a week.  After Zeta last year we were down for a few days. It's uncomfortable being without a/c in late August. But we know how to do it and are ready.  Are we ready to do it for three weeks?  Hell no! But we do welcome the fight we're going to have with Entergy if they are serious about that.

Anyway that all adds up to staying in town for us.  Not everyone will have come to the same conclusion and that is fine.  Different people have different situations that will cause them to answer the above questions differently.  But we're still here, us.  Just after midnight on August 29th appropriately facing down another catastrophic hurricane.  They are saying the first effects should be noticeable in the morning. I'll try to update then. 

Holy hell it is already June

It's been quiet on the Yellow Blog for a few weeks and, I guess, for much of the year. I've been kind of slacking, I realize that. That's not to say I've been off in space or anything. The main point of this blog is basically note taking for stuff that goes on in the news or just things I read and hear in general. Trust me there are plenty of notes. The "drafts" folder here is quite prolific. I just haven't taken the time to sit down and organize them in a while.   That's not a great thing because if I don't process at least a little bit, it starts to feel like I might forget it all. Which.. again.. the main point of this blog is so I don't forget about things that happen. 

And there's a ton of stuff going on right now that I don't want to lose track of.  The legislature is wrapping up today.  I managed to get some of that down a few weeks ago, but things have not improved since.  Most notably, despite being in possession of an historic budget surplus flush with federal money to throw at whatever they like, lawmakers decided to fund a roads and infrastructure program by forcing more cuts to higher ed and health care. 

Today, we learned that they have decided to scrap two years of work toward a plan for automating expungements of criminal records because the State Police said it might cost too much. 

Davis said State Police still weren’t able to afford the proposal. He told legislators last month that  if James’ bill passed his agency might be forced to reduce the size of its next police academy class — a priority for several lawmakers — or cancel the purchase of new police vehicles. 

But lawmakers could have absorbed the entire cost in next year’s budget. The Legislature’s budget plan includes $17 million in unallocated funding that can still be spent. The Supreme Court is also sitting on millions of dollars of reserves that could be used for this purpose if it wanted to do so.

Anyway, there's more, of course. But that's not the only thing.  A bunch of stuff has been going on. Another building is collapsing downtown while we are still figuring out what to do about the last one.   A big municipal election is coming and some of your all time favs are back in the mix. It's hurricane season again and the turbines are.. not ready.  It's June now but the first of July is coming and that is going to be the worst first of the month yet for people facing eviction. 

Also other things! I have to make time to get this stuff in context before it all becomes a big blur and our consciousnesses disintegrate into the wind.  I'm trying.  

Meanwhile, holy hell it is already June. The myrtles are already in bloom and it hardly even feels like we're in 2021 yet.

Eta is enough

Louisiana's inclusion in Hurricane Eta's "cone of uncertainty" marks the eighth (Eta-ghth?) time we've been there this year.  It's been quite a ride, folks.

The wind wooshed around a lot

Yesterday I got out on the bike for a little while to see how bad it was around us.  It wasn't all that bad, really. A lot of tree debris everywhere. Most not quite as extreme as the photo above but I didn't go very far.  The roads were okay by the time I was out. But the night of the storm, one person was electrocuted by downed power lines which is horrifying.  A lot of people still don't have power.  325,000 Entergy customers are still down as of this morning.  But, generally speaking, for a high category 2 hurricane passing directly over the city, things could have been a lot worse.

It's not over yet, though. Sewerage and Water Board certainly had themselves a night on Wednesday. 

Yet another New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board turbine failed Wednesday during Hurricane Zeta, although a spokesperson for the public utility said loss of that power source did not impair drainage.

Turbine 3 was brought online at the height of the storm but went down after “it reached its capacity,” S&WB spokesperson Courtney Barnes said. The turbine has typically been reserved for emergency use in recent years but was pressed into normal service for Zeta because Turbine 4, the largest of the S&WB’s operational turbines, broke Sunday.

Turbine 3 appears to have been activated as a back up for pumps that would have taken Entergy power under normal circumstances. But they made the switch when either that power or some other equipment failed.  Anyway, it sounds like they were able to juggle and jerry rig their way through it. Happily, the storm moved quickly enough that the rainfall didn't put the pumping capacity to a serious test. 

Yesterday, the city and SWB were asking people to use less water until they could be assured of full sewerage pumping capacity.  But the details of that and several other issues were still incredibly vague as of this morning. McBride enumerates a few in this FB post.  In the meantime, while it is still highly doubtful that there will be any Mardi Gras parades in 2021, I think several krewes have asked Turbine 6 to ride  as a Grand Marshall

We are hearing some concerns about water being safe to drink due to power loss across the city. Power at our Carrollton Water Plant, where water is purified, maintained power throughout impacts from Zeta thanks to Turbine 6.

— SWB New Orleans (@SWBNewOrleans) October 29, 2020

This afternoon the Entergy map is still looking pretty Christamassy.  Eyballing it, I think that looks like we might be close to 50% restored in Orleans Parish. 

The Lens reports that the clerk of court needs 48 hours advance notice if we have to move any polling locations for Tuesday. 54 of them were without power as of today. Also in that article we read that the city is starting to get estimates as to the general cost of repairs. (It also happens to be city budget season and the outlook is not good.)  As is the usual case with a major disaster, we would expect the federal government to reimburse these expenses.  How much they pay out, though, might depend on certain data. 

FEMA hasn’t approved a major disaster declaration for Hurricane Zeta yet, according to The Times Picayune/New Orleans Advocate, and is awaiting more complete damage assessments.

Cantrell said that the National Hurricane Center would also be reviewing data as to whether the storm was indeed at Category 2 or if it had slipped over the Category 3 threshold. That would have reimbursement implications, she said. Green said the city was also looking into federal assistance for individual residents over lost food.

It has been widely reported that Zeta's maximum winds may have been just 1 mph below the threshold for what we would consider a Category 3.  If we had known at the time that this would make a difference, maybe we could have all gone out and waved some fans.

What did Zion say to Zeta?

Let's dance.

Man, I don't know about y'all but I haven't felt this giddy since February. Finally, something different is happening.  It's happening fast too. This thing is hauling ass across the Gulf.  Yesterday we were told to expect it to come in after 7 PM so people have planned their day according to that. City offices are open until noon. Schools haven't cancelled their virtual classes. This morning while I was out I saw the regular joggers jogging, the commuting, the panhandlers handling pans. People are determined to business up until the last possible businessing minute. 

That's probably not the appropriate way to behave. And the current scenario where we see a hurricane accelerate and strengthen unexpectedly is a perfect example of why.  The recent years of near misses followed by talk radio wise-assses complaining about "lazy" people taking the days off shouldn't have bullied us into this. But that's what happens when leadership is too sensitive to that kind of nonsense. I mean, you want them to be responsive to vox populi, but you also want to err on the side of safety whenever possible. 

Hopefully it all works out. I always end up having to calm down the people around me in situations like this and one thing I try to do is remind them how little agency they have in any of it. Most events in this world transpire in total independence of our individual choices.  The Saints win the game or they don't. The roof blows off of your house or it doesn't.  It's just stuff that happens. Sometimes it affects you and sometimes it doesn't. But none of it is about you at all. Once you get that, you worry less. 

Anyway, I had been planning to hit the grocery store one more time before the power goes out.  I wonder if they are open.

We all just laugh

Look, we all knew there would have to be a Hurricane Zeta because there was just no way that the year 2020 A.D. was going out with the second most named storms in history.  Got to tie that record at least.  We also all knew that it had to make at least one serious run at Southeast Louisiana before this was over. 

But we'll wait and see if it can follow through.  So far, its aim has not been particularly impressive. 

Colossus crawls west

Today's look has Delta coming in much stronger than we thought. And it's headed right for SW Louisiana where they're still literally picking up debris from Laura.

So that's not great.  Can still change and probably will, though.  But a shift back east is also not a great outcome.

The Friday Fizzle

It would be pretty typical for an October storm to lose strength as it crosses the northern Gulf. It's not guaranteed but it's something we've seen quite a few times. Anyway that's what this graphic seems to indicate even though the current status of the storm is freaking people out.  

The problem is, if it happens, it's all going to happen on Friday.  But if you have to decide what you are going to do before then, well, it might require a small leap of faith.

Breaking records

They're going for it. All the mud. 

The state is undertaking two “record-breaking” restoration projects aimed at reviving 7 square miles of coastal habitat and bolstering natural storm defenses east of New Orleans and near Venice in lower Plaquemines Parish.

Long planned but now funded with $215 million from money BP set aside after the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, the projects amount to the largest marsh restoration and the largest coastal ridge-building effort the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority has ever attempted.

“The only way to describe them is 'massive,'” CPRA Executive Director Bren Haase said. “They’re both record-breaking projects."

The Deepwater Horizon disaster happened 10 years ago.  These aren't the first projects that settlement has funded but they do give some idea of how long it takes to put that money to use. Which is a maddening thing to think about when we consider just how late in the game all of this is. This, for example, is from May of this year.

 A new study says Louisiana’s coast cannot be saved.

Researchers looked at how the marshes have survived over thousands of years and concluded that they are past a major tipping point and sea level rise will eventually wash the entire coast away.

The study, published today in Science Advances, found that marshes can survive a certain amount of relative sea level rise — about a tenth of an inch per year. Sea levels are currently rising 1 to 2 inches a year in Louisiana due to climate change and subsidence.

“Previous investigations have suggested that marshes can keep up with rates of sea-level rise as high as half an inch per year, but those studies were based on observations over very short time windows, typically a few decades or less,” said Torbjörn Törnqvist, Lead researcher and Tulane University earth and environmental science professor.

He said officials have perhaps been too optimistic: “Unfortunately we have already reached the tipping point for marsh drowning in Louisiana. There is no way back anymore.”

Yeah... but you gotta do something.  And since we do have some money to throw around right now, we might as well throw at something at least a little bit useful.  And these "record breaking" projects do sound a little bit useful. One project aims to save and reinvigorate 3,000 acres of marsh around Lake Borgne. 

Restoring marshlands in Lake Borgne, actually a large saltwater bay, is part of a wider effort to rebuild wetlands in the Pontchartrain Basin for both ecological and storm protection functions. Like much of the coast, the basin has been rapidly losing land from erosion, storm surges, rising seas and subsidence, the natural compacting and sinking of the soil.

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assessment found that boosting the marshlands in Lake Borgne could provide significant storm surge protection for New Orleans.

See, that helps. Now, if they could get all of this done by, say, Thursday evening that would be great. 

Tropical Storm Delta was strengthening in the Caribbean Monday morning and is expected to become a hurricane Tuesday on its path toward Louisiana, forecasters said.

The current track from the National Hurricane Center has Delta making landfall Friday as a Category 2 hurricane in southeast Louisiana, but the track has an average error of 160 to 200 miles this far out.

Here is Delta's track which, appropriately for something called that, is still subject to change.. but.. yikes!

We're in the Greek alphabet for only the second time in history.  That other time was, of course, the infamous 2005 season when we got all the way up to Zeta. Just a couple more to go now and maybe we can break that record too.

Que sera, man

 You know, we've got so many problems right now, who even has time to think about this one?  

Tropical Depression 19 formed into Tropical Storm Sally in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center, making it the earliest named "S" storm in recorded hurricane season history.

As of 1 p.m. Saturday, Sally was forecast to move through the Gulf and make landfall Tuesday along the Louisiana-Mississippi border as a low-level hurricane.

Hurricane can come or not come. It doesn't matter.  But it should know that if it causes anyone to cancel school, the mayor might try and cancel its unemployment benefits. 

Just blew right through

Laura is already out of the headlines most everywhere but Louisiana.  Trump came down and signed some autographs or something and now they're all on to other things. 

Here are some numbers.  Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to be without water or power for a month at least. Tens of thousands of evacuees are staying in hotels all over Louisiana and Texas. Remember that evacuees in similar circumstances after Katrina had to fight more than once to keep their hotel vouchers before being kicked out with no place to go.  This is going to be a long tough road ahead for many people. 

A massive chlorine gas fire that erupted near Lake Charles has yet to be fully measured. Information about possible environmental damage from similar chemical infrastructure in the area is slow to come in.

The lack of urgency around monitoring is problematic, said Kimberly Terrell, Tulane Environmental Law Clinic's director of community outreach, because industrial facilities hit by Laura's winds could be leaking or emitting more air pollution than normal. 

"Monitoring air pollution is more important than ever," she said. "You would hope that the state would mobilize every resource available to provide information about what’s in the air in this region."

Indeed, since Thursday, more than 50 pollution events linked to Laura in Louisiana have been reported to the U.S. Coast Guard's National Response Center, including the possible release of toxic vinyl chloride and dichloroethane from the Westlake Chemicals facility, just across Contraband Bayou from the BioLab facility, and the release of an unknown quantity of natural gas from a storage tank at the Cameron LNG Inc. facility in Cameron Parish.

Confidence in EPA to discharge its duty under Trump is at an all time low. It will make it all the more difficult to assess the harm done by Laura. 

That is also true in general as attention moves quickly away.  Only a few years ago an event like Laura might be the biggest ongoing news story of the year.  In terms of the current national news cycle, it's just another catastrophe to throw on the pile. 

That doesn't make it any less devastating for the people who lived in its path.  If you are looking for a way to help, the City of New Orleans is compiling a list of ways you can do that here.

Worst person of 2020?

Seems like a lofty title. The competition would be stiff. Pros only, please. Probably if you are a mayor of something, you've already got a leg up on it.  But it would be hard to beat Josh Guillory at this point. 

Instead of hurricane damage, Lafayette has faced the "serious, local security threat" of protesters, according to Lafayette Parish Mayor-President Josh Guillory's administration.

Cydra Wingerter, Guillory's chief administrative officer, sent a Saturday email to those involved in disaster response, urging them to "take a pause on any action to establish shelters at this time."

Hundreds of thousands of people without electricity or water right now.  But... "security threat." Brilliant.