Louisiana

Louisiana senators Cassidy, Kennedy still seeking flood insurance reforms

Published

5 months ago

August 20, 2024

Louisiana senators Cassidy, Kennedy still seeking flood insurance reforms

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – Amid increasing flood insurance costs, Louisiana’s U.S. senators say they are continuing to push for reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program.

Property owners are seeing higher flood coverage premiums, on top of soaring property insurance costs.

Katherine Drezek is a Louisiana homeowner who said she has seen her flood insurance premium rise in recent years.

“Yes, I think all the insurance has gone up, not only flood insurance. Fire insurance, just the house insurance period, has gone up,” she said.

Still, Drezek has not considered dropping her flood coverage.

“No, I live too close to the lake not to have flood insurance. I mean we live in Louisiana, we need flood insurance,” Drezek said.

With Congress in recess, Republican senators Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy were speaking Tuesday (Aug. 20) in the New Orleans area.

Cassidy toured Wrstbnd, a company in the Elmwood section of Jefferson Parish, after he spoke to the River Region Chamber of Commerce. And on the north shore, Kennedy addressed the St. Tammany Chamber.

“We need to fix the flood insurance program. The first thing we need to do is expand it,” Kennedy said.

Only a fraction of the properties in the U.S. are covered through the National Flood Insurance Program. According to FEMA, the NFIP protects more than $1.28 trillion in assets through nearly 5 million policies.

“We’ve got about 5 million people across America that’s got flood insurance. That’s not enough,” Kennedy said. “That’s not enough, because the more people you have, the more risk you can spread.”

Fox 8 asked Cassidy if there should be an effort to get more properties covered by flood insurance.

“There should be,” he said. “Banks are supposed to require it if homes are at risk. One thing we know is that more homes are at risk. So, for example, more people are building next to the coast. People want to live next to the water, and so that almost inherently puts them at risk.”

But he added that high costs are keeping some property owners from either acquiring or keeping flood insurance.

“On the other hand, if the premium is so expensive people can’t afford it, it drops off,” Cassidy said.

Cassidy said he wants Congress to mandate FEMA to take into account more levees when determining flood insurance rates.

“Right now, if a levee works but it’s not federally recognized, FEMA does not include that levee in their kind of risk assessment,” Cassidy said. “But the levee works. People can show flood water on one side, dry homes on the other. So, we would require FEMA to begin taking into account these non-federally recognized levees which work.”

Kennedy said, “I’m for creating some sort of national catastrophe fund that includes flood, that includes fire, earthquake. That’s harder to do than it sounds, but you get 15, 20, 30 and 40 million people in a fund, you can spread the risk better than you can with only five million.”

Under Risk Rating 2.0, the methodology FEMA has been using in recent years to determine premiums, rates can legally be increased up to 18% a year.

“This algorithm apparently can look into the future and tell whether your home is going to flood 45 years from now. I don’t believe it. I think it was an excuse to raise premiums,” Kennedy said.

With U.S. House members and some senators up for reelection in November, pundits say Congress will hesitate to pass consequential legislation before the end of the year.

On the prospects of getting NFIP reforms approved this year, Cassidy said, “I can’t tell you that it’s going to happen, but I can tell you that we’re in active negotiation as to how we could help lower-income Americans afford their flood insurance.”

Kennedy concedes that reaching a consensus on how to change the program will be difficult.

“We need to fix it,” he said. “But it’s not easy to do, because you’ve got a lot of people who, first, don’t care. They’re in a state that’s never flooded. And No. 2, we’ve got a lot of different points of view about how to fix it.”

Drezek said she has a message for Congress.

“Lower it. Please, please, please lower the insurance,” she said.

Kennedy said Congress will not let the program expire.

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Louisiana

A little water makes a lot of snow. Why future snow melt won’t lead to floods.

Published

6 hours ago

January 22, 2025

Press Room

A little water makes a lot of snow. Why future snow melt won’t lead to floods.

If you’ve been a weather nerd and checking the National Weather Service’s hourly precipitation tallies, you might have noticed something appears to be off with the measurements of Tuesday’s snowstorm.

Precipitation measurements are in the tenths and hundreds of an inch, though widespread measurements of the blanket of snow falling across the state are in the several inches.

Baton Rouge, for instance, had a reported 6 inches of snow by midday Tuesday, though hourly measurements from Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport only measured 0.27 inches of precipitation.

What’s the deal?

Vincent “Vinny” Brown, an LSU climatologist, said those National Weather Service precipitation measurements are in liquid amounts, not snow accumulation totals.

The ice crystals that make up snow take up more volume than liquid water, but exactly what that ratio is in any given snowstorm can involve a number of factors.

One old rule of thumb is 10-to-1, or 10 inches of snow for every 1 inch of liquid, but forecasters have developed other ways to predict snow accumulations.

The Kuchera snow ratio, for example, is a widely used statistical method that relies on the warmest temperatures in the air column to try to estimate snowfall.

But it can be a difficult task. According to the National Weather Service, factors such as the amount of ice in a snow cloud, the types of snowflakes being formed, how warm it is between the snow cloud and the surface of the Earth, and windiness can all increase or decrease the amount of snow hitting the ground.

Deep cold can push the snow-to-water ratio to as much as 20-to-1, the Weather Service says. Some academic papers published by the American Meteorological Society say that ratio can range from 3-to-1 to 100-to-1.

Phil Grigsby, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Slidell, said published snowfall tallies are measurements of actual accumulations on the ground or other surfaces that the service’s network of observers are reporting.

“Those are actual people going out and measuring them … on patio tables and decks and things like that,” he said.

He added that this difference between snow volume and water volume means the eventual melting of south Louisiana’s coating of snow is unlikely to have much of an impact on local waterways.

Grigsby added that the snow falling across south Louisiana is on the dry side and that means the snow-to-water ratio is even wider than the typical rule of thumb.

That means even less water will ultimately run off once the snow melts.

“This won’t cause any flooding issues at all,” Grigsby said.

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Louisiana

Central Louisiana residents delight in a rare snow day Tuesday

Published

14 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Press Room

Central Louisiana residents delight in a rare snow day Tuesday

Snow is not something that you see very often in Central Louisiana.

Central Louisiana woke up to a blanket of snow, and several Pineville residents were out Tuesday morning enjoying it while it lasted.

“We love it,” said Nikita Rackley, who was outside on Myrtle Street with Jayden Deslatte, 10, and his uncle Wesley Deslatte enjoying the rare snowfall.

Chris Jasper, 20, and Corneilous Hughes, 12, donned a pair of Louisiana mittens (socks) on their hands as they pelted each other with snowballs on Barrett Street. Jasper said the socks did help keep their hands warm a little bit.

“I hadn’t seen snow in years,” Jasper said.

It was the first time Hughes has seen snow in Louisiana but has seen it in Houston. He expected it to snow here on Christmas.

“It’s a lot of fun,” said Jaden Wells, a Louisiana Christian University freshman psychology major from Mandeville.

The campus was closed Tuesday due to the weather, but Wells and Noah Nava, a junior education major from Newton, Texas, were outside throwing snowballs at each other and attempting to build a snowman.

The snow was not sticky enough for the snowman, so they ended up with a small mound.

“It’s perfect for snowballs though,” said Nava, showing one he just made.

“We don’t get this a lot so you’ve got to get outside and enjoy it as much as you can,” said Wells.

The National Weather Service in Lake Charles issued a Winter Storm Warning from midnight Tuesday until midnight Wednesday. A low of 14 degrees is expected for Tuesday night. Wednesday’s high is expected to be 30, with a low of 19.

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