Hot Button Editorial Blog

Protect and Restore

How many times over the years have we all wrung our hands and asked when somebody would come up with a science-based master plan to shore up our state's disappearing coastline, build back our depleted marshes and protect our urban centers from Gulf storms?

The answer is more times than we can count.  Well, just the thing we've asked for is staring us in the face.  But like the dog who chased the speeding fire engine and finally got his jaws around its bumper, the question is, "what are we going to do with it now?"

The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority has presented us with a bold plan which would take half a century and cost 50-billion dollars to enact.  Southwest Louisiana would be the second-largest recipient of that spending, at nearly 11-billion dollars.  Only the far-bigger New Orleans area would get more.

Though science-based, the Plan is not without controversy.  Some Cameron residents have already been vocal about it not giving our coastal parish enough direct protection.  And some Calcasieu Parish residents have raised eyebrows at a 44-mile levee system to protect against a catastrophic storm surge.  Any time you talk about levees here, the discussion arises about turning whatever's behind it into a big swimming pool.

We all have a chance to give our input at a public hearing at the Lake Charles Civic Center's Contraband Room this Wednesday.  Please try and attend.  The Plan will be on display 1 to 530pm and then the hearing will be 530 to 730 in the evening.  Public comments will be taken for a month and then it goes to the Legislature March 25th.

This is one of the most important projects ever proposed for Southwest Louisiana and its impact on our region will be significant.  Don't let it happen without your direct input.

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Do you have a comment or reply to this Hot Button Editorial?  Please send it to hotbutton@kplctv.com.  We may post it here in the comments thread and/or use it in a Hot Button Rebuttal.

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Sewer Inspections

The feedback we've heard from Calcasieu Parish residents affected by the pending inspections of their mechanical sewer systems has been mixed, to say the least.  Some are simply shrugging it off as a reasonable price of admission to living in a neighborhood without a comprehensive sewer system.  Others have howled that it's a violation of their inalienable rights, some invoking Second Amendment comparisons.

We side with the first group.  If you're a hot button regular, you may already know that we've not thought much of the parish's historical nurturing of the development of close-in subdivisions without central sewer and water services.  And so we're left with this problem, where an estimated half of the area's 30,000 private individual sewer systems aren't working properly.

One person's runoff, not properly managed, is another person's problem.  All things considered, the inspections are the right thing to do and are being conducted by the parish in an very responsible manner which respects homeowners.  Click here for more information on what what you can expect from the inspection program, which is just now getting underway.

A home may be a castle, but it is not an island.  The sewer inspection program is a good idea, and will help make for good neighbors in subdivisions throughout Calcasieu Parish.

http://www.cppj.net/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=2023

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Do you have a comment or reply to this Hot Button Editorial?  Please send it to hotbutton@kplctv.com.  We may post it here in the comments thread and/or use it in a Hot Button Rebuttal.

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Water to Texas

When General Russel Honore' gave his keynote address to the Chamber Southwest last year, he assured us that water would be the world's defining commodity in the 21st Century.  Regions will be divided between those which have ample supplies of fresh water and those that don't. After a two-year drought it would be hard to ignore his warning.

And so the Sabine River Authority's proposal to enter into a 99-year contract to sell water from Toledo Bend to Texas ought to be a big red flashing warning light to anyone who lives or works in western Louisiana.  Southwest Louisiana is especially exposed.  We depend on our industrial complex, and our industrial complex depends on huge amounts of fresh water in their processes.  Any shift of water to Texas shifts the probability of the plants leaning harder on the aquifer under our community, which is something we just don't want.

99 years is a long time.  Nothing against our friends in Texas, but selling them our Louisiana water is simply a breathtakingly BAD idea.  If you agree, click here to make your own feelings known.

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Do you have a comment or reply to this Hot Button Editorial?  Please send it to hotbutton@kplctv.com.  We may post it here in the comments thread and/or use it in a Hot Button Rebuttal.

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Budget Axe

Well, here we go again.  It's January, which means it's time for resolutions and wiping the slate clean...and another big swing of the state budget axe which lands squarely on our universities and technical colleges.

Of the $250-million in state cuts, higher education took an unforgivable $50 million.  That's because just about everything EXCEPT higher education has been protected by law in Baton Rouge so McNeese, Sowela and the rest of the state's institutions of higher education become Louisiana's fiscal whipping boys.  And let's not forget that 50-mil is just for the second semester, not an entire year.

School officials do the best they can to absorb these now-predictable body-blows, but if you look behind the reassuring soundbites you'll see the crumbling impact on our campuses, our faculty and our students.

Louisiana talks a good story about retaining our best and brightest and retraining our workforce.  But we can't move forward if our colleges keep getting kicked in the gut till there's nothing left to give.  McNeese and Sowela aren't being nibbled to death by minnows.  They are now being devoured by pirahnas. 

McNeese and Sowela depend on adequate state funding. The laws simply must be changed to protect higher education and they must be changed right quick.

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Do you have a comment or reply to this Hot Button Editorial?  Please send it to hotbutton@kplctv.com.  We may post it here in the comments thread and/or use it in a Hot Button Rebuttal.

 What's YOUR Hot Button?  Friend Jim Serra on Facebook at Jim Serra Kplc and join in the behind-the-scenes conversation!