Mitch Landrieu: “I had to come to the floor and speak briefly and thank the ranking member and the chairman for their extraordinary help…”

“I had to come to the floor and speak briefly and thank the ranking member and the chairman for their extraordinary help in crafting this bill to help meet the needs of Louisiana's vanishing coast. This coastline just doesn't belong to Louisiana, it belongs to the Nation. It is America's last coastal zone, with millions of acres of wetlands that serve as hosts of the oil and gas industry and that cradle, if you will, the great Mississippi River, which is the greatest river system on the North American Continent. It provides for the extensive fisheries industry. This is a picture of southeast Louisiana. But if you head southwest, it is also host to major river systems, the Calcasieu Ship Channel, et cetera. This coast is threatened. This is a pretty extraordinary graph that we found recently, which shows the track of every major hurricane since 1955. The blue line is the track of Hurricane Rita, a category 4 to 5 hurricane. Katrina is the yellow line that went through the eastern part of our State, and then, of course, Rita on the western part on the Texas-Louisiana line. This gulf coast is America's only energy coast. All of the oil and gas offshore is produced right here. Most of the refineries, platforms, et cetera, are beside these great wetlands. This bill is going to make substantial investments along this coastline to keep our river open, to keep our ports operating, to protect these wetlands, and to help create a stronger barrier.…”