Mark Pryor

We can play the blame game all we want on this, but the bottom line is, right now, there are lots and lots of locally owned levees that need a lot of work.

What would happen if, say, hypothetically, there is a district that is not in yours, but in an adjacent district that may have a problem?

There was no doubt that there was going to be a strong motivation on the part of our parishes to at least look into the validity of those V Zone designations.

So here you have the problem of people paying their levee taxes... and then also having to pay flood insurance.

It should not take the personal intervention of a U.S. Senator for FEMA and the Army Corps to work together to hear from folks and to come up with some decisions.

Thank you for working on this issue as diligently as you have been.

OK. Well, you all have been great.

Thank you for your leadership, and I am glad you were able to stay as long as you did.

The taxpayers, State, local, Federal taxpayers, have invested something like $32 billion, or maybe more, in that levee system.

If my constituents are frustrated, that means I am frustrated.

You said in your opening statement that you think the Mississippi River and Tributaries, MR&T, should either be exempted from the flood mapping or at least treated differently.

Can you tell us why you have gone to the Shaded Zone X?

Isn't that the 500-year floodplain?

I was going to follow up on that.

It does concern me that it is sending a signal to other hospitals around the country.

But it seems to me that they ought to consider that compensation, because most of those patients wouldn't have that except for these circumstances, right?

But also, it is a lesson learned area that you guys are working on to try to make sure it doesn't happen like this in the future, or at least that it is handled appropriately in the future, is that the understanding?

But to me, that seems that planning would take care of a lot of that.

We need it to respond to emergency disaster events wherever they occur in the country.

I have heard, and I don't know how accurate it is, that it may be difficult for a lot of Federal employees to actually serve on those response teams.

It seems if the Federal Government has a lot of expertise, has a lot of people that have expertise that might be part of that team, I just wonder if there are maybe too many barriers for them to serve.

So there again, that is collaborative, as well, in terms of how that works.

Good. Well, that is encouraging.

NDMS is something that we should continue, that it is important in a time of crisis.

Let me ask you about something I think was in your written testimony--you maybe said it a few moments ago--but about the communication between FEMA and your local hospitals.