It's unreal. It's unthinkable. You know, they still have a chance to do the right thing.
Billy Nungesser
The Public Record
54th Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana
★ Featured Quote
January 2, 2025
This administration in the city has failed miserably on everything.
— Billy Nungesser
They just don't get it. We can never forget those 11 lives lost. And to hear those men that survived being treated -- and it's typical for BP.
It's been one lie after another. And the long-term effects of that oil out there, we don't know.
We want to know everything. We want to know where is the money. We want to know why they're dragging their feet on the cleanup and why they're not giving us the assets they promised to leave here.
No. There's been a lot of excuses. Early on, the oyster beds, for instance, it's a three or four-year process. They came in and said, 'OK, we're going to make it right; we're going to pay you for four years.' Then they turned around and…
It's the single largest coastal restoration project in the history of America. It was permanent in 19 days without cutting any hurdles.
They have no plan. The Coast Guard nor BP has a plan. There's nobody cleaning up the marsh. I want to see a plan. If you're not going to have a plan, get the hell out of the way and let us go do it ourselves.
If they would have worked 24-7 on the cleanup, we would have seen most of the area cleaned up and bank stabilization in place. We're losing land every day because of the lack of the response.
Absolutely not. The spots you saw, you don't have the thick oil. But when a bird gets a little bit of oil on its breast, it's like you punching a hole in a rubber boot. You're going to get pneumonia and die.
They have no plan; the Coast Guard nor BP has a plan. There's nobody cleaning up the marsh.
In a section of the report they call the boom wars, they write -- quote -- 'President Nungesser deplored the lack of available boom' and that -- quote -- 'directions went out to keep the parishes 'happy' -- which resulted in operational…
In a section of the report they call the 'Boom Wars', they write -- quote -- 'President Nungesser deplored the lack of available boom' and that -- quote -- 'directions went out to keep the parishes 'happy' which resulted in operational…
We told them from day one it was useless, but they put it out there as a dog-and-pony show.
Every day from here on out that it stays sealed off, there will be less oil in our marshlands, less oil to kill the birds, less oil to ruin our way of life.
The rigs that leave aren't coming back. They get under contract in Brazil or Africa, they're staying over there.
When we're in Baton Rouge having the Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo because they won't let us build anything back, that's a problem.
The only way we're going to control our way of life and get our way of life back is if we have those berms out there, we have barges in the pass, and we can keep that oil at bay.
It's an emergency. And here we are, weeks later, after we already started pumping, waiting on the additional permits from the berm.
Just saying no is not good enough. We need to work together and come up with something that will keep this oil out.
We need to bring as many ships as we can get. They don't need to come into Venice for a photo-op. They need to go out in the Gulf and go to work.





