Baton Rouge Reporter

BATON ROUGE, LA – Louisiana’s fisheries were crushed by several disasters in 2019 and are finally receiving $58 million in federal aid to offset impacts.

In 2020, U.S. Congressman Garret Graves worked to secure $58 million in federal assistance for an impacted fishing community.

But, despite the disasters occurring five years ago, the federal bureaucracy has taken nearly four years to deliver the funds to Louisiana’s fisheries. The disaster funding was awarded in 2020. 

“There is no excuse for the bureaucracy to take four years for the disaster relief we secured to actually be made available, but these funds will be invaluable. We have promised the seafood industry we would not stop our fight to bring them relief while working to reform the broken fisheries disaster process. We will continue to work with our fishing community to cut through the red tape and make this program functional,” Graves said.

In recent years, Louisiana’s seafood industry has faced Hurricane Ida and other natural disasters, contended with unfair trade practices, skyrocketing inflation, high gas prices, supply chain issues, and three years of back-to-back openings of the Bonnet Carre Spillway.

Background:

Graves worked to secure $100 million in federal appropriations in the 2019 Consolidated and Supplemental Appropriations Act to respond to disaster events impacting the nation’s fisheries that year. Following the congressional approval of these funds, Graves successfully pushed the Department of Commerce to allocate the largest amount of the funding to Louisiana. The Department agreed, allocating two-thirds of the total to Louisiana within a few months of congressional approval. Unfortunately, the state was not able to submit a spending plan to the Department of Commerce for approval until December 2021, and outstanding federal agency questions on the state’s plan took nearly two years to resolve. 

Graves has been critical of both the state and federal government for delays in this process, calling for the federal government to declare fisheries disasters in a timelier manner, and for the state to make completing a high-quality spend plan a priority. He continues to push for process reform on this issue as a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources.

Original source can be found here.