Louisiana’s New Governor Put Abortion Politics Over Fixing Pipes

When a wedge of salt water labored its manner up the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico this fall and threatened to overrun the New Orleans public waterworks, it was not the primary time town confronted a consuming water disaster lately. 

The Crescent Metropolis’s growing older water system is filled with lead pipes, contributing to elevated lead ranges within the water on this predominantly Black neighborhood. The 4 water consumption factors that draw from the movement of the Mississippi River all lie in numerous states of disrepair. One consumption has doubled as a mooring for barges loaded with oil and different chemical compounds for a lot of the previous decade. One other is out of service altogether — and has been for 34 years. 

RELATED: The Water Disaster Gripping One other Majority-Black Metropolis

To assist bolster the flagging water system, New Orleans wants cash, and many it — in complete, the system wants almost $1 billion in capital enhancements. 

Final yr, town sought $32.7 million in funding from state bonds to assist construct a brand new energy plant for the Sewerage and Water Board, which might give the water system new pumping energy not just for drawing water into the system from the Mississippi, however to assist draw down floodwater after storms too. 

However the metropolis faces a giant roadblock to getting that cash: Jeff Landry, the Republican legal professional common who final month was elected to be Louisiana’s subsequent governor. 

Landry, a staunch conservative, not solely doesn’t imagine in local weather change, however can be vehemently anti-abortion. As legal professional common, he petitioned the state bond board final July to dam town from receiving any public funds to repair its water system after New Orleans officers stated they’d not use metropolis sources to prosecute abortion circumstances, based on Essence. 

“It’s my perception {that a} parish or municipality shouldn’t profit from the hard-working taxpayers of this State whereas ignoring legal guidelines validly enacted by the individuals by their representatives,” he wrote in a letter to the board.

On the time, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell accused Landry of enjoying politics. “By politicizing an primarily technical course of, the Lawyer Basic demonstrates he would relatively rating low cost political factors on the backs of girls than govern — residents and the enterprise neighborhood simply usually are not prime priorities,” she stated in a press release to the Louisiana Illuminator.

The politics did work for Landry, nonetheless, who unexpectedly gained greater than 50% of the vote within the first poll of what’s normally a two-round election system. He’ll substitute Democrat John Bel Edwards, who was not in a position to run once more attributable to time period limits. 

Whereas Landry and Bel Edwards each assist criminalizing abortion in Louisiana (Bel Edwards signed a ban on abortions in almost all circumstances into legislation final yr), there are vital variations between the 2 males in the case of questions of local weather and the surroundings. 

Bel Edwards enacted insurance policies geared toward lowering emissions and limiting Louisiana’s dramatic coastal erosion, however Governor-elect Landry didn’t embody a single scientist or conservationist on his “coast and surroundings” transition council. As an alternative, the council is stacked with petrochemical firm legal professionals and development enterprise homeowners, though it does embody some native officers from elements of the state which can be routinely flooded.  

The factor about being a climate-denying governor in a state like Louisiana is that climate-related disasters will proceed to occur, no matter Landry’s politics or insurance policies. Local weather change impacts public infrastructure — in spite of everything, the saltwater wedge was a results of a drought that lowered water flows on the river. 

It’s simpler for politicians to face towards perceived political points like reproductive rights or local weather justice than it’s to struggle towards contemporary water, even when all of them are very important. And but Landry appears greater than high quality with limiting all three — which doesn’t bode nicely for Louisiana.