Jay Lapeyre, Jr., the New Orleans civic and business leader who as nominating committee chairperson single-handedly reshaped the region's two biggest levee authority boards following post-Hurricane Katrina reforms aimed at limiting political influence, is stepping down from his position.
After serving on the two nominating committees for the boards of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East and -West since their creation 18 years ago, Lapeyre, 72, is term-limited once his current appointments end in 2025. In an interview this week, he said he was stepping aside to provide the Council for a Better Louisiana time to choose his replacement.
Lapeyre's role was a critical one following the federal levee failures that exposed deep flaws in south Louisiana's hurricane protection systems. In Katrina's wake, voters and state legislators regionalized the area's local hurricane levee districts and created nominating committees for the new levee authorities in order to ensure engineers and other qualified experts were chosen to serve on them.
Lapeyre, a respected business leader as CEO of industrial machinery maker Laitram, was chosen to lead those committees and quickly built a process to find qualified candidates.
"The mantra back then was simple," said Lapeyre. "If we don't get this right, nothing else matters. We had to create not only a dramatically reduced risk from flooding, but we also had to insure the public perception of that, and insure that we had credible messaging of our goals for the feds."
Lapeyre's service was heralded by representatives of several civic organizations that led the fight for major improvements in the area's hurricane levee protection, including: Ruthie Frierson, one of the founders of Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans, which led a statewide campaign to establish the regional levee authorities; Anne Milling, founder of Women of the Storm, whose 150 members lobbied Congress for post-Katrina rebuilding aid and flood protection improvements; and Sandy Rosenthal, founder of Levees.org, a group created to assure levee reconstruction did not repeat the failures that led to flooding in the city after Katrina.
"Jay Lapeyre is one of the most amazing, talented, committed leaders the New Orleans community has had in my lifetime," said Frierson. "He was instrumental in establishing levee board reform no one thought was possible given the entrenched politics."
Lapeyre's service also was praised by Shane Guidry, adviser to Gov. Jeff Landry. Earlier this year, Lapeyre criticized Landry's decision to reject a candidate chosen for the east bank levee authority in the waning days of Gov. John Bel Edwards' administration, University of New Orleans Engineering Professor and former American Society of Civil Engineers President Norma Jean Mattei.
"We appreciate the service Jay has done for the state," Guidry said. "The short while that I've known Jay, I applaud his commitment to ensuring that no homes go without flood protection. We wish him well in all his future endeavors."
A complicated process
While the Army Corps of Engineers oversaw design and construction of the post-Katrina levee systems on both sides of the Mississippi River, the new levee authority board members provided critiques and expertise aimed at assuring local concerns were addressed, Lapeyre said.
In September 2005, more than 80% of voters statewide approved an amendment to the state Constitution that consolidated the local levee districts into the two regional boards, and state legislation set up nominating committees whose members were chosen by local and statewide civic groups and universities, and national professional organizations.
The nominees had to fit within a complex matrix for each board, which was designed to assure members had flood-fighting expertise and limited the role of politics. The matrices required some seats to be reserved for individuals with engineering or science or other professional backgrounds, required a certain number to be from parishes included in the area served by the regional levee authority, and kept others reserved for individuals who lived outside those borders.
In addition to the Council for a Better Louisiana, other civic, educational and engineering organizations, such as the Public Affairs Reserch Council, Louisiana Geological Survey at Louisiana State University and the American Society of Civil Engineering, were allowed to appoint members to the nominating commitees.
The nominating committees then forwarded the names of one or two candidates for each seat to the governor, who was to choose amongst them and forward their choice to the Legislature for approval.
Lapeyre said this week that his committees shuffled through as many as 500 candidates for the first two candidate lists. Of those, 134 candidates submitted their names to the Secretary of State's office for consideration for 11 seats on the east bank board and seven seats for the west bank board. The east bank board initially also included representatives for Tangipahoa and St. Tammany parishes, but they were stripped from the regional authority several years later.
Lapeyre served as chair of the two nominating committees over nearly two decades, in part because his assistants at Laitram helped keep track of the complicated nomination process and coordinated meetings.
More important, observers say, was Lapeyre's success in working with the committees to assure qualified candidates were available, even after the successful rebuilding of today's modern levee systems on both sides of the river have resulted in less interest in individuals applying for board seats.
"We’ve had some terrific people volunteer," Lapeyre said. "We also have made a ton of impact in terms of the design. The Corps paid attention because of the confidence and focus these people bring to flood protection."
Barry Erwin, president of CABL, said his organization would look to Lapeyre for assistance in choosing his successor on the committees.
"He helped to make sure these levee authorities were as apolitical or non-political as they could be. Our goal is for that to continue, and that's what the people in the New Orleans area want and expect," he said. "To the degree that we have a role in the nominating process, that's our goal."
Frierson also supports replacing Lapeyre with someone who will continue to ensure independence and expertise in new authority board members.
"We should avoid experimenting with the lives, property, or our region's future by reducing the independent, local oversight that brought focus, integrity, competence to flood protection that is functioning well and that is consistently improving," Frierson said. "I hope people will heed the wisdom in Jay's approach."