New Orleans levee board members quit as Jeff Landry's adviser pursues controversial changes

Reprinted from the Times Picayune
By ALEX LUBBEN | Staff writer
Mar 18, 2025

Three members of a board overseeing New Orleans area flood protection have resigned in protest over controversial changes being pursued by an adviser to Gov. Jeff Landry, who critics say risks weakening reforms put in place following Hurricane Katrina. The resignations, effective Monday, leave the board at risk of being paralyzed as storm season approaches. In order to act, the board needs a five-member quorum. With the three members’ resignations, the board is left with only six members. At the same time, their departures may allow Landry's administration to replace them with board members less likely to oppose changes being sought, which include giving the governor more power over board appointments. The agency, officially known as the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, oversees a complex system of levees and pumps rebuilt in the wake of Katrina on the New Orleans area's east bank.

The letter was signed jointly by board members Roy Arrigo, Thomas Fierke, and William Settoon. It is addressed not to Roy Carubba, the president of the board, but to Shane Guidry, Landry’s informal adviser in New Orleans, who is not on the levee authority’s board but has been overseeing reforms at the agency. It alleges the agency's new leadership had diminished “morale, readiness and focus on flood protection.” Roy Carubba, president of Carubba Engineering, was appointed to the board of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East and named its president in early October by Gov. Jeff Landry. (Flood Protection Authority) Guidry thanked the departing board members for their service. He also stressed that, under his guidance, the agency was “moving in a better direction to make sure that all flood control assets are maintained properly, which they haven’t been, and working properly, which they haven’t been,” though neither Guidry nor Carubba has provided any evidence that the city’s flood control infrastructure is faulty. Carubba and Guidry also strongly rebutted the departing board members’ allegations that morale at the agency had diminished. Guidry said he’d met with 75 levee authority employees in January, and “they expressed their satisfaction and gratitude” for the changes being carried out by Carubba and the agency’s chief of police, Joshua Rondeno. Carubba stressed that “morale is as high as it’s ever been.” Shane Guidry of Harvey Gulf Marine in his downtown New Orleans office on Thursday, August 1, 2024. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune) Chris Granger Arrigo, one of the resigning board members, said he felt that the board had been distracted by political infighting and was no longer focused on flood protection. “Why am I resigning? I’m concerned that we’re painting a picture to the public that you’ve got these nine independent people providing oversight on their flood protection, and it just isn’t so,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

Roy Arrigo was selected by Gov. John Bel Edwards to sit on the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East board in 2021. (Photo courtesy of Roy Arrigo) Photo courtesy of Roy Arrigo In the resignation letter, the departing board members also emphasized their belief that the agency should “adhere to the statutory requirements for the regional director, and the current post-Katrina driven nominating protocol,” a direct rebuttal to changes at the levee authority that Guidry and Carubba have been advocating for. After Landry appointed Carubba to lead the levee authority’s board, Carubba sought to assign duties that have previously been carried out by the regional director to Rondeno, the police chief. The regional director is required by law to have either engineering or professional experience that Rondeno does not have. The role of the agency’s police force has become a point of tension since Carubba took over. The board president has emphasized at board meetings that the governor had given him a mandate that included expanding the role of the agency’s cops. Other board members have maintained that the sole focus of the levee authority should be flood protection. Thomas Fierke. Lakefront Management Authority photo Guidry has also said that he plans to support legislation that would scrap the levee authority’s nominating committee, the body tasked with putting forward potential board members for the approval of the governor and legislature. Sen. Patrick Connick (R-Marrero) previously said he plans to introduce a bill that would change the nominating process during the upcoming legislative session. That committee was a central pillar of post-Katrina reforms to the New Orleans–area levee boards, designed to give oversight on the nominating process to engineers and good-government groups rather than politicians. Guidry has characterized the committee as unelected and unaccountable.
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William Settoon Connick said on Tuesday that he was focused on gathering information about the board, its history and its operations. “There’s a lot going on and we’ve got to sort it out,” he said. “The ultimate goal is levee protection.” But those who supported the post-Katrina reforms strongly oppose scrapping the nominating committee, which they say is designed to insulate the levee authority from politics. Rebecca Mowbray, the president and CEO of the New Orleans-based Bureau of Governmental Research, expressed concern that the levee board was understaffed with hurricane season approaching. “Moreover, the unsubstantiated accusations about the region’s flood control infrastructure need to stop,” she added. “If there’s a problem, the public (and SLFPAE taxpayers) needs to know what it is.” Ruthie Frierson, who founded Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans, a group that advocated for levee board reform after Katrina, expressed concern about members of the board resigning because “they feel they cannot fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to focus on flood protection.” “The citizens of Southeast Louisiana should be concerned about the lack of independent oversight and responsibility for flood protection,” she said.