We all must acknowledge that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the August Flooding makes us painfully Aware of the vulnerability of our systems. We need to refine and enhance our existing infrastructure, identify gaps in our status quo and build new infrastructure needed for the future.

Proverbs 29: 18 “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” I feel it is incumbent upon us as citizens and our elected leadership of our communities/parish, to mobilize the collective wisdom, experience, energy, and expertise of business and community leaders to develop and support a plan that deals with the drainage and flooding issues in Iberia Parish.

The Coastal Protection Restoration Authority, a state entity with authority to articulate a clear statement of priorities and to focus development and implementation efforts to achieve comprehensive coastal protection for Louisiana, has developed the 2012 Coastal Master Plan. The Plan and additional resources can be found on their web site. http://coastal.la.gov/.

Our local officials in response to the devastation across Louisiana for the 2005 Hurricane season created the Iberia Parish Hurricane Flood Protection District Advisory Committee in August of 2006. This Advisory Committee was the beginning of what would become the Iberia Parish Levee, Hurricane and Conservation District in 2010. The purpose was to develop a flood protection system for Iberia Parish, construct and maintain those protection systems, and enforce rules and regulation regarding the Protection systems.

The Levee District has developed a Draft Plan that identifies the levee systems specification, includes preliminary engineering, cost estimations and many other details while still noting it in not a final document. The Draft Plan does give us a solid starting point to work with CPRA to figure out how to implement a parishwide protection and restoration system in the most efficient and beneficial way. As you can see a lot of work has been done to get us to a point where now we have a decision to make as a community. Do we continue to move forward and protect our community for the future unknowns or do we just look at ourselves and say this does not pertain to me and do nothing?

I ask each of you to vote “Yes” on Nov. 18 for the means to continue to move Iberia Parish forward?

Joey Zagar

New Iberia