Al Levron, “I Remember…”: Louisiana Reflections and Stories of the Past

00:00 Make sure we're recording. And here we are. Okay. Hi, and thank you for coming. My name is Jennifer Abraham Kramer, and I'm with the T. Harry Williams center for Oral History with LSU library special collections. And we're working with CWPPRA on this project that Susan just explained to you. So I am with Al Levron, and it is November 14, 2013, and we're at Conoco Phillips office in Houma, Louisiana. So would you please state your full name and when and where you were born?

00:29 And. Sure. My name is Al James Levron I was born in 1955 in the city of Houma, Louisiana.

00:36 So you've lived here all your life?

00:38 I have. In the same house, in fact, 58 years. Never moved? Yes.

00:44 So can you share with us, like, a childhood memory that connects you to the wetlands or coastal Louisiana?

00:52 Sure. My parents are both. My mother is now 94 years old. She's still alive. But both of my parents were born and raised in Pointe-aux-Chenes Louisiana. It was an agrarian type situation. My father grew up in a family of 13. His entire family members were trappers and hunters and fishers. In fact, he was exempt from the war effort, world war two effort, because he was a farmer, and he was involved in that activity. And growing up, while my family, my parents moved away from Pointe-aux-Chenes in probably the 1930s. They followed the nutra, the fur trade. A lot of the people in the Pointe-aux-Chenes area moved over to Barataria Bay in the Lafitte area. And my father used to actually construct tranassas. That was one of his jobs with the company he worked for. And he was also a trapper. And then ultimately, after the fur trade kind of played out, they moved back to Terrebone Parish, Tahoma. But the connection to Pointe-aux-Chenes was always there. And again, when I was a kid, we had a camp on Bayou Jean Lacroix, which is right near Lake Shan. And we used to go there probably every weekend fishing and things of that. Again, when I was a very young child, one of the interesting things, my father, being from the old school, he actually built his own boat. He put his own very small four stroke engine, inboard engine in there. And I remember leaving from the landing and going to the camp with his very small putt putt boat, as I called it. And then these other more modern outboard motors would pass us up. And it was so frustrating to me as a child, taking so long to get to the camp. But once we got there, you know, it was always good fishing. My father would crawl. My mother, as it turns out was a good shot. She used to take the 22 and shoot what she called marchant and cook right off the dock and then cook march hen for lunch.

03:05 So why are Louisianas wetlands important to you?

03:11 Well, certainly as my vocation, I am the parish manager of terrible and parish government. I also serve as the chairman of the Barataria Terrebone national estuary program. So it certainly is very important to me in terms of the culture. Our economy historically was based on oil and gas in the marshes, the fisheries, and now, more and more, we're seeing their importance to hurricane protection. And one of my roles is I'm intimately involved in our hurricane levee construction project. So we're attempting to build these levees to protect the citizenry. But there's no marsh on the outside, so finding that fine line and of building a levee that can be resilient and stay there for generations is quite a task.

04:05 Yes, it is. Thank you so much. And so, in your opinion, what do we stand to lose without coastal restoration?

04:11 Well, in terms of terrebone parish in home Louisiana, I think we stand to lose the entire economy, the entire community as we know it has terrebone parish. I mean, you're looking at sea level rise of, you know, upwards to two to 3ft over 100 years, land loss subsiding. I mean, the coast is literally at the city limits of the city of Houma. We are a bedroom community to the oil and gas industry. So these activities are fit hand in glove and without the coast, without a secure and resilient coast. Again, looking down the line, I don't see Terrebone or the city of Houma being a viable community in 100 years without coastal restoration.

05:02 So this is a related question, but why? What do you think you, what do you think that the rest of Louisiana, and maybe even the rest of America, needs to know about wetland pressure and wetlands and coastal restoration?

05:20 Well, it's a. They do have a stake in this, and that's obviously something that we've attempted to reach out and get the people to understand that message. But without Louisiana, so goes the oil and gas industry, so goes the price of fuel, so goes, you know, let them freeze in the northeast, so to speak. So I think everyone has a stake in this. The fisheries, the abundance of fisheries, the fresh fish, the fresh shrimp. That may seem to be a small area. Oh, I can go get other fish. But again, I think it's what we all expect in America, to have fresh seafood, reliable, cheap energy, and we fulfill that goal. This is Susan Testroet Bergeron outreach. Al, let's talk about the next generation. What do you want to tell the next generation about coastal Louisiana and coastal restoration? Well, if I can be very frank, you know, sometimes my coworkers call me doctor. No, I'm typically pessimistic, unless someone can prove otherwise. And my job and my profession is to promote the continued restoration. But personally, I don't have a whole high degree of. Of confidence that we're going to succeed in this effort, unfortunately, and again, I'm being very frank, my children, I'm suggesting that for the long term, they look elsewhere to live. And that's the reality of our situation. I'm hoping I'm wrong. I'm going to continue to promote the advancement of the projects. I just don't have a real good vibe that is going to work out.

07:17 So how did you get involved in coastal restoration?

07:21 That's an interesting thing. By happenstance, actually. For years, I was the director of our environmental program here in Terrebone, primarily our wastewater program. We were building sewer plants and things, and in that profession, and Susan's probably heard this story before, but I'll relate it, trying to promote terrible parish sewer system, I was actively reviewing federal regulations as they were being drafted. And one day in 1986, I happened to run across that the Clean Water act was up for reauthorization, and there was an opportunity to propose areas to be considered for the national estuary program. And I actually did. Again, I was sitting on an island on this thing. I remember calling Carrie St. Pay, who was a friend of mine at the time. I said, hey, I got a great idea. We're going to get an act of Congress to create terrebone Parish as a national estuary program. He thought I was nuts, so I was very young and naive. I didn't know what I could or couldn't do. So, in fact, I scheduled a meeting with then I, newly elected Senator John Breaux. He had not even taken his office yet. He was in Senator Bennett Johnston's old office. And I met with him, and I presented the concept to him, and he was enlightened. And within a few weeks, I was getting a call from doctor Don Bosch, from Lumcon, and apparently, the seed of the idea, I don't know if it was only me, but it just, again, the timeliness of it. Lumcon was integrated and involved in the concept of developing this comprehensive plan to submit a proposal to the president, and in fact, ultimately Barataria. The project that I envisioned was. I was very self serving, was terrible in Paris. The people who had a much better understanding of this thought that the terrebone Barataria complex was a better fit. And, in fact, the proposal was Baratarian terrebone, which was ultimately approved by the governor and accepted by EPA and now is one of the 19 national estuary programs. So from water quality, where I started, obviously, when we got into the development of the proposal, it became obvious that hydrologic modification, land loss, was the lunch pin to the whole issue. And then hence, I started moving more into interest in the restoration end.

10:15 Thank you. Do you have any other questions you'd like to ask?

10:17 No, I'm glad you told us.

10:20 Is there anything you'd like to add?

10:21 No. Thank you so much for your time.

10:22 Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it.

10:25 Thanks.

10:25 All right. Thank you.

10:27 Sure. That was very good. We'll be, we'll be stealing some of those.