U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Recovery and Environmental Resilience Efforts on the Occasion of the 10th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina Fact Sheet

•   Investing in Innovation and Economic Growth of the Gulf Region and Communities:  The Obama Administration and the Department of Commerce have invested $178 million to support economic development opportunities and increase assistance to entrepreneurs in high-growth, high-wage industries in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Investments have supported workforce development partnerships, business development services, technology transfer activities, and the expansion of industries that rebuild wetlands, implement water management strategies, promote clean technologies, and perform other risk mitigation activities.
  • ​​Successful investments in Gulf regional entrepreneurship including The Idea Village, New Orleans Business Alliance, and New Orleans BioInnovation Center. The investments in Idea Village to support entrepreneurship and increase assistance to entrepreneurs in high-growth, high-wage industries in New Orleans. Investments in New Orleans BioInnovation support the expansion of industries that rebuild wetlands, implement water management strategies, promote clean technologies, and perform other risk mitigation activities in southeastern Louisiana. This project assists communities in mitigating the effects of disasters, and recovering and becoming more resilient by implementing workforce development partnerships, business development services, technology transfer activities, and regional marketing and branding activities.
  • The Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council, chaired by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, released the draft Initial Funded Priorities List (FPL) totaling approximately $183 million. Using funds from the settlement with Transocean Deepwater Inc. for initial investments, the Council is seeking to address critical needs of ten key watersheds across the Gulf to help restore the region’s ecosystem and strengthen economic resilience.  Projects and programs in the draft list will help to revitalize the region through skills training for local communities, improvements in water quality, and habitat restoration critical to juvenile fish and endangered birds and sea turtles.

•   Building Prepared and Resilient Gulf Communities: The Obama Administration and the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have invested significant funds to increase the resilience of Gulf communities and their environment.

• Designing hurricane-resistant buildings– Commerce’s National Institute of Standards worked with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center and the University of Florida, to develop a methodology for calculating the wind and storm surge hazards jointly for structural design purposes. The methodology is now a widely accepted concept for designing coastal structures to resist hurricane hazards.
• Community resilience: This fall, NIST plans to publish the final Community Resilience Planning Guide for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems. Based on lessons learned from Katrina and subsequent disasters, NIST has developed this guide to be a comprehensive, yet customizable tool that communities can use as they plan and implement measures designed to help them withstand extreme weather and other hazards and to recover efficiently in their aftermath.
• NOAA is providing more than $9 million in coastal resilience grants to enhance coastal communities and to restore coastal habitat. NOAA is providing the money this year -- $5M from NOS and $4M from NOAA Fisheries, to help coastal communities and their managers create on-the-ground projects to make them more resilient to the effects of extreme weather events, climate hazards, and changing ocean conditions.

Since 2005, NOAA has:

• Increased preparedness and resilience in Gulf communities by investing significant funds to increase the resilience of Gulf communities and the environment. In 2010, NOAA established the Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center in Mobile, Ala. to serve as a regional coordination center for federal, state and local emergency managers and partners to help Gulf communities prepare, respond to, and recover from disasters and serve as an emergency operations center during crisis. NOAA has invested heavily in Gulf projects to help make coastal communities more resilient to the effects of extreme weather events, climate hazards, and changing ocean conditions.

• Restored more than 5,200 acres and removed about 65 tons of debris in coastal Louisiana and Mississippi (wetlands, dunes, mud flats, adjacent riparian corridors). Over the last six years, NOAA has been working to rebuild the Barataria Basin barrier island chain, a key 19-mile stretch of barrier shoreline, sponsoring the design of five projects, constructing four barrier islands and restoring more than 1,650 acres. Restoring these wetlands and barrier islands has improved protection for Louisiana's people and property as well as one of America's richest fisheries (speckled trout, red drum).

• Created the Coastal Community Resilience Index Tool to help communities identify vulnerabilities, capitalize on strengths, and assess future impacts of natural disasters. CRIs have been completed in 47 communities across the Gulf of Mexico.

• Developed the Digital Coast website that focuses on helping communities address coastal issues and has become one of the most used resources in the coastal management community.

• NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey is developing an advanced storm surge model to drive total water predictions.  Based on the coastal ocean model, this system provides advanced computations that couple storm surges and tides and dynamically models the ocean’s response as a hurricane tracks across the ocean and crosses inland. An envelope of potential inundation predictions is generated based upon the National Hurricane Center’s forecast.

•   Building a Weather-Ready Nation through Improving Predictions and Forecasts with Technology, Data, and Innovation:  The Obama Administration and the Department of Commerce have made significant advancements in hurricane forecast and storm surge models. Through investments in new weather satellites, with improved technology and instruments, NOAA’s hurricane forecasts are timelier and more accurate for each storm's strength, location and direction. NOAA has also invested in new monitoring stations for storm surge and water levels across the Gulf and developed an advanced storm surge model to provide more accurate water inundation predications as a hurricane tracks across the ocean and crosses inland. These improvements will allow Gulf communities and businesses to better prepare and respond to future storms – protecting infrastructure and property, minimizing economic losses, and protecting our communities and saving lives. 

Since 2005, NOAA has:

• Invested heavily in supercomputers to improve hurricane forecasts. The speed of computing has improved by 60 percent in global models at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. The National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) computer is running 175 times as fast as in 2005 and there will be another upgrade in the fall of 2015.

• Reduced the track error for hurricanes by up to 40 percent. This allows for greater confidence in the forecast and provides a more accurate area for potential evacuations.

• Launched five weather satellites with improved technology and instruments, so that NOAA's forecasts are more timely and more accurate for each storm's strength, location and direction.  Today's 3-day forecasts are as accurate as 2-day forecasts were 10 years ago.  This extra lead time is essential for communities and businesses as they prepare for potential storms.

• Made major advances and upgrades to global models for seasonal and long-range hurricane forecasts.

• Developed the world's first global forecast model to effectively simulate year-to-year changes in hurricane activity. This prototype targets Category 3, 4, and 5 hurricanes months and seasons in advance. Though these hurricanes make up approximately 24 percent of landfalling hurricanes, they account for 85 percent of the damage caused by hurricanes.

• Significantly improved the understanding and representation in our models of how oceans and atmosphere interact with and fuel hurricanes.

• Used models to study how long-term climate change may affect hurricane activity in the future.

• Deployed new technologies to improve forecast models. This year, NOAA is deploying unmanned aircraft and water-craft loaded with sensors to provide better data for operational weather forecast models. NOAA is using NASA's Global Hawk to provide top-to-bottom profiles of hurricanes from 60,000 feet, nearly twice the altitude possible with manned aircraft. The information gathered on these nearly 24 hour flights that can reach the waters off Africa are being put directly into operational forecast models. NOAA is testing whether the Global Hawk can be used to fill gaps in data that may occur due to satellite gaps. 

• Installed "storm-ready" water level stations in the Gulf, including a new permanent station to monitor storm surge on Lake Pontchartrain and five hurricane-hardened water level stations, and implemented a Mobile Bay Storm Surge Network. And, brought online seven new Physical Oceanographic Real-time Systems (PORTS®) offering real-time oceanographic and meteorological information to the Gulf's maritime community.

•   Building a 21^st Century Economy by Increasing Exports and Foreign Direct Investment: The Obama Administration and the Department of Commerce work to expand the Gulf Coast economy through increased exports and foreign direct investment that leads to more and better American jobs.

• The Department’s SelectUSA program, established by President Obama in 2011, has worked to win more than $10 billion in foreign direct investment for Gulf Coast communities.
  • Sasol:  SelectUSA began working with the Louisiana Economic Development team in 2012 to advocate for a major investment by Sasol, a South African energy company. Since then, we have continued to provide ombudsman services to the State of Louisiana and Sasol.  In October 2014, Sasol issued the final investment decision by its Board of Directors on an ethane cracker and derivatives project planned for Southwest Louisiana.  This $8.9 billion investment continues on track, ‎and the firm has made over $1 billion in commitments to contractors.  This project is expected to create 500 direct new jobs, more than 5,000 construction jobs, and thousands of indirect jobs in Louisiana and other parts of the United States. 
  • Incitec Pivot:  A global manufacturer and marketer of commercial explosives and fertilizers headquartered in Australia, Incitec Pivot announced an $850 million investment in Waggaman, Louisiana in 2013.  Construction is underway, and the plant is expected to produce 800,000 metric tons of ammonia annually beginning in late 2016.  During the three-year construction period, approximately 750 jobs will be created.  
  • voestalpine Stahl GmbH:  voestalpine broke ground on a $740 million investment in Corpus Christi, Texas in April 2014.  The plant will have an annual production capacity of two million metric tons of Hot Briquetted Iron, which is a high-grade feedstock for steel.  The project will create approximately 150 direct jobs.
  • Jyoti Americas:  In 2012, Jyoti Americas, a sholly-owned subsidiary of Jyoti Structures in India, completed construction of a facility in Conroe, Texas to manufacture high-voltage transmission towers. 
• To promote U.S. goods and protect Gulf Coast manufacturing jobs, the Department’s three U.S. Export Assistance Centers in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi have supported  more than twenty international trade missions, 80 export outreach and counseling events, and touched more than 560 local businesses. Through these efforts, exports from Gulf Coast have grown more than 77 percent or nearly $126 billion since 2009.