“I just learned they (SLFPA-East) have fired the director of operations and the employee who oversees the 7th Street Canal Pump Station… This is the person who oversees all the floodgates, all the pumps, everything that needs to close and run when the storm comes. I don’t need to remind everyone where we are in the calendar; we are four weeks away from hurricane season.” Blair duQuesnay (Chair, Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans)
Blair duQuesnay joined the Newell Normand show to ring the alarm bell: The entity responsible for protecting New Orleans from flooding during hurricane season is “on fire.”
Following duQuesnay’s interview, current SLFPA-East board member (and former board president) Roy Carubba called in to present his side of the story.
“The people that were let go today — I'm not going to go into the details. I'll leave it to our regional director if he wants to call — were stealing public money from the agency, period. It's documented,” Carubba said.
But there's an issue: The documentation Carubba mentions isn’t public.
“We've heard that there are investigations happening, but there have been no reports from those investigations. So as a member of the public, we can only assume that there is no evidence to back these up,” duQuesnay explains.
“It's been a year and a half of these accusations and allegations,” duQuesnay continues. “If there's evidence, the public needs to know. Otherwise, we have to assume that those are simply allegations. And all of these board members who resigned last year resigned in protest of what was happening with board members who were appointed by Governor Landry, saying that they were going to come in and ‘clean house.’ Yet no evidence has been shown that any of these employees, any of these board members, have done anything that would require them to ‘clean house.’”
Carubba doubled down on his claims that the recent firings are theft-related, but admits the report containing evidence is being held from the public by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill for what he imagines are “political reasons.”
“In March 2025, the attorney general started an investigation into the board. Consequently, some board members resigned in the midst of that investigation,” Carubba states. “There is a 90-plus page report that has been issued to the attorney general's office by a private law firm hired on behalf of the agency through the attorney general's office, which I participated in day-to-day for almost six months. That report is out there. If that report were released by the attorney general, all of these questions you have would magically go away. But it is my opinion — maybe I'm paranoid — that it is being held for political reasons.”
“I have asked ad nauseam when I was the president to have it released. It has not been released… I can’t tell you why it's not being released. I have begged,” Carubba shares.
"Politics has re-entered the business of our flood protection..."
“At best, if they could replace these people, it could take four weeks, and there is no way somebody can learn this huge and complicated engineered system in that amount of time to be ready for flood season,” duQuesnay says. “That’s just the latest about members who have left, been fired, resigned, pushed out, you name it.”
As chair of Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans, duQuesnay oversees the group that helped pass legislation and a constitutional amendment that reformed the levee board after Katrina. She explains that, since the onset of the Landry administration, changes at SLFPA-East have caused swelling concern, and that this past week’s firings are merely the tip of the iceberg.
“When you put all of these actions into a full story, we can only see that politics has re-entered the business of our flood protection. That is what the reforms after Katrina were passed to eliminate. And so the reform still stands in words, but they are not being followed right now, and we should all be concerned as citizens, and we need to ask our lawmakers to do something to start to correct this.”
The conflict started over disagreements about allocating SLFPA funds to the Orleans Levee District Police.
duQuesnay explains that former regional director (Kelli Chandler), “Left after she clashed with the new board president, who Landry appointed, over the increase in the police dept (budgets and salaries).”
Since then, the conflict has only gotten worse.
“We lost our chief engineer, Dr Malay. Anybody in the engineering community will tell you this is one of the smartest individuals; he resigned,” duQuesnay continues. “We've lost the director of maintenance, the director of risk on facility projects, and they let the head of HR go. Notably, shortly after that was when the contract was signed with the chief of police.”
“I cannot stress to you: I don't even know if there is a leader, a head in this organization that remains,” duQuesnay said.
The expansion of the Orleans Levee District Police budget continues to be a concern among board members. Recently, the police Chief signed a contract that, through the next few years, would see his salary expand to $250,000, a sum that would double that of his predecessor.
Critics of Landry’s management of the SLFPA state that the governor habitually appoints board members who lack experience.
Former SLFPA-E board member Debbie Settoon — who recently resigned from the organization following a battery charge, which was later dropped, for allegedly punching the New Orleans Levee District Police Chief Joshua Rondeno outside of a SLFPA board meeting in October 2025 —called into the Newell Normand show to explain her frustration after Landry took over.
“The two presidents who were appointed by Landry had very little experience,” Settoon explained. “They're both people who run their own companies. They don't realize the board has the authority, not them, as the president of the board. And they're not used to running a consensus organization. They're more in tune with command and control.”
“We should not even have half of the police right now that we have, because we only need them during emergencies,” Settoon continues. “And originally, you know, that's not how this board was envisioned, and it has just grown out of control. It's become a monster.”
SLFPA bylaw reform to create next wave of conflict
Currently, the SLFPA is debating a series of bylaw changes, and the outcome could alter the organization’s power dynamic, which could be a good or bad thing, depending on who is being asked.
In one corner, Carubba states that the changes, if passed, represent a return to normalcy.
“Part of the reason we're in the throes of changing the bylaws is because of the corruption that was present with the former board and the way that board — on or about 2022 — manipulated and changed those bylaws so that the board could have more day-to-day control of the agency, which boards are not supposed to do, as you're well aware,” Carubba explains. “We are there for oversight. We are not supposed to be involved in the day-to-day operations of the agencies. Now, why do you think that is? Because it was corrupt. So with that said, we are in the throes of putting these bylaws back to what I would call normal.”
In the other corner, duQuesnay explains that the changes will further concentrate power, resulting in additional firings that will further destabilize the organization on the eve of hurricane season 2026.
“The purpose of those changes is so that the director of engineering can be let go unilaterally by the regional director and the board president without a vote of the board,” she says. “That's what I expect to happen if they pass those bylaw changes at the May 21st meeting.”
With June 1st approaching, the efficacy of an organization born in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for the purpose of better protecting citizens from future storms by consolidating a loose patchwork of over a dozen local levee boards down into two state-run entities is being put to the test.
“We got lucky last year. We didn't have a storm,” said duQuesnay. “And to think that we would get lucky two years in a row is just not a way to operate, and the public needs to be concerned; they need to speak up. They need to call our legislators. There is a bill in the House from Representative Stephanie Hilferty. It calls for the Senate to reconfirm all current board members.”
“The federal government isn't going to fix our levees again because we took our eye off the ball,” she concludes. “This is an existential risk, and everybody needs to wake up. And I would definitely personally ask the governor to do something about this. ”SLFPA board members claim that terminated employees stole “public money from the agency,” but the 90-page investigation report is being withheld
SLFPA board members claim that terminated employees stole “public money from the agency,” but the 90-page investigation report is being withheld
