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I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth B Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

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And here in New Orleans, you can actually get your water tested for very easily.

An update on Louisiana's water.

Those security individuals are going to be looking at things on your network to see if those anomalies are happening and then stop it before it gets out of hand.

Cybersecurity breached in several parishes.

Those renewing in January saw that 63% increase.

The commissioners insurance plan faces doubters, but the federal pandemic aid is sort of running out at this point.

Pass close.

Watch one spending the costs to keep the lights on is going up yet again.

It is.

Entergy this week got approval from the Public Service Commission to build customers one and a half billion dollars over 15 years.

The new cost would amount to about $5.50 a month on an average sized home.

Of course, that depends on how big or small your house is.

And of course, this is not the first one, remember?

This is on top of a $3.2 billion plan the PSC approved that already had bills going up.

So you're going to see a lot more on your bill coming up soon.

And now to other news across the state.

The price of eggs continues to amaze everybody.

We stopped at one Baton Rouge grocery store and found a dozen eggs costing $4.99 and $5.29.

The first week of the new year, 3.90 $0.08 a dozen was the norm for Louisiana.

And when my prices start to come down, it's still several months away.

Laying hens wiped out by the bird flu first have to repopulate.

And at 18 and 22 weeks old should begin producing eggs.

We were among the first to lay down a timeline with Commissioner of Agriculture Mike Strain.

Two weeks ago.

We also checked gas prices, and what we found driving around is right in line with Louisiana's average $2.79 to $2.99 a gallon.

That's about $0.20 lower a gallon than a month ago.

And of course, the cost varies depending on where you look.

After weeks of uncertainty and chaos.

Mardi Gras is back to normal.

Maybe all crews should be able to resume their traditional parade routes, according to Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office.

Deputies will pour in from all over the state to cover each parade.

Law enforcement who volunteer will receive $50 an hour in order that Tuesday they'll get $75 an hour.

This plan has been in the works since Mayor Cantrell announced that the parade crews could stay on their traditional courses if they had enough law enforcement to secure the route.

And the legislature has been hotly debating whether to hold a special session in February to address the insurance crisis.

Some say it's just too expensive.

Commissioner Jim Donelon explained to me why it's so important.

Commissioner Donlin For anyone who thought that we would be on the rebound of the insurance industry and for people who were hit hard, that hasn't happened yet, has not at all.

We're still at the peak of the crisis and it's only getting worse on a daily basis because those folks who are now in citizens are a state market of last resort, 120,000 of them.

Just this month, January starting started feeling the pain of the 63% rate increase that I had to approve under the law for that state sponsored program January one.

Those renewing in January saw that 63% increase and 10,000 of them each month will see that 63% increase as they renew.

So it's hitting people, people who who can't afford that anyway.

But who it's difficult to afford that in any case.

So that's hitting people.

So you've got that time element there.

And you also have hurricane season coming.

And the whole purpose of the incentive program is to get more companies in, to relieve the pressure on on citizens and also to prevent their use from exacerbating the problem of our safety net.

The Louisiana Insurance Guaranty Association and those companies, small regional State Farm and Allstate and Liberty Mutual, they're not coming for grant money from the state.

They have more business than they want in all coastal states.

So it's the small regional companies that we've been dependent on since Katrina that need to reinsure their risk through the international reinsurance marketplace, two thirds of which is located offshore.

Zurich, Bermuda, London, etc..

So we spread our significant coastal exposure actually around the world through that reinsurance market.

So if we're in a football game, this insurance game right now, what quarter are we in?

We're in the third quarter.

Okay.

We're trying to get the program in place to attract these companies, eight or nine of which are knocking on our door right now, wanting to know the latest on whether we're going to have a special session to fund the program or not.

And they need to get that information and get that money to to prove it before they go to Zurich or London or Bermuda and buy their reinsurance, effective May 31st for the next hurricane season.

It since we're in the third quarter, we don't know the outcome yet.

Do it.

No question about it.

It's in doubt.

Certainly it's truly, truly in doubt.

And it's critical.

Literally thousands of folks, hardworking folks that are are trying to make a living in and to build their biggest asset.

Their home is part of their their their wealth.

And they're indeed Georgia.

Of losing those homes if they have to buy insurance at 63% higher than they're paying right now.

I was reminded by my insurance agent recently when I mentioned of a claim that might happen and I've never had a claim before for some roof damage.

My deductibles, $5,000.

And I thought, well, that's higher.

And he said, you're lucky to even have one at that point.

40% of the policies in Louisiana have a 5% named storm deductible.

Typical home is insured for $200,000.

That's $10,000 deductible for wind and hail or hurricane or named storm.

Different companies call it different things.

But a lot of the blue roofs that we see all around town are because of that high deductible that folks can't meet.

So in this time frame of getting this work done in a special session, how quickly can that be accomplished?

If we do what we are hoping to do, and I've spoken to the governor, I've spoken to the speaker and the president of the Senate about it.

A special session of limited duration.

One week after February 1st, we can in February get the bill signed.

By February 15th, we can be putting money in the hands of these eight companies or nine companies by the middle of March, and they can be going to the reinsurance marketplace, telling them what their new book of business is, what their need for coverage is, and then be selling policies in competition with citizens by May 1st, April 15th, May 1st.

And there's one other thing, Florida, what's happening there or or has happened there is something that we have to look at and is similar in some ways.

Absolutely.

But that's for the regular session.

That's not for the immediate need for the crisis to to address the the critical situation that so many folks are facing.

But Florida fixed a badly broken system so that we don't have as much to fix.

There are some things we'd like to do in that session, but theirs was impacting our market even before Laura Delta Zeta any and because many of those small companies that we attracted including the one that insured my home for the past ten years, were being taken down into insolvency by the dysfunction in the Florida market, even without hurricanes over there.

That's before they had in the.

The new all time record holder insured loss hurricane finally replacing Katrina as the most expensive of all time.

Well, people are waiting to find out what happens.

They're hanging on this and it's really important.

And you're at the helm of it.

Thank you.

I, I welcome the opportunity to serve.

And never before in my career has it been as challenging but as important as this is.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This year, already around 30 parishes were hit by a cyberattack.

This particular one began around Christmas time and spread to different government agencies around the nation.

Dozens of parishes in Louisiana have reported attacks and they're clerk of court offices.

I spoke with Carlo McDonald and IT expert.

He told us all about these hacks and other things about cybersecurity in Louisiana.

So first, let's talk about the amount of time it took for this particular breach to get going.

It started somewhere around Christmas time and then after the New Years, whenever agencies in Louisiana started to notice that there was a problem.

Is this a normal amount of time for a cybersecurity hack?

Yes, typically, especially ransomware attacks they'll bill the hackers will get into the network and take their time learning about the network where all the critical data that where is the confidential information.

Once they learn that and it could take a month could take I've seen five or six months of them in a network.

And once that they know where that's at, they'll then start the ransomware attack, which starts encrypting everything.

And that's when you start seeing things go on.

So I don't know all the details on the hack, but I'm going to guess that they were in there probably for a little while and then after that initiated the ransomware.

So there's no way to detect when these people are in there, whenever they're just learning about this information.

Yeah, there is.

If you put security software into your network more than the standard stuff, you know, there's EDR, which is endpoint detection and response software that you should have on all your systems.

You should have a cyber operations center kind of watching.

And I know that the small midsize companies are probably going well, that's too expensive.

But now that we've gotten those costs down so that any business really can afford to have somebody keeping an eye on things and, you know, you should be looking those security individuals are going to be looking at things on your network to see if those anomalies are happening and then stop it before it gets out of hand.

So in Louisiana, I mean, it seems like we've been hearing a lot about cybersecurity attacks for, I want to say, about four years since 2019 when they had that big breach at the DMV.

Right.

Is Louisiana common place for cybersecurity attacks?

Are we up to date?

Now, Louisiana is not alone.

Really?

We saw a big rash of ransomware attacks about three or four years ago.

Louisiana, with the government saw a lot of that as well.

And I think it kind of woke everybody up to upgrade your systems, your software, your hardware.

You know, we tend to think that if it's not broke, don't fix it, let it run.

But you really have to keep equipment up to date every 3 to 5 years and look at that.

Talk to your i.t.

Group and get those things upgraded.

And i think people have learned from that.

So we're seeing less and less of that type of ransomware attack, but we're seeing more of stealing your data type of attacks.

And, you know, we can talk about that in a little bit and give you more details on that.

I know.

I want to hear the details now.

I mean, it seems like you can't afford to to wait around until these cyber attacks happen.

I mean, what are the new methods that they're using?

So because people have learned about ransomware attacks and they've been upgrading their equipment and their software and they're doing backups offsite into the cloud.

So they feel like, well, if I get ransomware attack, I can just go ahead and restore my data and tell the hacker or the bad actor that, you know, Hey, I'm not paying you.

The problem with that today is with ransomware attacks, if your stuff gets encrypted by that time, they've already taken most of your data off your network.

And the reason behind that is because they lost that leverage they used to have when you didn't have any backups.

So now they have leverage with your data.

So they're going to tell you, oh, you're not going to pay.

Well, I'm going to release all your public information or your information out to the dark web.

And that's a scary thought for some of the stuff like Banks, Hospitals, Clerk of Courts.

These are lots of private information on these types of networks that they know if they can get that, that they have leverage on you.

Right.

And I mean, I think it's important to remember that these are real people.

It's not just a computer that's going around hacking people.

So that means that as we're learning how to protect ourselves, they're learning how to attack us.

Oh, yeah, it's a never ending change.

And, you know, there's a lot of people used to have their emails hacked.

And so, you know, your I.T.

guy said, oh, you need to have multifactor authentication put on it where you get a code to your phone that says who you are.

Right.

Everybody has that today.

Guess what?

They've worked around that.

And in January this year, we've seen some of our customers where that's happened.

And it starts with a phishing email that you enter your email address and your password, and then the hacker actually watches that process and they can take that information and bypass that multi-factor authentication process where it goes to your phone.

So they can just log in with your email address and password again.

Yeah, it's.

It's terrifying, but.

There are ways to protect against that.

And I mentioned earlier, they need our software having a security group, watching your network and watching your users.

Unfortunately, you know, we can protect against the network side, but but a user is going to answer that phishing email.

They're going to click on that link.

And you try to train everybody not to do that through training, phishing, training and phishing exercises.

But at the end of the day, you still have that one user that gives that information out.

And unfortunately, that's how they'll get in.

Right.

So it just seems like this is kind of an inevitable part of life with technology at this point.

Yeah, there really isn't any way around not having somebody watching your systems 24 seven for security issues.

The cost is it's cost effective now.

Prices come down considerably.

Big corporations aren't the only ones that can have a security operation center.

And everybody really needs to look at that.

And if you're a smaller company, maybe you have five employees, there's still things that you can load and have people watch your stuff.

And that's the EDR software I mentioned endpoint detection and response.

They actually have a level above that which actually has those security engineers watching your computer.

So if you do accidentally go to that phishing page, they'll get an alert and you get an email, Hey, we noticed you went to the site and then that'll stop them from getting in.

So there's definitely things you can do.

So the bottom line is just to make sure that you keep all of your security systems up to date.

And as the technology advances, you need to be advancing, too.

Absolutely.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for coming in.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Public Affairs Research Council this week released a commentary about the upcoming legislative session and the budget.

And the person who wrote that commentary is Melinda Dillon, the research director of PA and the purpose of this was to give legislators just a reminder, a heads up of where we are, which is flush with cash at the moment, but we won't be.

That way always.

Right.

And I mean, it was also just to let the public know how much money is out there.

I mean, we're talking about some fairly significant sums.

They have a $727 million surplus from the last budget year.

They have $925 million from the current budget year that they didn't spend that better than expected.

Tax collections came in and then they are going to build the budget for next year when they come in to the regular session in April.

And but the federal pandemic aid is sort of running out at this point.

There is a giant fiscal cliff on the horizon in the next term.

So we just want them to start thinking about the broader implications of what's coming down the line and just being smart in how they prepare for it.

So in this session or immediately, what is something that you would be happy seeing happen?

Well, we'll say like, let's give the legislature a little bit of credit.

The governor and the legislature have done some smart things with the short term money they have from past perspective.

We don't want them to increase the size of the budget so that ongoing regular expenses that they have to pay in the out years become a real problem when they start losing revenue because in mid 2025 there's a temporary state sales tax point four or 5% that was enacted several years ago now falls off the books.

So if they don't renew it and we have no idea what they're going to do and quite frankly PA has no position on whether they renew the tax or not.

But if they're not going to renew the tax and there are a lot of legislators who are running for reelection who don't want to, we think they should make sure that they're not growing the budget any further to worsen the shortfall when it comes later down the road, and that they should be doing some smart investments now with the money they do have.

So when they have this shortfall on the horizon, it doesn't create nearly as big a problem as it could.

There was some drama about that sales tax even passing to begin with.

But what a good thing that it did, right?

Well, so much drama.

I mean, it took them almost an entire term in office.

When Governor John Bel Edwards first took office, it took almost his entire first term for them to stabilize the budget situation that they inherited from the Jindal administration.

And so we don't want to see them get into that cycle of problems again.

So, you know, we want them to use short term money in these these temporary surpluses and short term cash that they have for short term expenses.

But you could do things like pay down debt.

The state has a ton of debts that need to get paid.

Right.

You can pay those down.

So those obligations aren't in the next term, which means they have less that they have to worry about paying later down the road.

You can make investments in water and sewage repairs.

The legislature has done a bunch of that already.

We have a lot of needs.

You can who doesn't think we need roads and bridges to be fixed, you know, expanded new bridges.

All of those things are smart uses of one time dollars on a on, you know, important projects, but things that aren't going to be perpetual expenses down the line.

And a lot of that money is taken care of because it came from the Biden plan, the bipartisan plan, the infrastructure plan.

You mentioned water, though.

A recent rating came out of how bad water systems are in Louisiana.

I don't know where you begin to try and fix that, but it needs to be fixed.

And that's the problem.

I mean, you're talking about we have, you know, a few billion dollars in in needed repairs and maintenance to water and sewer systems.

We have a $15 billion backlog in road and bridge repair.

Right.

The congressional bipartisan infrastructure bill is not going to address all of that.

We have billions of dollars in backlogs of college building repairs that are needed in state building repairs.

You know, there are so many things, coastal restoration, we don't.

Get that quickly.

That's right.

Yeah, well, I mean, we don't want the state to wash away.

There are so many ways you can spend this money smartly without increasing your expenses down the line while doing real good for the state.

So those are the things that concern you.

What would you expect to see happen?

The one thing I would say is PA's has had some issues over the years with the fact that the legislature wastes some of this money on these parochial pet projects in their districts back home that clearly don't represent state priorities.

So we hope they don't do a lot of that.

But it does seem that so far the plan that has been laid out and the discussions that are ongoing are pretty, pretty in line with what we're recommending.

The governor's budget proposal is supposed to be released to the legislature on February 17th.

So we'll get a better sense then of where he's going and what the legislature wants to do.

And then you may come back with another commentary, right?

Oh, absolutely.

Right.

And then you'll be right back here.

Exactly.

Well, thanks so much.

Thank you.

Good to see you.

P farce is the most pervasive chemical compound you've likely never heard of.

But according to experts, it's everywhere, including our water.

We first told you about this chemical in an interview with the Water Collaborative last summer.

Now the organization has compiled a report revealing exactly what it is and where to find it.

Take a look.

Drinking water is colorless, odorless and tasteless.

It's almost impossible to detect what we're really consuming.

And lately that's been called into question over.

Residents of Jackson, Mississippi, have gone without safe drinking water for weeks and over nearly 40 million people across seven states as well as Mexico, rely on the Colorado River basin.

As of now, its reservoirs Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are both below 30% full and over again.

When you say Have you heard of Pass?

Most people shake their heads.

I am pleasantly surprised when we started this project early in 2022.

A lot of people said, I don't know what that is.

Now we're finding there's a lot more about it in the media.

So when you ask people, have you heard of fast food?

People are like, you know, I think I have heard of that.

Actually, pee fast is short for per and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

It's a virtually indestructible chemical compound used to make things last longer.

A scientist created them in 1938 and they've been dubbed the Forever Chemical because they take centuries to break down.

Not to mention, they're everywhere.

You can find them in food, packaging, dental floss, shampoo bottles, trash bags everywhere.

Any time we wash our dishes, wash our clothes, all of that runs out into our wastewater treatment systems.

And it can't be filtered out as the current technology that most wastewater utilities have does not filter out pee fast.

So then it goes right back into our environment.

And in some cases are drinking water, which is where the Water Collaborative comes in.

This is a nonprofit that researches Louisiana's water systems.

They also tested for understudied substances, pee fast falls directly in that category because it's not regulated and the chemicals are kind of a mystery.

So walk me through the actual process of testing.

What do you send people out with how they test and how long does it take to get the results back?

One, we use pace analytical based out of Saint Rose, and what they do is we have the testing kits and we actually bring those testing kits to the water sites we test for.

They also tested for soil as well.

And then in both of those cases, they bring those back to Saint Rose and they give us the results.

So it's actually a quite simple process.

In fact, here in New Orleans, you can actually get your water tested for very easily.

The collaborative researchers tested water at 31 sites.

Five of them contained PFAS chemicals.

It was heavily concentrated.

And Cathy Parish and Saint James Parish.

The fact that we found levels in the Mississippi River where people get their drinking water from and we found those levels over 200,000 times the recommended safe drinking water levels is is really, really significant in and of itself.

We don't know what kind of health effects that might cause.

Water utilities, through no fault of their own, don't have the technology, most of them to be able to filter this stuff out.

There are no federal or state regulations around this currently.

There may be people studying this, but you don't have to add it to a consumer confidence report if it is being studied.

But it's hard to know exactly what the health risks are because the chemical is so understudied.

Can you tell me, are there any health risks associated with it?

There are health risks associated with p pfas chemicals.

So with p pfas chemicals, it's found in about 97% of Americans blood.

And the health effects are still being studied with epidemiological studies.

It does take quite some time to study because the human body is very complex.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published an article linking P Fast with weakened immune systems, fetal development issues and kidney problems.

But the research is still pretty new.

There's lots to understand.

One of the biggest epidemiological studies in this country was actually done with P fas being the main center of the study.

Back in the early 2000, I believe it was.

So this isn't new.

This isn't new.

This P fact has been around for over 50 years.

Louisiana's government agencies are monitoring the levels in the water and how they affect us.

Last year, the Department of Health announced that the EPA would grant $50 billion to the agency's Drinking Water Revolving Loan Fund, which focuses on three categories, including the Emerging Contaminants Fund.

Lowering the level of typhus in some Louisiana waterways is part of the mission, though the agency did say the amount of the chemical compound isn't an immediate threat to residents.

So it's been really important for us to gather that data and share that data with anybody that we can and say, hey, here's what's out here.

The EPA hasn't issued any regulations, but they have issued guidelines on how to address fats and waterways nationwide.

That happened last year.

And if you're at home and you're wondering what you can do to limit your intake, you can use a water filter.

It won't completely eliminate the compound, but it can reduce it.

And everyone, that is our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything.

Help at any time, wherever you are with our lab.

You can catch LBB News and Public Affairs shows as well as other Louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years.

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For everyone here at Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

I'm Andre Morelli, and I'm kerosene.

Until next time, that's the state or at every day I go to work for Entergy.

I know customers are counting on me.

So Entergy is investing millions of dollars to keep the lights on and installing new technology to prevent outages before they happen.

Together, together, together.

We power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth Zeigler Foundation and the Zeigler Art Museum, located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.