Full Show 8-11-26: Sewerage & Water Board issues, Saints injuries, and more

Hey, it's the sports junkies. If anybody knows about die-hard sports fans, it's us. We get to live and breathe the excitement of the season all year long, right alongside the most passionate fans out there. For advertisers, that passion matters. It's exactly why sports radio performs for brands. That passion, that excitement and engagement, you don't get that kind of dialed in attention anywhere else. People who listen to sports on the radio via streaming or on sports podcasts are nearly three times more alike. to consider a brand that supports their favorite team. If you're interested in reaching sports fans, we have the playbook for you. Check out our comprehensive e-book, State of Audio, sports fandom. Learn where fans spend their time, why avid fans drive stronger brand results and how categories like beverage, grocery, and quick service restaurants are winning with sports fans on audio. If you want to reach the most valuable sports fans, check out stateofaudio.com. Life can feel overwhelming, but you don't have to go through it alone. On my podcast, From the Heart with Rachel Brathen, I share openly and vulnerably about everything life brings us and what we can learn by living with our hearts a little bit more open. Every Friday, a new episode brings you a new story with topics on self-care, motherhood, healing, and more. You are enough, just the way you are. This podcast is a reminder of that. Follow and listen to From the Heart with Rachel Brathen wherever you get your podcasts. All right, you're going to be hot today, chance for showers as usual, maybe a little bit higher chance than normal, but then it's going to dry up, and it's going to be really, really stupid, crazy hat, hot rather, but what else are you going to do, right? Just go with it. Jeff Palermo joined SNLW.com columnist, Louisiana Network News Director. How you done, Jeff? Hey, I'm doing well, Tommy. How about yourself? I'm okay. What's the story out of Baton Rouge when it comes to LSU football? Well, yesterday we got to hear from Sam Levitt for the first time since he arrived on campus last January, and it really was a joy to hear from him. This kid really appreciating the opportunity that he has. So far, he has fought into everything. that is LSU and everything that's South Louisiana, even the humidity, says he likes how the air feels on his skin. So he's only been dealing with it for a few months, you know, give it a few years, and then you get tired of that pretty quick. But still, great attitude coming into it, shows off his leadership skills, you know, took a bunch of the wide receivers with them to Dallas. where they all stayed in the same Airbnb and practiced together for a few days and trained for a few days. He's 100% healthy. I think we can quit talking to him or asking him about the foot injury. That must have been one big Airbnb. It probably was. And I think it was probably donor or NIL paid for it. Oh, yeah, there you go. They're going to come out of his pocket, that's for sure. So let's talk about what we can expect. from Sam Levitt. What kind of player are we going to see? What kind of quarterback is he going to be, presuming he's 100% healthy? I'm going to go with that. He said he is. Let's go with him. Put that, like you said, behind us. He's 100% healthy. So what can we expect from Sam Levitt?

I think you're going to see a guy that's a mobile quarterback that can run the football. I think he's a guy that could potentially, when it's all said and done, probably run for 300 to 400 yards for you. You know, they just never really had that mobility factor with Garrett Nussmeyer. I think you're getting that with Sam Levitt. I think you're getting a guy that's... got some really good experience. It's already led one team to the college football playoff with Arizona State. The one thing that we've seen in practice so far, and it's very limited, Tommy, as far as what we get to see, is his ability to throw the deep ball. Now, granted, you know, he's heaving the ball down field, and he's hitting wide receivers in stride, but this is just, you know, basically, you know, playing catch in the backyard for some people. Against they are, right? Yeah, right. It's not even seven on seven. There's not much pressure in his face. He's just heaving the ball downfield. But it looks like he's able to, you know, the connect passes downfield. And he's got a wide array of wide receivers. And one of the things he talked about, too, is loves the fact that Trades Green is on his team. And I think that's a guy that he's going to connect with quite a bit. especially in the red zone. I mean, it seems like there's some other guys that he's developing a connection with. Jace Brown, the transfer from Kansas State, Winston Watkins, who's got the experience in this offense being at Old Miss a season ago. Jackson Harrison, we've talked to a little bit about before. So those are some of the guy. I mean, Eugene Wilson is in the mix as well, the transfer wide receiver from Florida. He's developing all that chemistry that he's trying to do. But I think you're looking at a really good quarterback. And, you know, we're still having to wait and see whether, you know, the offensive line is going to be solid. And will they be able to run the ball effectively? But with Lane Kippen's offenses, usually they have success running the football. So when it comes to running, not everybody is Jaden Daniels. That's a generational type thing, right? So if you were to put Garrett Nussmeyer at one end of the spectrum when it comes to running quarterbacks and Jaden Daniels at the other with no disrespect at all to Garrett Nussmeyer, he was hurt for one thing last season and he's not known to be a running quarterback. That's not his thing. But if Garrett were to be a one and Jaden were to be a 10, where would you put Sam? I would probably put him at a six or seven. I think that's kind of what you're looking at with him. I was guessing five. I didn't think seven. Well, and we'll see how much, you know, Lane really wants him to run. But I think Lane likes the guys that can get out of pocket that could take a play where it's starting to break down and still make something of it. And I think that's what you're going to. That's what they want to see out of Sam Levin. And he's a fairly decent-sized quarterback, too, you know, 6-2-21-pound. So once he gets moving, you know, he was clocked at, I think they said, 21 miles an hour when he was running straight lines. So he's got some speed. He can pick him up and put him down pretty quick. And you're getting close to cruise control speed there. All right, Jeff, let's take a break. We'll pick it up. We come back. 621. Traffic now, WWL.

627 Tommy Tucker Carlson, WWL talking to Jeff Palermo, www.com, Louisiana Network News Director about them LSU Tigers. And Jeff, tell me about what's going on in the running back situation. Well, Dylan Jay Jones has been the guy that really has been, you know, he emerged last year during spring football. He's the one from Wisconsin. He's the one from Wisconsin. And, you know, he was a kid coming out of Laurel Merylton out of high school. He was considered one of the top running backs in the country when he committed to Wisconsin. Didn't play much his freshman season. He played last year, played the first seven games of the year and suffered a turf toe injury, only rushed for 300 yards last year. But one of the things that you see out of him, that's a little bit different from Harlem Bari Weiss and Kate and Durham is its size. He's 210 pounds. And Barry and Durham are, you know, Barry's 187. Kate and Durham is 200. So he's a bigger running back. And so I think he's going to be your starter. But Harlem Barry is certainly going to be in the mix in there as well. Again, with Harlem Barry being a – A five-star prospect, the number one running back coming out of the... in the 2025 recruiting class, he's going to be a factor, and I think he can be a factor in the passing game as well. I think you're going to see a bit of a one-two punch between those guys. Caden Durham is still going to be involved in this team. I still think he's going to have a part, and you'll see him get a few carries, and Stacey Gage is in there as well. He's a transfer that came in from Central Florida. To me, it's Dylan Jay Jones, Harlem, Barry, and then you sprinkle in a little bit of Kate and Durham in there as well. I don't know if we talked about this or not, but what's going on at the kicker position? The kicker position, well, interesting on the punter, you got Grant Chadwick, who is a preseason all-SEC selection. I can't remember the last, maybe you've got to go back to Brad Wing the last time there was a preseason all punter, all SEC punter. He's the transfer for Middle Tennessee. He did a nice job last year. And then the field goal kicker that they're looking at that is probably going to be the one that's going to be kicking the field goals for them would be Scott Storsick. So he's a transfer from Arkansas, had a decent season last year. So I would think he's Scott Starzick is probably your guy going into this season as well. Boy, that punter, Grant, what is it?

Chadwick. Sounds like you should come from an Kay Ivey League school, doesn't he? Oh, Grant. Grant Chadwick. How are you? Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate as always. Jeff's got a good article up at odyssey.com, www. www.w.w.L.com. You can find it. LSU quarterback Sam Levitt embraces Louisiana, prepares the lead Tigers, the CFP. And he said he likes the way the humidity feels on his skin, which is odd. We'll talk to Raphael going at you when we come back. about, he's the President of Metropolitan Crime Commission, about violent crime, ankle monitoring, and more right now. Time for WWO First News. 645, quarter till 7, Tommy Tucker Carlson, WWL, on his Tuesday morning, August the 11th, joined by Raphael goinganche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission and our friend. How you know, Raphael? Hi, Tommy, how are you? I am okay, sir. Let's talk about, um, Before we go any further, this whole grand jury thing and the investigation that goes on, what's the next step here? Because I don't think Liz Marl is going to let this go. I don't think she should. And I think ultimately somebody's is ultimately, will we ultimately get to the bottom of this as to how it started or will the proceedings to the grand jury because there's secret, cover that up forever? Tell me how this works out, Raphael. Okay. Well, I mean, my crystal ball is a little hazy right now. But there's a couple of things that we do know. One, that there is an investigation, investigation being conducted by the Louisiana State Police. I've also confirmed that the federal officials are taking a look. to see if any federal laws were violated. And then, of course, there is the potential for civil litigation involving this. Liz Murrow, the Attorney General, has announced that she was going to pursue some civil recourse with respect to this. So those are three independent... options that are being pursued. So you're absolutely right. It's not over. This is just the next phase of what, you know, is transpiring right now, trying to determine out, trying to determine how the local criminal justice system was weaponized to indict the Attorney General for writing a letter. citing a law and enforcing, attempting to enforce and protect the legislation that was passed by the legislature this year. So the judge, I mean, the attorney general was doing her job. Her job is to enforce the actions, official actions of the executive and legislative branches of government, and to be indicted for doing that is, I think, a real travesty, and it's a long way from being over. The, you know, people here civil and they think compensation automatically, but a lot of that could be about the discovery process, right?

Exactly. Exactly. So there's a lot of things moving behind the scenes right now. I don't pretend to know all of them. But, you know, what is safe to say is that this is a long way from being over. So we heard Courtney P. earlier talking to you about traffic stops. Talk about the importance of traffic stops and NOPD getting back to that and how that can be a big instrument that helps police fight crime. Well, right. So, you know. What people think of traditionally, law enforcement responding to calls for service, people dialing 911. That is one component, a major component of what police departments do, but that's not the only thing that they do. But in New Orleans, post-COVID, because of the declining numbers of officers and the increase in crime, The police department stopped doing some basic things that they were doing pre-COVID. And one of those things is traffic enforcement. So when someone's dialing 911, it means a crime was already committed. But police departments, successful police departments in Sheriff's Office, also employ and utilize proactive policies like traffic enforcement. And traffic enforcement, it's a safety thing, but it's also a critical tool that's used to locate and identify felony offenders. And by that I mean so if an officer or trooper or a deputy observes someone violating a traffic law, that gives them the justification to pull them over. And when they get pulled over for that traffic violation, they may find out that the car was stolen. They may find out that the person driving the car has a felony warrant for a violent offense for them. They discover drugs and guns. So those traffic stops lead to arrests for violent and repeat felony offenders. And that's what the police department has started to do in 2026. So for the last two and a half years, the Louisiana State Police Troop NOAA has been engaging in proactive policing to compensate for the police department's inability to do that. Now because crime is going down, the police department is returning to doing some of those things, and one of those tools is traffic enforcement. So, you know, that is... going to be critical as the police department attempts to bring down even further the felony crime rate in the city of New Orleans, because the key to keeping that momentum going and reducing crime is apprehending the people that are committing those offenses and traffic enforcement is an important tool in identifying and apprehending some of the known.

felony offenders that the police have issued warrants for. All right. Let me take a quick break. We'll pick it up. We come back. I want to talk about ankle monitoring as well. Raphael Goynecce, our guest, President Metropolitan Crime Commission. 651, 9-7. Traffic now, WWO. 6.58, Tommy Tucker Carlson, WWO. Quickly back to Raphael going Anche, President of Metropolitan Crime Commission. I talked to Matt Dennis with ASAP. Not too long ago, Raphael, about the information he's providing with judges. And I'm trying to get a handle on is the problem with the information that he's providing to the judges, to the judge is not like it in the format that he's providing it? Is he giving him too much information or are the judges not acting on it? No, I mean, I think that ASAP and Matt Dennis and Jill Dennis, they've done a fabulous job, but they're a for-profit business. Okay. And so where we've seen electronic monitoring used more effectively, I think is probably 85% of the people that are arrested, they can't afford a lawyer. So when their family members post bail for them, under the current system, the offenders have to pay for monitoring, which is about $8 or $10 a day. And many of those people can't afford to do that. So what ends up happening is that Matt can't make any money if they don't pay for it. And there is, I think, some... things that can be done. Electronic monitoring is not going to go away. I'd like to see ASAP come back into this market. But I think there's some things that fundamentally have to shift. I think that the courts need to work and recognize what electronic monitoring can do. And, you know, we're not going to lose this tool permanently, but it's a setback to lose what ASAP has built here over the last several years. Hi, Raphael. Thank you. Appreciate the time. Rafael Garnace, President Metropolitan Crime Commission. That's our one already in the books. We'll come back. Talk to Jeff Noak, WWO Sain, a reporter about the boys in black and gold. And we'll talk with council member Leslie Harris. Saints Training Camp presented by Rouse's markets is in full swing. Hootad Nation training camp free of charge. Capacity is limited. All but one practice is sold out. That's a practice on Wednesday, August 26, the Tulane's Yulman Stadium. You can reserve Saints training camp tickets now online at New OrleansSaints.com. Your city, your host, your news. Take WWL everywhere you go today.

Listen live right now on the Odyssey app, IHeart Radio, or tune-in. I think I'm going to blend it a couple of those things. Anyway, Jeff Noak joins us now, WWL Sain Sidelined Reporter. How you doing, Jeff? Doing good, Tommy. How are you? All right, what's going on in training camp? What's the latest? Oh, man, it's still going on. Today will be day 10. I believe they're still in pads today. And this will be the last day of kind of the install. There are 10 days of install for the offense. And that means basically you're just kind of setting up what the offense is. Every day you're bringing in new elements. And after today, the entire offense should be completely installed. And then you kind of move on to more competitive elements. Like you'll see a lot of more. situational stuff. That's why the joint practice will be on Thursday, preseason games on Sunday. So this is where kind of the rubber meet the road of, hey, everything's there, and you really want to start to see a little bit more efficiency as you move forward. Is the schedule the same for the defense as far as install? That's a good question. I don't know if it's as intensive as the offense is, but we also don't talk to Brandon Staley nearly as often as killing more. So we end up talking about more about the offense. There are a few injuries that have cropped up over the weekend. Dylan Raidens, who was a backup guard, tore his ACL. So he's done for the year. It's the second ACL to the Saints has had along with Brian Brzee. on the defensive side. And Cam Jim Jordan also, you know, it's a weird situation. He had a hamstring injury on Thursday. But then he went up to Canton for Drew Brees' Hall of Fame induction on for Saturday. So I think there was a timeline issue in terms of getting all the information on that injury. Because when we talked to Kellan Moore on Sunday, he said they were still gathering information. So that'll be one that's interesting to hear more about today. because Cam Jim Jordan is not a guy who misses anything. He doesn't miss practices. He doesn't miss games. So if he misses significant time, that tells you that's not a minor injury. So that'll be one to watch too, because this is the time of year where injuries start to pile up. You know, your 10 practices in, guys are starting to feel it. So there's some of those to watch going forward. And of course. You know, feeling it's one thing when you talk about the torn ACL as something else. And we were talking about, Jeff, you and I were about injuries. You know now that later in the season you're going to have offensive linemen hurt. We didn't realize there's going to be this early in the season. The replacement for, I can never say his name right, Raidens? Redens. Like Mortal Kombat. If you've ever played Mortal Kombat, like that would be. All right. So do we know who that would be or not? Yeah, well, so the good news is the Saints have still have their starting five offensive line intact, right? So it would be a much, much more significant injury if it was one of the starters. But your six, seventh, eighth offensive linemen are definitely going to get on the field, and it's so you're going to have to have bodies there. Right now, it'd probably be a guy like Will Sherman, you know.

There's not a lot of bodies there at guard behind him. Jeremiah Wright is a rookie out of Auburn. He's a fourth round pick. He's a developmental guy. I doubt they're going to want to throw him into the fire right away. So what I think is going to happen, I would be expecting the Saints to similarly to last year when you get to the end of camp and you go around and look around the league and identify players. who are probably going to get cut but have performed well. Think of a Luke Fortner last year. You know, I think you're going to get aggressive again. Because it's tough because, you know, you say, hey, why don't they go try some people out, bring some people in. And you could do that. You could get guys in for reps. But most likely the best option to fill your gaps on your roster is currently on someone else's roster. On the expanding NFL rosters as it is now. Exactly. Exactly. All right, Jeff. Let me take a break. We'll pick it up here. We'll come back. I want to talk about the joint practices and what the schedule is for that. They start tomorrow, right? Thursday. Thursday, and what that's likely to look like in terms of does the real game happen with the joint practices, and then is the preseason game just to, and we'll talk about all of that when we come back, because it's kind of hard to keep track of. 7.20. Time for a look of traffic. For that. We go to Joe Cardosi. 724, Tommy Tucker Carlson, WWL. Back to Jeff Noak, W.W.L. Saints sideline reporter talking about... Training camp and the upcoming practice sessions with the Jacksonville Jaguars and then the game on Saturday. I presume there's some kind of coordination between Jackson, although you're playing them in a quote game, and I'll put that in their quotes because it's preseason, and you do have guys slugging it out for different positions, but there's got to be some kind of coordination between Jacksonville and the Saints with what they want to try to do, what the Saints want to try to accomplish. In terms of the game? No, in terms of practice. Yeah, I mean, they're going to coordinate, you know, and this time of year, you're not getting super exotic. You know, I don't think these teams are typically sending blitzes or extra pressure. You know, it's more like, hey, you're going to run your stuff, we're going to run our stuff, we're going to see what happens. But for example, I would think they'd say, like, you know, if, I don't know, who's the coach of Jaguar? Jaguars? Liam Pellin. Yeah, that may be Kellan Moore at some level of discussion is, hey, look, we really like to work on our goal line defense if you guys can run some of that, that kind of thing. Yeah, they'll communicate. We're going to learn more about it probably today from Kellyn because we're going to ask them a lot about it today and tomorrow. But yeah, I mean, there's always some level of camaraderie in the practice, not as much in the game because you are trying to win the games. But yeah, that practice, which is going to be open to the public, which is pretty cool. I don't know if they've ever had one here that's been open to the public. It's just not something that locals have gotten to see very often. So I think that would be a lot of fun for the fans out there.

But those are competitive practices. Like I think you'll probably see more competitive reps with starters in that Thursday practice than you will in the in the preseason game on Saturday. I'd be surprised if Tyler Shuck, Jim Jordan Tyson, Chris Alave, if they play in that preseason opener. And in large part, because you're going to be loading them up with reps on Thursday, and particularly for the quarterback. I'm not putting my quarterback in a preseason game if I don't have my starting offensive line out there to protect him. And I think that's as big of a reason as any why I don't expect to see Tyler because a guy like Eric McCoy, I don't need to have him out there. Even the David Edwards, I wouldn't expect him to be out there. So that changes things for me. So I think probably you're going to get a heavy dose of Spencer Rattler in the preseason game, whereas in the practice, you'll get a heavy dose of Tyler, Shuck, Jim Jordan Tyson, Chris Oliva, Travis A. Chan, all those guys. What is it, pardon me, during practice about Tyler Shucks that made, that Tyler Shuck that has made you go, huh, anything? You know, it was a slow start for the offense in general. You know, the first few days, I didn't think they got a ton done. The ball was on the ground a lot. I feel like he's, you know, the offense in general and Chuck included has kind of tightened things up a little bit, you know, particularly as the pads came on. I think the offense benefits from getting pads on a little bit more than the defense maybe because, you know, it allows them to protect himself a little bit. But, no, I mean, he's just, he's a very composed player. Like, you don't see him out there rushing. You know, he doesn't seem like he's swimming. Like, he seems like he always has a plan. The plan doesn't always work. You know, sometimes, you know, Tyree Wilson the other day was able to get in on a third down and strip the ball from him. He's got really long arms, the guy that traded for ahead of the draft or during the draft from the Raiders. There hasn't been a ton of downfield passing. There hasn't been a ton of scrambling and off-schedule stuff. And I think a lot of that is due to Tyler wanting to, particularly during install, kind of ride the pocket. You know, like this isn't the time of year where you want someone bailing on a concept. You want them to hang in and try to make it work. Because we know these guys can scramble. We know they can run around and create off-schedule. That's always going to be there. You do practice that a little bit. But, you know, during install, I think you're better off having your quarterback run the offense. And I think that's what, you know, the deep balls haven't been there. We've seen a little bit more from Spencer Rattler and guys like Barryon Brown. Bryce Lance had a long touchdown the other day. But I think the connection, particularly with Chuck and Jim Jordan Tyson, the rookie at Arizona State, they drafted in the first round, that's been growing pretty quickly over the last year. five or six practices, and that's been exciting to see. Barry on Brown was the next one I was going to ask you about. Really having a great camp?

Yeah, definitely. Especially for a six-round pick, you didn't know what to expect out of him. You know, we watched him at LSU last year. He was only there for a year. He was mostly a return guy. And what we've seen through the first nine days of camp is there's a lot more in that bag in terms of the offense that they can mine down the line than maybe even they expected. You know, he's been really good at tracking the ball. Spencer's been finding him on deep shots. If he's one-on-one with a cornerback or a safety downfield, it's a mismatch. And so he's a guy that, you know, I remember when Reficheed was a rookie, and, you know, he wasn't here for his rookie camp, but he came in immediately and just, he seemed like he was moving faster than everybody else. That was my next. And that was my next question. Or does he have, like, a gear that everybody, no, that's a bunch of fast athletes out there, but does he have a gear that stands out a little bit more than the rest of him? Yeah, and I don't know if it's really top-end speed as much as it's just kind of twitchiness. He's got that kind of short area of quickness. He can change direction really quickly, and that's a big advantage in the NFL because everyone's fast. It's more about how fast can you stop and how fast can you change direction at the same time. Has the game of inches too. So, you know, if you get a little position here, a little position there, that's all the difference in the world. Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate it. Jeff Noak, W. W.O. Sighteline reporter. We'll take a break. Come back. Talk to council member Leslie Harris. Right now. Time for WWO First News. 747-13 till 8 joined by council member Leslie Harris from District B. You might be able to hear her wrestling with the dogs for a sofa cushion in the background. How you doing, Leslie? I'm great. How are you? How are the beasts? They are in a bedroom because they were whining because they wouldn't be on the radio. We'll put them on. Another time, maybe. Yeah, but put them on. I'll put my two and my two on, and we'll go get a cup of coffee. They can do their own thing. I can have dog talk. There we go. Let's talk about, speaking of dogs, you may as well pick it up here. What's going on with the SPCA and funding and strays? Yeah, so the SPCA had their budget cut like many other city agencies, and they went to about a $2.7 million budget. So we've asked them to use some of their nonprofit money, especially since they've been fundraising around the budget cuts. do assist with funding some of the animal control duties that they have been tasked with. I have a meeting with them on the 18th to go over their budget to figure out what we can do because right now what we're getting is inconsistent pickup of stray animals, animals that are in distress. And a lot of our nonprofit independent rescues are taking control and picking up those dogs. And it's unfortunate because those nonprofits are not getting funding. So correct me if I say anything wrong here, counsel. The SVCA has money coming in from private sources, endowments, whatever, that is not specifically...

tasked for picking up strays, the city pays them to do that, but they had a budget cut, so they're saying, well, rather than make that up with the endowment, with money that we do have, we're just not going to pick up as many strays? That's correct. They're cutting days of service. They're cutting when people can drop off strays to the facility. They're not responding to NOPD calls for service. There's a lot of things happening, and because of that, our local nonprofits like zooses, take pause, bulldog rescue, are having to step in to provide animal control services, and that's something that they really should not be doing. It should be tasked with SPCA. And if SPCA is not going to do it, then you might look at taking some of the money that SPCA is getting and giving it to some of these other organizations or not. We might do that. There is a CEA in place through 2027, but it's frankly, if the SPCA cannot perform the duties that it's tasked with, then that might be grounds for breaking the CEA. But at this point, I think we need to just sit down and have an honest conversation about the donations that they're getting. because they're saying that the city isn't paying them enough money and what they're doing with that money to supplement services. What do they, I'm not asking you to speak for the SPCA, but what do they say they're doing with the money they get from donations? They're saying that they're providing things like adoption services, free clinics for animals. And I'm not saying that nothing that should be provided. But if they are getting unrestricted dollars in because of our budget crisis, they should be applying that money to picking up animals that are in danger, that are overheated, that have been dropped off or that are really in danger. And I get those emails every single day of dogs that are in distress and have not been picked up. And just from in your own house. The CEA with the SPCA calls for them to do what for the city? So it provides for animal control, so for getting dogs that are in distress off the street, for getting animals that may be imposing a harm to others off the streets, also some equine services as well, so horse services. And so they're providing some of that, but they're not providing it on the time schedule that is set out in the CEA. So the hours of operation have been cut. The times when they're answering calls have been cut, and because of that, we're seeing animals in distress more often that, like I said, our local nonprofits who are stepping in to pick up those animals are having to do. I know what equine means, but you should never underestimate my level of dumbness. 751-9-8. I'm going to take a break. We'll talk about affordable housing, okay, and also the demolition of Lindy Boggs Hospital. Leslie Harris is our guest council member, District B. Time for Traffic now, WWL.

756 Tommy Tucker Carlson WWL back with Leslie Harris, New Orleans City Council member. Let's talk about affordable housing. I'm going to have Andreke and Morris on later on. Talking about this report that's out of the annual income needed to afford rent in Louisiana metro markets, to afford a one-bedroom fair market rent, you need to make $44,520 a year. That's a one-bedroom apartment. Two-bedroom goes up to 1331. How critical is the need for housing in New Orleans and how short are we? We need housing desperately, and that's why I've been pushing for this for the past four years, including getting the housing trust fund passed. You know, we need to build housing. We also need to maintain housing, and that's why part of the funding for the housing trust fund goes to critical home repairs that people can actually stay in their home. But we need to take a hard look at what we're doing as a city. I know that there's some resistance to providing pilots, payment, in lieu of taxes in order to get these affordable housing projects built. However, we know that that's critical in order to help with gap financing because it's very expensive to build affordable housing. Finally, Lindy Boggs getting torn down. Some action on that, huh? Super excited. We're going to have a press conference today at 10 o'clock. The city has put in funding to get the demolition done and to build water infrastructure that will take about 4 million gallons of water, of stormwater, and make sure that that neighborhood doesn't flood. So it's a long time coming. This has been abandoned since Hurricane Katrina. So the first... Go ahead, Leslie. I'm sorry. No, it's a great partnership between private and the city. And so it can really be a model for what can happen in the future. So the steps on this, tear it down, put the reservoir tank in, right? And then from there, see what develops? And then from there, they are planning multi-family mixed-use development, so it'll have retail, but it will also have some housing. That was something that I insisted upon when we advocated for the money for the stormwater management. Why is it so hard to find affordable housing or to build affordable housing? There's a lot of reasons that we could go into, Tommy, starting with COVID and also our aging infrastructure here in New Orleans. No quick fix. No quick fix. Thank you. Anything else, Leslie? No, thank you. I appreciate your time. I really do. Leslie Harris, New Orleans City Council member, demolition the old Lindy Boggs set to start today to have a big press conference about it at 10 o'clock. We'll have it for you on the news later on. We're going to take a break. We'll come back. We're talking about surge and waterboard losing over three quarters of the water from leaky pipes.

Three quarters of clean water that they make 75% of it leaking out, leaching out. Then we'll talk to Freddie King, New Orleans City Council member, about the multiple bore water advisories in Algiers in the last couple of weeks. So a lot coming up. Stay with us. Tommy Tucker Carlson on this Tuesday morning, August 11th. Thanks for getting it started with us here at WWL. 815. Now as we are joined by H.J. Bosworth, Engineer and Research Director of Levees.org. How you doing, H.J.? Good, Tommy Tucker Carlson. Thank you very much for calling me. We have been... Go ahead. Good. Hmm? No, I'm here every day. How are you? Oh, good. I want to hear what you have to say. I'm here every day. I'm tired to listen to me. You know, I remember May and Merrick Garland talking about the amount of water that the city was losing. I don't think it was this bad. First of all, let's tell people what we're talking about. How much water the Surgeon Water Board takes in wastewater, right, and they are water from Mississippi River. Well, let me ask you that. Where do they get the water from that they treat? Where do we get fresh, clean water from? They and Jefferson Parish and St. Bernard all get water from the river and treat it using lime and sediment basins and chlorine and UV stabilization, all sorts of different things. And they process the water at the Claiborne water plant near the parish line. And there is a plant in Algiers as well, is there not? There is. There is. Since it's impractical to send the water over the river. Right. So of that, that's a costly process, I would presume? Absolutely. So you get this water and you clean it, and then you put it in the water lines and you've got to maintain the pressure, correct? Because if not, then you have a bore of water advisory? Right, right. You need that certain pressure, 20 PSI, 20 pounds per square inch, minimum to assure the folks that are using the treat of water for drinking doesn't get contaminated by things that can seep into it through cracks in the Bari Weiss pipes. So now they say that the surge and water is losing more than three quarters of the water it produces. 75% of it. Go ahead. Yes, they do say that, but the fine print of the article that we're probably all thinking of says that the 76% of it's lost, but that also includes free water provided to public agencies and nonprofits that Stewart Public Lands. So I don't know about you, but if I've got a toilet that runs all the time, and I realize that my water bill has gone up $50, $60, $80 in a month, I fixed the toilet. Are the people in public agencies that careful and that mindful of wasted water, or is it not my problem? That's a great. I think that the article leaves more questions than it does answers. I mean, yes. Ben Myers' story at nola.com. Go ahead, AJ.

Yeah, that's Ben Myers. Anyway, so... And the article, I mean, Ben Myers is a great writer. But, hey, how much free water is provided to public agencies? Do they have a meter? Do we know how much they use? Are they careful about their water usage? And the nonprofits that Stewart Public Lands, who are these nonprofits? Do they have golf courses? Do they provide universities? Are the universities paying water? Who all is paying the water? Is it? Are we providing free water for all sorts of different characters that don't give a flip and have to pay for it ourselves? That's my question. So from the engineering standpoint of water leaking into the ground, let's say it's 50%. Let's say I'm just picking these numbers out of the air, but just to have a jumping off base, say of 75% that's lost, 25% of it's given away, 50% is leaking out. And again, that's just... picking numbers out of the air. There's no factual basis for that at all. But if that's the case, how is the water leaking out? Well, the pipes are old, and the joints come apart, and the service lines, the one between the water main and your meter could leak. But because our water table is so high, you know 90% of the time, maybe 80, where a leak is because it's coming up through the street. You can also hear them in the nearby catch basins. If water is leaking into a drain line, you can usually hear it if it's near a catch basin or whatnot. So water doesn't just go off in the nether regions beneath our streets. Those are already wet. They're bubbling up in the streets or somehow somewhere they've lost track of where the leaks are and they're not keeping track of them. And then the Surgeoning Water Board needs to get on this. You know, they need to know where the leaks are and why it takes a month to get to a leak. You know, we've all seen, you know, water in the streets and you put a cone out there and someone runs over the cone. Put another cone out there and someone runs over the cone. But the leaks in the street, you can see that create the potholes will leak for a month before the Surgeon Water Board shows up. Fortunately, and recently, I've noticed that they've hired independent contractors to make these fixes, which... are way more efficient and way more effective. When the water, let me take a break. We'll pick it up here. We come back. I don't want to talk about the engineering part of this, because if I remember correctly, the water can be... damaging the subsurface, and then you wind up wiping out the foundation, and then it leads some more pipes being broken. So you're causing your own problems in a water leaks, pipes break, water leaks, pipe break situation. That's a cycle of failure. We're talking to H.J. Bosworth, Engineer, and Research Director of Leveys.org, about Ben Myers' story at nola.com about New Orleans Suringer Waterboard, waste in three quarters of the treated water. Granted, some of it goes to nonprofits.

and that Stewart public lands and the public agencies. But I just made the number, okay, 50%. Let's say they're losing 50% of it that they refine or that they clean. What kind of damage is that having on the streets? And what does it mean for ratepayers? And could that lead to more boil water advisories? Because how hard is it to sustain 20 PSI when you got water pouring out at 50% of what you clean? 821, traffic now, WWL. 827 Tommy Tucker Carlson, WWO, back with H.J. Bosworth Engineer and Research Director of Levees.org talking about the water that sewerage and waterboard is losing after they refine it and clean it and process it and leaking into the streets. H.J., is that what's happening? And as I said earlier, can the leaks erode what little bit of substructure we have? And as a result, that leads to more pipes breaking and more leaky pipes? Absolutely. Anytime you have a water leak and a nearby crack and a drain line or a sewer line, the water leak will find its way to that crack. And it won't just flow nice and pretty without taking out soil in the process. Anytime you see a sinkhole or a pothole or whatnot, and the city agency or whatnot shows up, fills it up with asphalt, and a year later it's a pothole once again, there's another problem beneath the surface where water, maybe it's groundwater, maybe it's treated water, is flowing from one spot to the next and taking with all the soil that's nearby. And, you know, like, remember years ago, we had the Cinco de Mayo, where we had the gigantic sinkhole on Canal Street, not far from the ferry landing. That was the, that was exactly what was going on there. You had a leaky water pipe. You had an open drain pipe, and the water continued to erode all of the soil around the end of that, the tunnel underneath the river gate. for years. And then finally, the pavement collapse and created a hole big enough to put a small vehicle in. So yeah, you've got all sorts of warning signs all over the city of... where the water leaks are, where the problems are, but putting Band-Aids on larger wounds just doesn't quite do it. You've got to have a dedicated crew to go in there and say, okay, here's a line we've patched with asphalt, you know, five, six times over the past five or eight years. Dig it up. Find the problem. Fix the pipe. But that would mean... Once the pipes are fixed, yeah. Once the drain pipes and the sewer pipes are all fixed, everything else is going to bubble to the surface. Then you can see it, then you can act on it, even if it takes a month. You know, the Surgeon Water Board may just be understaffed. This could cost a lot of money, right? Right. So from an engineering standpoint, let me run this by you. It would seem as though...

And this is the Saturday morning hardware store guy, engineer, right? It would seem as though if you were going to put the city on an equal footing with somewhere else where we're not on swamp land and everything else, you would have to drive pilings, place the pipes on that to make sure that they didn't sink or subside, and then from there you could get gone and have regular maintenance going on. Otherwise, you're stuck in this quagmire. Is that accurate or not? Maybe not. When you drive piles underneath one item that you've got buried under the streets, it stops that from settling, but it doesn't stop everything else from moving. The soils under the streets, the soils underneath, the sidewalks, the soils underneath the neutral grounds, they're still going to settle, sometimes swell, sometimes shrink, depending on the weather because of the type soils they are. So putting everything on piles may not be as good as making sure that all the pipes are flexible. Okay. When the city was built, everything was cast iron, which was fine and great. But over time, the joints open up, the pipes crack, whatnot. You've got polyethylene pipe that's nice and flexible, and it's just, it's really something that the Surgeon Water Board should embrace 20 years before they started to embrace them. I'm glad to ask that question. The word of the day, flexibility. Thank H.J. Bosworth, engineer research director of levies.org. We'll talk to Freddie King, New Orleans City Council, member district C, about the boil water advisories for the West Bank. When we come back, right now we pause for WWL First News. Tommy Tucker Carlson talking to Freddie King, New Orleans City Council member District C, which includes Algiers in the French Quarter. How are you doing, Freddie? I'm good. Time to have much so. All right. Let's talk about these boil water advisories in Algiers. What's going on? Do you know? Yes, yes. So the pipe, a 20-inch water main was hit. Friday night, Saturday morning at the intersection of German DeGal and Indiana Street. I think it's important to clarify that this was not a sewage and water board employee or a contract under sewage and water board. This was a Army Corps engineer sealer project that had nothing to do with sewage and water board. So once that pipe was hit, I received... an alert around 1.30 a.m., letting me know that the water, the water main was broken. The water pressure had dropped below a safe pressure, and the water distribution was disrupted in allergens. The water was restored roughly 6, 7 o'clock that Saturday morning, and the water was... tested on Sunday. The results came back yesterday. Also, when the results come back, the Seweridge and Water Board has to send those results to Louisiana Department of Health. They have to verify the levels or the testing results before they can lift the Ballwater Advisory. As of yesterday, about 435 o'clock, the Ballwater Advisory was lifted for most of Algears, except for the...

the areas closely, closely connected to the area where the pipe was burst. So there was only one boil water advisory listed or two? There were two in the city. One was in the east, but... The one in Algiers, they both were lifted yesterday, the one in Algiers were lifted later in the day. So the one in Algiers was strictly because a Corps of Engineers contractor working on a CELA project hit a water main. Is that what happened? Yes. And water pressure drops. So in this case, there's no question about how it happened or who was at fault or anything else. No, no question is, as the information I received from the leadership of sewage of water board has been pretty consistent. I also went on the scene, talked to some of the workers, and from everything I've gathered, this was done by accident, of course, by a contractor with the ormical engineer doing a sealer drainage project on the gall. All right, Freddie. Anything you want to add? Look, I also wanted to mention the council now having more oversight as it relates to Suitorial Water Board. For me, the main thing is to provide more transparency and more accountability to be to the residents of the district or of the city. I'm not trying to go in and tell Sewing the Water Board how to do the data, the operations. But I think there needs to be a higher level of transparency, consistency, and accountability. And that's what I'm looking to bring with the council having more oversight of Surgeoning Water Board. But wait, didn't they have... The Boil Water Advisory, oh, it was just an update that I'm thinking of on August 7th that talked about what happened on July 25th. That's what happened. Yeah, so that was a previous ballwater advisory sometime last month, but the most recent, was a result of the busted pipe on the Merrick Garland, Indiana. And do we know what the previous one was caused by? I don't have that information. I was told, but I was told weeks ago and forgot about it. And it was in July? Yes. So now it's different. Now, tell me how it's going to be different if something like this happens again in August, now that you have more control. Did the new system help you divine, pardon upon, where this leak came from or how it happened this time or not? Well, the difference for me is the information was coming.

All the time, every, we were getting updates multiple times a day every so many hours. So the main difference is the communication piece. Things are going to happen. We have an outdated, antiquated war system. But I think the key is to be just honest and open with people. And in the past, it was difficult to get that information out as soon as possible. And look, there were some people who were saying the communication wasn't great. this paths go around with the water break over the weekend. But that's what I want to improve the communication and the transparency and accountability piece as related to the water board. Gotcha. Am I going to see you at the Celebrity Waiter thing Friday? Yes. I'm about to make a few phone calls and get my table ready. All right. There we go. We got the Shaw Celebrity Waiter Lunching coming up Friday at the four columns. Freddie will be there and you can email me or Freddie and he'll give you the details on how to be involved with that if you like. Thank you, Freddie. Appreciate it. Thank you. Freddie King, New Orleans City Council member, fellow Shaw graduate, 854 and a half. Traffic now, WWO. All right, thank you, and it is currently 908, and we're joined by Lindsay Cohn, visiting associate at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. How you doing, Lindsay? Good morning, Tommy. I'm doing okay. How are you? I'm okay. Here we go again. So what's... So what's new with the war with Iran? So they're asking. actually is new news, interestingly enough. What we have seen in the last couple of days, it's not very clear what's actually happening, but there is movement. What we've seen in the last couple of days is that Oman, the country just across the strait of Homoos from Iran. Oman and Iran have apparently reached a temporary deal on how to govern passage through the street. Now, this was one of the things that led to the breakdown of the ceasefire. because Iran's understanding of what was allowed in terms of passage through the street was different from the U.S.'s understanding, and so they both started exchanging fire over their different understandings of what was allowed. With this agreement between Oman and Iran, in theory, this creates something that the U.S. can sort of come to and say, okay, yes, we agree with this. The International Maritime Organization can say, yes, we agree with this. Iran, currently that agreement does not charge tolls for passage through the strait, which is something that Iran had been saying they were going to do, and the U.S. was saying never, we won't accept that. So that actually makes this deal a possible basis for some agreement. And Pakistan, which is one of the countries that's been mediating all of these deals, seems pretty optimistic that there might be some kind of agreement. Now, all of that being said, there's also bad news in the sense that Iran came out just a few days ago with a sort of...

People are calling it a new set of demands. I don't think that's the right way to characterize it, because it's almost exactly the same as the memorandum of understanding that was signed in June, that the U.S. signed with Iran. It's almost exactly the same set of demands, except that now Iran is saying, we want you to do these things just for us to open the streets. before those things were all sort of like, if you want us to stop our nuclear program, you have to do these things. Now, they want all the same things, but only in return for opening the street and, you know, maybe negotiating about the nuclear program later. So what that is is demanding a lot more from the United States for a lot less than what we were originally going to get to those things. So it's highly... uncertain how the U.S. well, the president has responded to that by saying, oh, yeah, I'm going to make you pay reparations to everyone for everything for the last 50 years. That's highly unlikely to happen. But we don't know where negotiations will go from yet, but there is an opening. Oh, boy, so many questions. So when we talk about governing passage through the strait as proposed by Oman and Iran, that would look like what? So, as your listeners have probably picked up by now, Homoos is extremely narrow. There are, however, a couple of different routes that vessels can take through it that are sort of safe to navigate. And, of course, you want some kind of regime that says the vessels coming in, go on this side, and the The original one had a two-mile buffer zone in between, incoming and outgoing, so that no one ran into each other. Iran during the ceasefire period was insisting that all ships come in and out through the lane that is close to the shore as Iran. In other words, completely within Iranian territorial waters and very vulnerable to Iranian attack. There is another route that goes along the coast of Oman, and other, you know, vessels were trying to go out in and out through that one, and Iran was saying, no, we didn't authorize that, and those were the vessels Iran was shooting at. This agreement says, okay, all the vessels coming in to the Gulf have to go through the Iranian route, and the vessels going out go through the Omani route. And there won't be any tolls charged, at least for this temporary agreement. But basically the regime says, if you're coming in, you go next to the Iranian shore. If you're going out, you go next to the Omani shore. However, there is a tiny chunk of the waters on the Omani route that are still Iranian territorial waters. So there is still a vulnerability there. But basically the idea is that Iran is making a concession. in the sense that they're saying, you don't all have to come through the waters that we control. But they're also doing this in coordination with Oman. And they're claiming that the rest of the Gulf countries are on board with this, although I haven't seen any announcement from any of those countries.

to that effect. And they're moving the goalpost with this memorandum of understanding, or what did you call it? Was that it? Yes, that's it? Yeah. They're moving to go posts by saying, well, before we wanted this in exchange for dropping our nuclear program, now we want this just to keep the straight-of-horn moves open. Correct. And they have that leverage because, you know, if the U.S. tried to say, oh, sure, yeah, we'll give you those things to get the straight open and then tried to renege, they can easily just close the straight again. So this is not a situation where the U.S. can sort of sneak past it. If we agreed to this, we would have to give those concessions in return for opening the straits. and we wouldn't be able to sort of reimpose them, otherwise they would just reclose the street. And again, just to recap, because it's been going on since February, when did the street get into the deal? The street became... became at issue after the US and Israel started attacking Iran ostensibly to either change Iran's regime or pressure them into giving up the nuclear program or a couple of other possible things. And then Iran retaliated by closing the street. So now we're negotiating over something that didn't even exist before we started. Accurate? Correct. Okay. So the president now says we're low-keying it that the talks with Iran are slow, that he's only semi-negotiating with them. Does that mean he's turning it over to the other Gulf countries or take me through that, Lansing? Yeah, I think, so I think the president is trying to communicate two things. Number one, I think he's trying to communicate that he sees this as a lower priority than he did before, and that's why he's not doing military activity. You know, there's been a lot of reporting about losses in U.S. munition stockpiles, and I think the president wants to... send the message that he's not being pressured into not doing military operations by the lack of things to shoot. He's choosing this path. You know, whether you accept that or not is kind of up to you. But I think that's part of why he's making that claim. The other part, I think, is that... He is trying to signal to the Iranians that this doesn't matter that much to him, right? Because what's going on here is we're fighting over stakes, right? And Iran thinks it has leverage because it thinks this is a really important thing for the U.S. president to solve. And he is trying to signal to them that actually he doesn't care that much.

and that it doesn't matter that much because eventually, and I believe Secretary Scott Bessent or Marco Rubio, I can't remember which one said it, just recently said, you know, soon the straight won't matter because we'll have pipelines, it'll go around the street, and we won't even need to worry about it. And so I think the president is trying to signal to the Iranians that he's not as vulnerable as they think he is. Again, whether that's posturing or sincere is hard to tell right now. It seems to me, that Iran is trying to drag this out as much as they possibly can. I'm not, you know, an expert in foreign negotiations or anything else, but there certainly seems to be, I'll just say it, no hurry on Iran's part, and it seems as though the president is playing right into that. Could that case be made? I mean, you could make that case. I do think that, again, we've talked about this before. There are factions in Iran. There are certainly some factions in Iran who would like to get this resolved because it is painful and it is very, very bad for their economy. However, there are other factions in Iran who do believe that they have the advantage and that... They can hold out longer than the U.S. can, especially in terms of the pain the U.S. public is willing to take, in terms of the midterms coming up and the pain the Republican Party is willing to take. So there are some people in Iran who believe that dragging it out is in their favor. You also have to keep in mind who is backing Iran. Both China and Russia. are backers of Iran, and both China and Russia benefit from anything that drags on, that keeps the U.S. involves, that bleeds the U.S. of resources and munitions and things like that. And so it is certainly possible that a country like China might continue to keep Iran on a lifeline just to drag this out and hurt the United States. Either way, it is not in the United States' interest for this to drag on. I don't think so. No, I think the United States does not really gain anything by dragging this on. Although there are some in the administration, and of course I can be wrong about things, there are some in the administration, though, who I think they believe that they have the advantage in terms of time because they think that the Iranian economy is close to collapse, that the Iranian government is close to collapse, and they think that if they can just hold out a little bit longer, then Iran will collapse and they'll get everything they want. creates a really problematic situation. When both sides think that just by dragging it out, they will win, then, you know, then you find out which one actually collapses. Let me pick it up here. We come back. We're talking to Lindsay Cohen visiting associate at Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. We'll pick it up right there when we come back about the situation in Iran and also the situation here in this country. And who's... got more say and what happens? Who's got more patience? Who's under the worst conditions, et cetera, as it relates to the war in Iran? 920 back in a flash, WWO. We are talking to Lindsey Cohen visiting the Associate at Columbia School of International and Public Affairs getting latest on the war with Iran. Lindsay, talk about the differences in cultures of the countries because I get a feeling that...

Iran is playing the long, long, long, long game here, centuries game where maybe the president of the United States is playing the long game in terms of months or years. Is there any credence to that? Well, I wouldn't call it a cultural difference there. I mean, these countries are on different political calendars, right? It's not that, you know, one of these cultures has great patience and all of these things. I think that that's kind of a cartoonish kind of way to think about it. But when you think about the things that President Trump has to worry about, midterms are coming up in a few months. He needs some kind of result in a few months. And whereas on the Iranian side, politics, you know, this is an authoritarian country, there is not a set calendar that anyone has to have results by, you know. And so they can have more patience in that sense because they're not on an electoral cycle that forces them to deliver something. That being said, again, they are under pressure. In terms of the economics of the things, people are not, you know, they're a blackout, people aren't able to access fresh food, there are problems with the water supply, there's problems with infrastructure. You know, the people are suffering, and that is costly for the Iranian regime to deal with. So they don't have forever. But I think in terms of the patients that we're seeing right now, it has much more to do with the electoral cycle than with any sort of... deep-seated cultural differences. So are the Iranians trying to Jimmy Carter, Donald Trump? Because you remember with the hostages, they waited until Ronald Reagan had taken the oath of office to release the hostages. And it seemed as though... the bigger picture got lost and got wrapped up in the negotiation itself as opposed to the end result. Who can hold out longer here? Because ultimately if the people of Iran don't like the conditions there, is there anything they can do about it? I'm not in the same way that people can vote someone out at the polls in the United States. You know, as we've seen over the last several years, the Iranian regime is very capable of violent and murderous suppression of protests. That being said... violent and murderous suppression of protest is no way to rule a country all the time. You have to have people living and working and doing their thing. It costs resources to keep a people under violent suppression. So you do need some level of popular legitimacy and popular support. And so they can't get away with just ignoring that. But, you know, I think that...

The likelihood that the Iranian people could rise up in protest and topple the government is not... high, right? The government, if anything, the regime is consolidating power. We've seen a few personalities in the last couple of days that indicate a consolidation of power by a certain faction. And I don't think, so if anyone was hoping that the Iranian government was becoming more fragile, I think that's not the case. So to play this out, Iran... can hold off till the midterms in November and see what kind of change they can affect in the United States. The United States, and I understand President Trump has some maybe financing considerations as it relates to munitions and the Senate being in recess and Congress being in recess right now, where that might be wise and no hurry to go on a bombing rate or anything. I guess I'm just thinking is, does it come down to the president saying, okay, that's it. We've got to get something done by the midterm. So I'm going to go in and I'm just going to rain hell down upon them and see if I can get them to give up. Or does he play into their hands and just take the time. And meanwhile, the war drags on and on and the public is against it and against it, et cetera. Well, I don't know what the president will decide to do, but you laid out his choices pretty starkly, and neither of them is a good choice, right? And so I don't know what decision he will make, but I do think that, as you pointed out, the Iranians certainly are... have the advantage when it comes to patients. They can wait. Whereas on the U.S. That's what I was alluding to earlier when I said culture, and perhaps I phrased it poorly, but that's what I meant. Time is on the Iranian side, is what I was trying to say. Yes. Absolutely. No, you're absolutely right about that. Now, it's possible that President Trump could decide to wait this out as well and just kind of hope and cross its fingers that it won't have a big impact on the midterms. But that is a risky, that's a risky course of action. All of the courses of action available to the U.S. right now are not great. We kind of got ourselves into a nasty spot and none of our options for getting out of it are really attractive. So if you had to say who's steering the ship here, advantage whom it would be? Right now, I would say advantage you're on. Because they're controlling the timeline on this. Because they have more patience and because they are playing for highest stakes. They can more about the outcome of this than we do.

Right. This is existential for them. And by them, I mean specifically the regime. This is existential for them. This is about the sovereignty of the country. For us, it's kind of a, you know, it's painful economically. It's scary in terms of the possibility of a nuclear armed Iran. But these are not existential threats to the United States. These are things that we dislike and find annoying. So they have highest stakes, and they have... the time advantage as of right now. Very interesting. Any final thoughts, Lindsay? Tommy, I, you know, this has been quite a roller coaster. I really, it's very difficult to predict what's going to happen next on this. Things could go either direction, and a lot depends on how President Trump use his options and what he thinks is likely to happen. So I don't want to make any predictions. So whose move is it now? Whose move is it now? Yeah. I think right now, yeah, I think it's the U.S.'s move right now in terms of whether the U.S. is going to decide to accept the Iran-Oman agreement on the street and whether they're going to move forward with some agreement. Again, as I mentioned, the Pakistanis are saying that some kind of agreement is close. That would have to be mostly a U.S. move. If the U.S. does that. then Iran will probably reciprocate in some way. And then we might get back to the point where we were with the June ceasefire. Whether that will hold, though, is again kind of a big question. I don't have any confidence that we're close to a final resolution. Thank you, Lindsay. Appreciate it. Lindsay Cohn, visiting associate at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. We'll take a break. We come back. We can move closer to home and talk about affordable housing with Andronika Morris. Right now, 935. Time for traffic, WWL. It is 943-17 till 10, joined by Andronika Morris, President of Housing Nola. Good morning, Andrenica. How are you? Good morning. How you doing, Tommy? Thank you for having me. I realize you and I've been talking now for 10 years, it seems like, or more. And I would just ask, how is the situation with affordable housing changed in the last 10 years or so? So about 10 years ago, it felt like we were on an upward trajectory, frankly, right? We had just finished. Katrina investments, they were powering down. And so there was a clear idea of what we needed to do to continue to ensure that everyone had safe, decent, affordable housing. Unfortunately, there were other people who were kind of getting excited about the fact that the market, the real estate market, was getting a little out of hand and didn't recognize that that kind of growth needed to be managed. And it wasn't managed, unfortunately. We didn't do things fast enough. There was opportunities that we could have had to leverage some of those private investments. And then the world fell apart with the insurance crisis and then COVID. And that just was a blow that was a one-two punch, right? The insurance crisis had been baking for the last 20 years since Katrina.

And it hit exactly the wrong moment alongside the COVID pandemic, which. you know, just put in stark relief the needs, right, where we should have been able to house everybody because people weren't moving around, people weren't trying to go anywhere. We could have stabilized everybody. And COVID demanded that everybody have a safe and decent home. Our essential workers needed to either have secondary homes so that they weren't bringing COVID back to their homes. Kids needed safe, decent homes to learn in since they weren't in school. And we didn't do any of that. We didn't do any of those things. We didn't make, we didn't guarantee those things in that moment. That combined here in Louisiana and in Metro, New Orleans, that set us on a path where now we need 55,000 just in New Orleans, the homes. We need thousands of fortified roofs to address the insurance crisis in order to stabilize the market because there's just no way to bring down housing costs without addressing insurance. This is no way. We have to make our home safe, and we have to be able to ensure them. Let's talk about the study that you conducted and what had found. So our partners at the National Uncom Housing Coalition do this annually. It's called Out of Reach. And it does the math. We like to talk to people about the numbers. And it talks about the fact that if you're making $7.25 an hour, which about a third of our workers do in Louisiana, you can't afford a one-bedroom apartment making $7.25 an hour. You have to work 100 hours a week just for one person in a one-bedroom apartment. If you need a two-bedroom apartment, you have to work about... 120 hours a week. That's not possible. No. Right? That's just not possible. That's not reasonable. That's not... So people that don't know if you're working... Just to put the numbers in place, if you're working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, that's just 84 hours. You're not even getting to 100. So there you go. All right. Yeah. The math is not mad. Right. Exactly. And, you know, asking people to work 16-hour days, it's not... It's not reasonable. And I don't think anybody, you know, we often hear about people working harder. I don't think anybody envisions people having to work 12, 16-hour days and still not have enough money to pay their bill. I had a job. Yeah, I had a job in college where it was built so that you could make money while you were on break and works. 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and you don't have time to do anything. You don't have time to get your hair cut. All you have time to do is take a shower, get something to eat, and go back to work.

That's right. That's right. And if the folks that we're talking about, I mean, that's just for somebody by themselves. If they have family that they're taking care of, a senior, their elderly parent, children, where does that, how does that make sense? Because you got to also factor in, do you have enough money for child care? And that's what we're talking about when we say, can you afford it? Like, can you pay what you can afford and have money to eat, to get a haircut, to, um, to clothe yourselves and your kids to pay for medicine. And not only does that $7.25 an hour not allow you to rent at those levels, it also doesn't allow you to do anything else. And so the mask doesn't work. And it's part of the reason why we're seeing such a loss in population in Metro New Orleans. We're losing renters. And those homes and apartments are not being filled. They're sitting vacant. So we're also losing property taxes and revenue. And we're losing community partners. We're losing critical folks to our communities being stronger and thriving. So in order, just in Louisiana, you need to be making about $22 an hour, $21.88 an hour in order to afford a two bedroom in Louisiana on average. $22 an hour. And, you know, we've recently had, you know, conversations about raising the minimum wage and certain partners have done so. Like the city of New Orleans has a minimum wage of $15 an hour. And that's not enough. That's not enough in Orleans Parish. In New Orleans, you've got to be making $25.60 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment. So $15 an hour is still off. It's still not enough. Much less $7.25 an hour. Why are these apartments or housing sitting vacant and losing property taxes because they just don't want to rent it at a lower rate? In some instances, they can't because of the insurance. Oh, the insurance. That's right. That's right. In some instances, they can't. They can't lower the price. And that's one of the big problems. That's why they're sitting vacant. And it's one of the things that we do here is we incentivize vacancies. So if your property is vacant and you have enough of it, you can write it off on your federal income taxes. You can tell the assessor in your community, hey, I want to use the income model for assessing my property taxes, and I'm not renting this property, so that reduces their tax obligation. So we've incentivized that so that they can bring those operating costs down, and it's easier and cheaper to maintain. And then, of course, if you own the property outright, you don't keep insurance on it, and you just cross your fingers. Because in order for you to rent it to someone, you've got to have insurance on it to protect the property, to protect the occupants, to protect yourself. But if, and you pay the property taxes and all those things like that. But if you leave it empty, you can forego insurance. You can forego, you can get a, you know, you can apply for the income model with your property taxes and you can write it off with your federal taxes. So it's cheaper.

to keep it vacant. That's how a system that we set up works. So a home that could be occupied to, that could be home to a family, is cheaper to operate rather than doing what it's supposed to be doing. So you need to make $53,240, $53,240 a year to afford a two-bedroom, and that's apartment or a house. Does it matter? Or is it an apartment? It doesn't matter. Okay. Yes, it was for a rental, so it doesn't matter. Like, we've got some, we don't have a lot of two-bedroom houses, but we do. We have half the doubles that are two bedrooms and things like that. You don't see a whole lot of freestanding homes that are two bedrooms that are for rent. So what are these people supposed to do? They're making $10, $15 an hour. They can't afford to live in the area. So what is supposed to do? What would help me out here? And Drinica, I don't know what the answer is. They're doing what they're doing what's happening is they're leaving. They're moving around. They're shifting around. They're getting evicted. They're not able to pay their rent. And we're losing them. That's what's happening. And that's not, I don't think anybody intends that. I don't think the landlords intend that. I don't think our leaders intend that. I know we don't intend that. And so that means we have, as community, we have to act. We have to get insurance rates down. We have to get utility costs down. These are things. And I'm not just talking about, you know, You know, fussing at the insurance companies. I'm talking about making homes safer so that insurance can be offered at a reasonable rate. And we got to push the insurance companies, too, because they've got to be a part of that because there's too many homes. I mentioned this to New yesterday. There's too many homes in Louisiana, period, particularly southern Louisiana for the last five years we've had just beyond COVID, Ida, Veda, Laura, Delta. the snowstorm last year, the tornadoes, right? There's just, and folks have not been able to get their insurance to pay out when they've even had it. And that's landlords and homeowners are alike. Last year, the national group, the White's reports shared that 45% of claims in Louisiana were denied initially in 2024. Almost half of claims are going to immediately denied. So we got a problem because people need to get their insurance to pay out so that they can make repairs. But we also have to be securing resources, deploying dollars to make these repairs. You know, we're talking about $75,000. Our estimates tell us that you can put on a new roof. You can do weatherization. You can do all the different things that the average home needs in New Orleans. to make it climate ready. And it costs about $75,000. And we need to be able to lend that money to landlords so that they can get their businesses back going. And we need to make sure it's given to, you know, homeowners in a way that makes sense for them.

And that's one of the things that we're trying to do, the Housing Trust Fund in New Orleans. It's taken a while, but we need, that needs to be everywhere. And Jefferson Parrish has been doing some of these programs. They did their fortified roof program last year. We got to continue that, right? We got to continue closing those gaps and making sure that homeowners and landlords make the repairs so their homes are safe. And they can be, they can be cheaper and more affordable to operate. I admire the passion in your voice and union convictions. I really do, Andrenege. Thanks for taking the time. Thank you, Tommy. You've been, Andrenegan Morris, President of Housing. Nola, we'll take a break. Come back, WWL. It's Sophia with an F, Franklin with the Y, and if you're looking for some bubble gum dumb dumb podcast, then you are in the wrong place, baby. Whether I'm reminiscing on the trials and tribulations of working in the corporate world to recapping today's latest reality TV show, you're going to want to pull up a chair and stick around. It's a good time and always 100% unfiltered. Follow and listen to Sophia with an F wherever you get your podcast. Podcasts.