BATON ROUGE - The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has issued a notice for the $1.2 billion allocated for long-term flood risk reduction. 

According to a news release, "state officials will provide local partners and stakeholders with additional guidance on the contents of this notice in the next two weeks. This guidance will be distributed as an official Louisiana Watershed Initiative communication." For more information, click here.

That money will fund the construction of flood-protection projects along with collecting data on water movement across Louisiana. The state is required to spend at least half of the funds on the 10 parishes most impacted by the 2016 flood: Acadia, Ascension, East Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Livingston, Ouachita, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Vermillion, and Washington. 

“This news gets us one step closer to making the Louisiana Watershed Initiative’s mission a reality,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said. “It creates an opportunity to address the root causes of flooding in our state, beginning with those areas devasted by the 2016 floods. As flooding becomes a more frequent concern for so many of our communities, it is imperative that we leverage opportunities like this to develop a mutual understanding of risk, increased accountability for decision-making and a stronger sense of long-term responsibility for Louisiana’s future.”