_A shorter version of this interview was published in the first issue of the Grassroots Mapping Forum_

_Shannon Dosemagen had a chance in May 2011 to speak at length with Barbara Marcotte, a resident of Myrtle Grove, Louisiana, about the Wilkinson Bay area as well as the broader environmental threats to the region._

##On Site: An interview with Barbara Marcotte##

My name is Barabara Marcotte, I live in the Myrtle Grove Marina Estates here in Myrtle Grove, Louisiana. I’m a resident fulltime.
 
###When we are talking specifically about the Wilkinson Bay area, when you think about the bay, what story comes to mind for you?###

I think for me, it’s the fishing and everything that we are blessed and have the fortune to be exposed to and to utilize on a daily basis. Out here we can fish, you can shrimp, you can crab, you can duck hunt. So you’re able to enjoy everything that is afforded to the residents of Louisiana which is why we’re called the Sportsmans Paradise, because it is a paradise for people who enjoy those types of activities outdoors.
 
###You’ve been here for about 30 years and have been fishing in this area as well- do you have a particular story about when you’ve been out on the waters that you want to share?###

Well I think one of the most awesome things is that, my husband and I, we had our weeks vacation and we were out here fishing. We’re driving along in the boat and all of a sudden the porpoise show up and they start swimming and going right onside the boat. You’re so close to them that you’re able to see their eyes. There’s not many places you can go to and experience that. We even have them at different times of the year- they’ll come into our private canals here. If you’re up and you’re out and about early enough in the morning sometimes- I’ve only been able to see them once or twice but there are other neighbors that have seen them a few times as well. They come back in our little canals here and swim and do whatever dolphins and porpoise do.
 
###How has this bay been a part of your families history?###

Well, for me, I have to go back on my husbands life because he has fished and hunted down here since he was a child. The family of a friend of his had a hunting camp down on Wilkinson Canal- a little fishing camp- so he would come down with them on weekends and at other times of the year. They would go out and fish and they would trawl- catch their shrimp and crabs and do their boils. They’d go out and duck hunt in the morning and then fish in the afternoon. Its just a thing in your life that your able to go do, enjoy and have available to you. And if all these wetlands aren’t protected, not only just restored, but protected the way that they are now and what I mean by that is what we were talking about earlier- with the freshwater intrusion- there are other ways to build the marsh that people have recommended to the Corps of Engineers- various arms of the Corps, that can accomplish the same thing without all the freshwater intrusion. When you get that in the end, all these things you enjoyed and valued your whole life, will go away, not all, but a lot of it will go away.

###So you were talking a bit about the types of fishing that can be done- can you talk about the activities a bit more?###

People, there are a lot of people- mainly I guess commercial fishermen that put their traps out along the Wilkinson Canal, out in Barataria Bay and a lot of the other little bays and lakes around here, but like where we are here in Myrtle Grove, right by the marina, we have subdivisions on each side. I can put little crab traps down off my dock and catch crabs right there there my dock. At different times throughout the year, I can fish off my dock, and  catch all the trout I want. We catch redfish off our dock (4:39). Sometimes at different times in the year, we can throw a cast net out and catch shrimp, I mean… not last year because of the oil spill, but the year before that we were catching like 15-20 count shrimp which is nice cookable size shrimp, right off the dock. That’s one of the things, you know, why we all bought land and built and moved down here.
 
###You said also about the catfish before...###

The saltwater catfish you don’t really eat, but the freshwater catfish we do get because of some of the freshwater intrusion down here, we do get freshwater catfish- we’ll catch them in our crab traps down here. Sometimes I’ll throw out the cast net to catch live shrimp to go fishing  the next day and I have caught nice freshwater catfish in my cast net. So its nice to just be able to pull it up, put it in the ice chest and cook it up the next day.
 
###You also said duck hunting, are there also other kind of waterfowl that people hunt for around here, or nutria?###

I know that people alligator hunt, not in our subdivision though. we do have alligators in our subdivision and sometimes we have to call in a trapper to remove them. So, I’m sure that people do hunt nutria and other little critters.
 
###Can you talk a bit about what your take on impact of spill is? Have you noticed or heard about changes to the area?###

We did notice some oil coming into the area and they had to put booms up. BP came and put the oil booms up on all the canals around here, basically to stop oil from being brought in on the boats coming in and out. At one time this was a main hub for BP and the Disaster Recovery Center, I think its DRC, to combat the oil from coming in through Barataria Bay and all these other areas and the Wilkinson canal. There’s lots of other bays around here like Airplane Bay and Bay Round and Bay Five that would be greatly impacted by oil coming into Barataria Bay, or be threatened by it. So, we had a lot of activity going on that we were exposed to, you know, from not only the workers coming in and out all the time with, trying to fight the oil from coming in, but you know, some oil did come in to the area, come into some of the individual canals. So we had that threat, but also we don’t know what its going to do to our health. You could stand on your porch somedays and you could smell the oil. So, who knows what effect that will have on your health, today, tomorrow, five years from now or in the future. That greatly effected our ability to crab and shrimp and fish because they closed basically at a certain point in time, everything was closed off from fishing- you couldn’t fish anything.
 
###Have people said anything about health experiences- or when clean up workers were here, did they say they were experiencing health effects?###

I’m not sure of that. I don’t know if anyone has had physical issues as a result of that.
 
###What do you think about the way the cleanup was handled? Do you find yourself thinking or feeling differently about the Bay since the spill?###

Everyone has doubts and concerns about the polluting that took place and how the fish and shrimp and crabs may have been affected by it and the quality of having a comfort that what we’re eating is safe. I think people down here still have some concerns about that. I mean, we check what we catch and of course if there was any kind of stench from it we wouldn’t eaten it, but still who knows how much of that is in the system and in the area down here. Everybody had those concerns.
 
###Has it stopped you from eating certain types of seafood?###

Everybody pretty much, for a period of time stopped eating the seafood because no one really knew- you know even though you might get something that may not smell like oil, they used all those dispersants in the water out there and who knows how much the crabs and shrimp and the fish ingested and what it did to them and what it would do to us eating it. We were very careful with what we were eating and where we got seafood from. Really for awhile we didn’t eat anything- we didn’t even have our crab traps down to catch anything because there was just that uncertainty.
 
###Are you planning on crabbing again this year?###

Eventually, yeah I will be. I haven’t at this point, only because I have to do some work on my crab traps. I plan on trying to start to do some. I think other people around here have, I would assume they have.
 
###Do you have suggestions for the restoration or recovery of the area? You also started to talk about the oil workers and the dredging thats happening, can you talk a bit more about that?###

They had a base of operations here that basically operated 24 hours a day. I think a lot of the concerns- how much oil was being brought into this area on the boats, that came in and went out. How much was coming in here that we may or may not know about. We have a level of safety concerns from that which also relates to a health concern from that. We all had concerns about the amount of people- the hundreds of people that were coming in and going out. This whole area, and Plaquemines Parish as well, we have all enjoyed the safety and security of living down here. I’ll give you a good example- after Hurricane Katrina, the things that we were able to salvage, because it was a brand new house, we lost our roof, we had to totally gut and rebuild so we lost almost everything. The things that we were able to save, we had in our garage, stacked up on 6 foot tables underneath our house. We could leave for the day and not have out garage locked because you never knew if you were going to be blessed that day and workers were going to show up to work on your house. So we had to leave it open that they would have access to the bathroom and other things. We’ve always been afforded the safety and security of knowing we can leave our house and not having to worry about locking all that stuff up and it will be there. People have been able to leave their keys in their golf carts, in their boats, sometimes people forget to lock their house, go to town and you know you gonna come home and everything’s going to be just like you left it. If you lived in New Orleans or Metarie or Kenner, or anywhere else, there’s no way that you could ever do anything like that cause it wouldn’t be there when you got home. So we have all had that comfort level of knowing we had that safety. 

When all these people started coming down here and working, we didn’t know who these people were, was there any kind of check done on these people to see if they had any criminal activity or record. There were people that did have a few things missing from their homes that we didn’t have issues with before all the workers came with the BP stuff. So at that point, you didn’t have that level of security that you beforehand. From that point on we never left our keys in the boats, locked our garage. There were people walking all around. Being in a situation of a state of emergency there were some workers who rented houses down here where people don’t live full time and so we didn’t know who was walking through the subdivision and not and you dont know who is watching your coming and going and what your locking and what your not locking.
 
###People were living at the marina here?###

There were people that were renting houses built in the subdivision. People were living down here, but to what to degree. I’m not sure.
 
###What are your suggestions for restoration/recovery of this area?###

I really don’t know I’m the right person, only because I don’t have a good understanding of that and how it plays into the ecosystem. I can say, through some of the meetings I’ve been to, I’ve heard a lot of concerns from people that live down here, people that fish down here for a living about the freshwater intrusion if they bring water in from like what I’ve heard has been proposed, from the river. There are people that have said there are other ways to bring in the sand and everything to build up the marshes that is a different process than what the Corps is proposing. So, when they built this property up, they pumped all this sand in in a matter of a few weeks time frame and it didn’t hurt any of the wildlife or the marine life around here. I don’t know what the process was and how they did it, but from what I understand it’s a different process than what the Corps is proposing. I’ve heard a lot of negative comments about how the Corps wants to do it versus what other people who have fished and lived and hunted and used the land their whole lives suggest.
 
###You were saying before that dredging in this area has been a problem in terms of letting freshwater come in...###

From what I’m understanding, if they start pumping in from the Mississippi River like they are proposing and it’s the type of dredging that they are proposing, I don’t know the official name, it would bring a lot of freshwater into this marsh area and whats going to happen from what I understand- that freshwater will greatly reduce the salinity of the water we have now so it would basically be a freshwater areas versus a brackish or saltwater area. Which when that happens, your not going to have the crabs, the shrimp, the fish down here.
 
###Can you talk about the flood gate issue that you all are working on here?###

A couple of years ago, it came to the attention of landowners down here that the Corps of Engineers wants to build up, right now around this whole subdivision area and the marina, we have a private four foot levee that is owned by citrus lands and what the Corps is looking to do is appropriate that land through the parish....
 
###So is that agricultural land?###

Right now it is and its for citrus growth as well as cow pastures. So you’ll notice if you drive up and down the highway coming in and going out, you’ll see a lot of cows on a lot of this land. That’s what the use of the property has been, but right now, there is a four foot private levee that surrounds both these subdivions and the marina. When this land was approved through local governments, the parish, local governments, it was approved for development for residential areas. At that time when all this was taking place and the approvals were being done by the various government agencies, it was mandated by the national flood insurance program, which now is an arm of FEMA, that in order for people to build a house down here, they had to build up on piling and it had to be eight feet above mean sea level, which is basically four foot. So you had to build up to a height of at least twelve feet for your first floor living space. In addition to that, they also had approved for everybody that was going to build down here, to be able to close in the bottom of their house if they chose, for storage, a garage, whatever they wanted to use it for. With all our permits approved to do so, you know when you go through the building process, inspectors have to come out and approve everything that’s being done. So we all had approvals to do this. Now the Corps based on the flooding that took places after Hurricane Katrina, the appropriations committee of the United States and of congress has approved the Corps to come in and build levees to give flood protection- originally it was the 100 year flood protection. We were told by the Corps that this area would not be included in that flood protection basically because of them trying to use the existing levee structure that’s there now which is the 4/4.5 foot levees that’s out there. Which means that all the people that have bought all this property out here- some have built homes, some have not yet- about 300 home sites- will be left outside of the levee protection. So what will happen is any storm that comes into the Gulf and pushes storm surges in through Barataria Bay- that will come in through Wilkinson Canal which will increase the flooding of all this area down here. In the past, the only time that we’ve had really major flooding so far in the last 5 or 6 has been with Hurricane Ike and we probably had about, over four foot, because the water went over the levees into all the cow pastures. So we had over a four foot storm surge come into this area. Most of the house down here had flood waters in their downstairs living space- or enclosures. There were some people who were fortunate, like where I live in the front of the subdivision who were a little higher, plus we built our lot up higher in anticipation of water. So we were fortunate where we didn’t have it ourselves, but other people in the subdivision, did have flood waters in their downstairs storage and garage spaces. 

So what will happen is if these levees are built up to the 12 foot level that the Corps is proposing to do, it could potentially put anywhere from 4 feet to 10-12 feet of water up underneath your house. And several things are going to happen, number one is all of our electrical service is five feet up off the ground and that is a requirement by Entergy in order for us to number one, protect it against flood waters, but also so that your meters could be read. If its anything over that, they can’t read them. So we had to put our boxes up five foot, if they build those levees up and we get five feet or six feet of water in this area, then all our electrical service will be wiped out which means you cant run your air conditioners to keep your living space dry to keep out the toxic mold that’s going to accumulate from the flood water- it’ll just come right up into your homes and that just means that everyone’s going to have to totally rebuild their houses. So that’s a major health issue. In addition to that, everytime we get flooding back here it effects the infrastructure- the streets- we already got streets where sinkage is happening and you can go down there and see how much some of these streets have sunk down. 

The other thing is that we have lift stations that push the sewage out of the subdivision into the lines on the main highway. Everytime that we have flooding back here all those systems have to be flushed out because of contamination. And so it takes time to do all that so that’s something else that’s going to be greatly affected if we get flood waters trapped in here. In the past, when there’s been flooding, its mainly been because the four foot levee has had a breach in it somewhere and that’s whats flooded these areas up until now. That’ll be another issue, these flood waters, if there’s breach that happens in the back, with twelve foot levees, that waters going to flood not only all the area within the levee protection system, but its gonna flood the only access in and out of the parish here which is Highway 23. And that water gets trapped between these twelve foots levees and the Mississippi River levees which is more than 12 feet high- where’s that water going to go? Its going to be trapped. So how are they going to get rid of it? At least with the four foot levees, the water can go out through all these canals and through the Wilkinson Canal, out into Barataria Bay and the Gulf. Whereas if they have these 12 foot levees its not going to automatically happen. And what they’ve had to do in the past- they’ve had to take pumps and stretch pumps- hoses from the highway to where the canal is, right on the other side of the property where there is the first living canal and also on this side, they’ve had to pump the water in to the main canal and these other drainage ditches to pump the water out from the highway. So that’s another issue that they’re going to run up against because they’re going to have 12 foot levees, how are they going to pump the water out over a 12 foot levees? I’m sure if they bring in big enough pumps it can be done, but that’s another issue.
 
###So how does this make you feel- that the federal government is trying to proceed with plans that they’ve designed without taking into account the way that residents feel?###

They say that they are doing this under the guidelines of protecting people, well, you’re not protecting people if you intentionally leave them outside of a levee protection system and flood them. Now, we proposed to the Corps back in 2009 a plan to construct a flood gate across the Wilkinson Canal, which will protect all of us here and as well as the marina. It not only protects all these homes, but it also gives a safe harbor to the fishermen that are south of us, down in Empire, down in Port Sulphur, and even further down in Buras and it gives them a safe haven to bring their ships, their boats to protect them from the hurricanes and from the devastation that they saw during Hurricane Katrina. That’s not just a pleasure boat that they use to go out on on weekends or on a family vacation, its their livelihood and they need that to support their families and to support themselves.
 
###Do you know why they aren’t interested in doing putting up a flood gate?###

Mike Mudge and myself, and now we have a few other people that have been working with us- we’ve formed a committee, the committee was originated with Mike Mudge and myself and what we have done is we have been meeting with the Corps since 2009 through conference calls, in person, through emails, trying to help them understand the devastation that their recommendation is going to cause to the people living here and to this whole area. They are now looking at the possibility of what the cost estimates would be and what the effects would be to install a floodgate. So they are now entertaining that scenario and our recommendation on doing that. At this point, we don’t have an answer about what their final recommendation is going to be to Colonel Flemming, who is now the Corp of Engineers head down here. They have been working with us, looking at different impacts of what a levee would be versus not having a levee and just leaving what we have now which is four foot private levee with the installation of a flood gate. They are now entertaining that. We have been able to bring to them a lot of information that they were totally unaware of- basically how our infrastructure works down here between our lift stations, how our street drainage ties- I can’t think of the technical term, but it goes through the four foot private levee into drainage ditches that eventually come around to the pump stations at the end of these subdivisions and get pumped out into the marshland. They were totally unaware of that and they really did not understand how- how everything is going to be impacted by the people down here. Its also just their lack of knowledge of knowing what the mandates were set when we purchased this property. We had to sign covenants stating that we understood we had to build at a certain height. They apparently did not do all of their due diligence to have all this information beforehand. So they are looking at it, originally we were told, this is over a year ago, that the cost difference of a floodgate versus a levee system was over $40 million. Since then, there’s virtually no difference in cost. The latest numbers we’ve heard is that its $10 million difference in cost. They still have more studies that they’re doing, we’re foraging ahead, we’ve created this brochure that I’ve given you, it gives you a basic idea... (describes whats in brochure)
 
What we try to help the Corps understand- you know, they have told us that they feel we would have minimal sustained damage. Now, we’ve never been able to really get them to explain what is “minimal sustained damage”- is that eight feet of water? Is it ten feet of water? Four week of water? Nobody has come up with an exact amount that they would feel we would be inundated by. Now, you know, if you’re a home owner and you live in an area of town and someone tells you “we’re going to build this levee and you will have minimal sustained damage” well your house is on the ground and whether you get 4 inches of water or two feet of water, you still have to go through the same amount of home repairs as whether its four inches of water or two feet of water- you still have to go through the same amount of home repairs as if its 4 inches or not. If we get, say 10 feet of water, when they build this 12 foot levee, ten feet of water, hurricane comes in, all this water storm surge comes in, you have 50, 60, 70 mile an hour winds, you have at least four foot seas. You get four foot swells coming in, that’s 2-4 feet of water being forced into your house- you have 2-4 feet of contaminated water in your house. So you still have a total destruction from the water. From what the Corps is looking to do. The logical solution is to put up a flood gate.  It’s a win win for everybody. Another thing that the Corps did not realize or understand is… if they put up the floodgate like we are proposing, all of this levee that surrounds this area, won’t be necessary to do. If there would be a levee breach, it gives parish officials- 3 to 4 days before flood waters will hit highway 23. So it gives them an opportunity to try with sand bags to plug up the breaches before the water hits the highways. If that levee is built and you get a breech (points to brochure), its only a matter of hours before the water gets to the highway and is totally flooded. If that were to happen, there’s a town north of here called Ironton and the highway goes down- it’s a lower lying area than what we are here on Highway 23- that whole town and all the residents that live there would have total devastation in addition to what we would have.
 
###When people tell you why do you live here, whats your response?###

When this land was approved for development, and approved for sale for residential development, everyone that purchased a lot down here, whether they lived here fulltime or not, built down here knowing that we were building behind a four foot private levee. I can pretty much guarantee you that if these three hundred people and businesses that had purchased property here knew that there would be a 12 foot levee going up and what the impact would be, number one, no one would have bought the land, and second of all, they would definitely have built up higher.
And everyone that I’ve talked to in this subdivision, if I knew that this would happen, that they would look at building a 12 foot levee and keep us outside the protection area, I wouldn’t have bought this property or built this house. No way anyone would have done it, we built behind a 4 foot private levee so we knew what the maximum could potentially be that we would get.
 
###So you were aware of the conditions that you were building under...###

Well they are changing the game… what does that do for people that have places built? If I came in today and someone told me the Corps is going to build 12 foot levees so if you want to buy a lot, that’s the condition your building under- I would have had the option and the choice of deciding whether I wanted to take that risk or not.
 
###And this has happened in other areas of Plaquemines too, is that correct?###

Well I know there are areas down south of here that have camps built up on pilings just like us that have no levee protection. They live on the water like we do. And whats going to happen is, just like us, they are going to build that levee up, their levee is going to come up along this line in the back. A lot of these camps- they have about a 4 foot levee like us. They know if the water comes up, at least its going to come up over the 4 foot levee and their places will be protected. If the levee there goes up to 12 feet, they are going to be in the same situation we are. Its going to totally devastate what they have. And the other thing is- when you get a storm surge coming from the Gulf, through Barataria Bay, as it comes up Wilkinson Canal, its gonna be like a funnel effect- that water’s going to have such a strength and speed coming in, that its going to come all the way to where the Corps is proposing the levee to be. These houses have the potential of being knocked off the columns that they are on depending on how big the storm is and how big of a storm surge we get and the force of the waters as it comes in all the way up the canal. Especially the houses that are right here in the front, that’s going to get it the worst because its all going to come rushing in and its going to go…you know, think about if you fill up a bucket or a bathtub and you start pushing the water from the back of the tub to the front of the tub, once the water gets to the front of the tub its going to go up. That force is going to be greater on the area where its going up until it settles and goes back down again, so the houses that are right here on the front- they have even a greater risk of damage than anyone else.
 
###Its kinda like what has happened with the MRGO?###

Exactly, and that’s what we are trying to stress in the communication we are developing- they are creating a mini MRGO. If their original proposal is what they go with.

Also, the floodgate gives this area and even areas south of us is, they have a place where they could have a base of operations for emergencies- like with the BP oil spill- they had for a period of time a base of operations here, helicopters and boats were able to get in and out, medical people were able to get in and out, so it gives you a base of operations where emergency command posts can be set up and dispatched from. This is pretty much the middle of Plaquemines parish so they can easily set up a command post here and have access to south of us down where there’s Buras, Empire, Port Sulphur, Braithewaite, all the way down to the end of the parish at Venice. It gives them a base of operations that they can get to very easily whether its by air, land or water.
 
###One of the reasons its so important to have this floodgate, but that we’ve had these increased issues with flooding is because of decimation of wetlands- can you talk about why the canal areas and these small bits of wetland in Barataria  and the Bay Wilkinson area are so important to the protection of this area?###

That’s our first line of defense and this is going down to the first line of barrier islands in the Gulf. That’s the first line of protection, especially for Grand Isle and through the years of the oil companies being able to dredge for oil out in the Gulf, you know, just like the MRGO, they’ve had to make canals to get in and out to various rigs set up, even out here in Barataria Bay, having to get in and out to the plants, they’ve cut all these little canals for access waterways just like the MRGO, it gives no protection to whats already here and all it does is it allows more intrusion of salt water into these areas that eat the marshlands. When you build the barriers out there and you have these lines of defense it helps that storm surge from coming in. And everytime that storm surge comes in, it deteriorates what we do have left- it washes it out. So by having those barrier islands, those lines of defense, it helps protect the marshlands that are closer in from eroding.
 
###If those erode further, it’ll be less protection in this area for yall?###

More devastation. Ss well as the fact that we’re loosing our coastline, we’re loosing valuable land. You hear the reports about how much coastline we’re loosing- I forget how many feet or miles it is every year, but this will help protect that. Building up those barrier islands will give us an opportunity to rebuild all this wetland through various projects. There are various ways to rebuild it and its looking at the smart way to do it and the least impactful to the shrimp, crabs and fish that are down here in these areas.
 
Do you have any hopes about how the area could change for better in the future? Are there any positive interventions that you can see happening after the oil spill?
I would hope, and there was a meeting that they had back in February, it was called the Myrtle Grove mini diversion project I think, and there was a lot of people that came to these meetings that have fished commercially and lived down here their entire lives and what I would hope is that the Corps of Engineers and any of the other organizations, government or otherwise, that are involved in this, listen to the people that have been down here, lived here, fished here, camped here their whole entire lives and even their parents lives, for generations. Because, they know how these waters are, they know how the tides come and go, they know how the storms affect this area, they provide a lot of valuable information and a lot of valuable ways that they can accomplish what they want to do without destroying things that we come down here to do- the fishing, crabbing, shrimping, that we’ve all come to enjoy. 

There’s one gentleman- I think the organization he’s with is from the Lafitte area- and he talked about how the Corps did a diversion project in that area of the waters and how its changed everything down there from being brackish water to freshwater so they have no more trout, they have no more redfish, croakers, flounder, they don’t have drum fish that they can catch, sheephead and eat anymore. Its all the freshwater- the bass and I don’t know all the freshwater fish there are, but that’s what they’re stuck with now. So its totally changed everything that they grew up being able to do.
 
If there is something that you can tell, because this map will be available to people from all over, to somebody not here about this area, what would you tell them?
Get informed, talk to the organizations and the people down here, just like we’ve formed a committee to try and protect this area and we’re getting ready to do a big campaign, we have a marketing plan and we’re getting ready to initiate it. What I would hope is that people will hear all sides of it and hopefully promote peoples interests enough that they want to come down here and help us fight for what we’ve all been able to enjoy just like they would want in areas that they lived in. You know, if they lived in an area that has a lake they are doing a certain type of fishing and an organization, government or otherwise wants to come in and change it- for people to help them with their fight and their struggle- that’s what I’d hope.
 
###Anything else you’d like to add?###

If people want to know more and help with our fight to help with our community, they can contact me at [barbsmar@bellsouth.net](mailto:barbsmar@bellsouth.net) Help us fight for the protection we deserve, just like the rest of Plaquemines parish, Louisiana or the entire United States. We’re looking for any and all help we can get.