New Fisheries Bill Adds Infrastructure Failure as a Disaster Trigger for Crawfish Farmers

This section of the Fisheries Modernization Act of 2025 is all about expanding the safety net for certain freshwater fisheries when disaster strikes. Specifically, it changes the federal rules for receiving disaster relief money under the Magnuson-Stevens Act by adding a whole new category of eligible causes: the “infrastructure-related cause.”

What does that mean in practice? Before this, fisheries mostly qualified for aid due to natural events (like hurricanes) or human-caused events (like oil spills). Now, if a fishery is damaged because a piece of federal or state infrastructure—think flood control systems, levees, or water diversion projects—fails or operates poorly, that can officially trigger federal relief funds. It’s basically acknowledging that sometimes the government’s own plumbing can be the problem.

The Crawfish Catch: Targeted Relief

While the change applies broadly, the bill specifically calls out the red swamp crawfish and white river crawfish fisheries for special consideration. For these specific fisheries, when they apply for aid, they can now submit detailed information on environmental factors like water quality problems, extreme floods, or droughts to prove their hardship. This is crucial because crawfish are extremely sensitive to water conditions, and infrastructure issues often directly affect their habitat through water flow and quality changes.

For a crawfish farmer in Louisiana, this is a big deal. If a poorly maintained levee system fails during a heavy rain and floods their ponds with polluted water, destroying their stock, they now have a clear path to federal aid that they might not have had before. It ties the relief directly to the operational risks created by large public works projects.

Combining the Causes

The legislation also clarifies how disaster causes are assessed. It ensures that when determining eligibility, officials can look at any combination of causes—natural, human-caused, and the new infrastructure-related events. This is important because real-world disasters are rarely simple; often, a natural event (a heavy storm) exposes a weakness in infrastructure (a failing pump station), leading to the eventual damage. This provision allows the relief process to reflect that complexity.

It’s worth noting that while this expands eligibility for freshwater fisheries, the bill explicitly states that it doesn't take away any existing eligibility for marine or anadromous fisheries (like salmon or striped bass) that already qualify under the existing Section 312 rules. The goal here is expansion, not replacement.

The Fine Print: Who Pays and the Vague Language

While this is a clear benefit for the targeted fishing communities, there are two points to consider. First, adding more ways to qualify for federal disaster relief means a potential increase in payouts, which ultimately falls on taxpayers. Second, the term “infrastructure-related cause” is pretty broad. While the intent is likely to cover major failures, the vagueness could lead to subjective interpretations down the line. Determining exactly when a failure in operations qualifies as a disaster trigger, rather than just a bad year, might be a point of contention for the agencies administering the funds.