A multi-billion-dollar plan to create new wetlands along Louisiana’s steadily vanishing Gulf coastline was abandoned in late July by state officials who cited the project’s rising costs and threats to the state’s vibrant seafood industry. [emphasis, links added]
In announcing its decision to cancel the Pelican State’s largest-ever effort to replenish southeastern Louisiana’s sediment-starved wetlands, the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said it had determined that the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project was “no longer viable due to multiple factors,” including litigation and rising costs.
Funded by the 2010 Deep Water Horizon oil spill settlement, the project – after years of controversy – finally broke ground in 2023 in Plaquemines Parish southeast of New Orleans.
The large-scale environmental engineering entailed in the project foresaw recreating southeastern Louisiana’s ecosystem as it existed before levees were constructed to protect New Orleans from the Mississippi’s not-infrequent floods.
Those flood-protection measures, however, by diverting floodwaters away from natural coastal wetlands, also deprived them of the sediments normally deposited during flooding.
Wetlands rely on sediments to counteract subsidence, the compaction of sediments under their own weight. Take away the sediments, and wetlands are in trouble.
“The coastal marshes of Louisiana provide a natural barrier against the erosion caused by fierce storms, which often come from the Gulf,” wrote Katherine Kemp for Tulane University in 2000.
“Because of the loss of these wetlands, the Louisiana coast has receded several thousand feet over the past few decades, and coastal fishermen have also been deprived of a ready source of income.”
This, in a nutshell, is the challenge Louisiana faces. The levees built to save lives are destroying coastal marshes.
The influx of water from the Gulf has prompted talk about “rising sea levels” caused by man-made climate change. The Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, sounded the alarm over rising sea levels in Louisiana.
“Our changing climate is likely to increase damages from floods, reduce crop yields and harm fisheries, increase the number of unpleasantly hot days, and increase the risk of heat stroke and other heat-related illnesses,” the agency warned in 2016.
Such fearmongering notwithstanding, as Kemp noted 25 years ago, it is not the sea in Louisiana that is rising; it is the land that is disappearing.
…snip…
As serious as the wetlands depletion in southeastern Louisiana is, the nearly $3 billion project aimed at its mitigation carried its own risks. Of particular concern was the influx of fresh water from the Mississippi and the effect it would have on coastal commercial fishermen.
In welcoming the project’s demise, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry said it was “no longer financially or practically viable,” the Washington Post reported.
He added that the diversion “threatens Louisiana’s seafood industry, our coastal culture, and the livelihood of our fishermen – who have sustained our state for generations.”
Top Image by Andrei Prodan via Pixabay
Read full post at Issues & Insights
