A Blueprint for Fixing the Coast
Jan 20
The 2012 Coastal Master Plan is a realistic assessment of what it will take to create new wetlands and increase hurricane protections for people living in the coastal zone. Louisiana’s sportsmen need to get behind this bold plan to save the coast.
In mid-summer of 2010, amid the chaos of the BP oil spill and the ever-present threat of approaching tropical storms and hurricanes, about a dozen scientists, planners and other specialists from Louisiana’s Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration sat down to discuss what was probably the most difficult task they had ever faced.
By law, this group was required to write another coastal restoration and hurricane protection master plan, sell that plan to the people of Louisiana and have it ready before the 2012 legislative session.
The original master plan was approved by the state legislature in 2007 when the images of Hurricane Katrina and Rita were still fresh. It was highly conceptual and basically explained what most already knew: the state’s coastal marshes and barrier islands were washing away at an alarming rate, Louisiana’s coastal communities, industries, hunting and fishing opportunities and unique culture were all threatened, and something had to be done to fix it.
The 2012 version was envisioned to be much more specific about what could and could not reasonably be restored and protected. It was to use rigorous scientific analysis to pick where levees should be built and marshes should be restored. It was going to have to take a stand, finally, on where diversions from the Mississippi River needed to be built and what those diversions could accomplish. It was going to have to estimate how much all of this would cost. And, most importantly, it was going to have to make tough decisions regardless of political pressure to make every parish, every stakeholder, happy.
The just-released draft 2012 plan largely accomplishes those goals. It suggests as many as eight Mississippi River diversions that will protect swamps along the rim of Lake Maurepas and build land below New Orleans. The sediment diversions, staggered between the upper-Barataria and Breton Basins, will hopefully be self-sustaining and build new land after each river flooding cycle, similar to what is happening in the Atchafalaya and Wax Lake deltas.
The plan calls for the restoration of nearly every barrier island west of the Mississippi. It maps an extensive array of large-scale marsh creation projects from the upper reaches of the Biloxi Marsh west to areas between Fourchon and Grand Isle, western Terrebonne Parish, Vermilion and Cameron Parishes. It aims to direct water and sediment from the Atchafalaya Basin toward western Terrebonne to help curb saltwater intrusion. And it prescribes the restoration of a host of natural ridges and shorelines.
All this at an estimated price of $50 billion over 50 years—intimidating numbers considering Congress’ current unwillingness to part with any federal funds and public demands that these areas be restored and protected yesterday rather than decades down the road.
The plan calls for a 50-50 split of this funding between restoration and hurricane protection, and will provide levees for communities that desperately need them and recommends the elevation of homes across the coastal zone.
It’s a good plan but it also has its inherent weaknesses. It’s just not possible to know exactly how each project will work and what political and natural obstacles lay ahead. Even those who wrote the plan admit that with excerpts like, “we must also acknowledge that substantial uncertainties remain…we do know, however, that dramatic land loss will continue unless we act boldly. In many cases, the risk of doing nothing is far greater than the risk of acting with incomplete knowledge.”
Even with an estimated $50 billion to spend, which is far from guaranteed, some communities have been left out. Some marshes will not be restored. Some barrier islands will continue to wash away. People living in those communities, hunting in those marshes and fishing on those barrier islands are undoubtedly and understandably disappointed.
But, contemplating a future where political wrangling, piecemeal projects and an unwillingness to change continue to dominate means Louisiana’s coast is destined to lose what little remains.
The state is accepting public comments through February 25, 2012. The plan is online at www.coastal.la.gov.
A version of this article will be published in the February issue of Marsh and Bayou magazine.
