Gaining Ground in the Bayou

Since the early 1930s, an estimated 1.2 million acres of the Louisiana coast have vanished into the Gulf of Mexico. Will the largest wetland system in the Lower 48 be gone before the turn of the century?

Louisiana's coastal wetlands are disappearing at a rate of 25 square miles per year, roughly the equivalent of a football field every half hour, and the potential consequences of this are staggering.

Located where the great Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, the area is home to four of the nation’s top 10 largest ports and serves as a hub for trade between the U.S. and Latin America. Nearly 34 percent of the nation’s natural gas supply and more than 29 percent of the nation’s crude oil supply move through the state and are connected to almost 50 percent of U.S. refining capacity. The wetlands and barrier island systems serve as hurricane and storm surge buffers for ports and communities, provide winter habitat for more than five million birds, and are a flyway for about 70 percent of all waterfowl that migrate through the U.S. The area’s commercial and recreational fisheries are recognized as nationally important. And no less significant are the cultural contributions of coastal Louisiana, which is home to historic New Orleans and its two million citizens—46 percent of the state’s population.

“In the past, natural factors such as land subsidence and erosion, sea level change, and storm events were offset by the land building and nourishment processes of the deltaic cycle,” explains PBS&J Program Manager Bill Hinsley. “However, human settlement and economic development—including the building of levees, upstream reservoirs, channel creation and dredging, bank stabilization, oil and gas development, and other activities—have altered historic hydrology and inputs of land-building sediment and nutrients. The result is a situation where more land is being lost than is being created.

”Fortunately, collaborative efforts by the state of Louisiana, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and other state and federal agencies are working to arrest the rapid erosion of this vital ecosystem.

Progress To Date

It was 1972 when the Center for Wetland Resources at Louisiana State University published the Environmental Atlas and Multi-Use Management Plan for South-Central Louisiana, which provided the first assessment of the extent and magnitude of Louisiana’s land loss and opened the eyes of the public to the growing problem. At the time, however, the focus was on future development and on minimizing its impact on the environment.

In 1990, the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act, commonly called the “Breaux Act,” was passed, making significant federal funding available to address the coastal wetlands losses. Since the Breaux Act, 131 projects—66 have been constructed and are in operation, while another 65 projects are either in design or construction phases—have resulted in more than 50,000 acres of wetlands protected or restored. This year’s extension of the Breaux Act through 2019, which could bring an average $60 million annually in federal funding, is considered critical for the continued efforts of restoring Louisiana’s coast.

While these projects have brought localized success, it has become apparent that a systematic approach involving larger projects to restore natural geomorphic structures and processes will be required to work in concert with the smaller projects. In 2002, the President and Congress challenged the USACE to develop a highly focused effort for a large-scale approach. As a result, the USACE submitted the Louisiana Coastal Area (LCA), Louisiana Ecosystem Restoration Study last November. The plan identified the most critical ecological needs, set goals, and outlined a $1.9-billion program of near-term projects along with longer-range studies for achieving these goals.

Dan Hitchings, director of regional business for the Mississippi Valley Division of the USACE, summarizes that “the plan recommended in the report of the Chief of Engineers, dated January 31, 2005, included seven major components focused to address the near-term needs. The combination of near-term projects, the science and technology program, demonstration projects, beneficial use of dredge material, and longer range studies of large projects will provide a foundation for future investments to protect this critical national resource.”
 
What’s Ahead?

Preliminary estimates of the cost of a comprehensive coastwide restoration program range from about $10 billion to $14 billion in today’s dollars to be spent over the next 20 to 30 years. Securing this level of funding will be a challenging task.

However, according to Randy Hanchey, deputy secretary of the state’s Department of Natural Resources, “there is at least $100 billion of infrastructure at risk—people’s homes, roads, bridges, oil and gas facilities, ports, navigation facilities and the like. In addition, coastal Louisiana is one of the world’s most significant ecological treasures. Surely an investment which would protect and restore even a portion of this area can be justified.”

The Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) currently under consideration and the Energy bill recently passed by the Congress provide significant support for Louisiana coastal restoration efforts. “The WRDA and Energy bills will enable us to accelerate our efforts to initiate construction of some of the highest priority projects in the areas of greatest land loss,” says Hanchey. “Our challenge is to demonstrate that these funds can be used effectively and that we can manage the design and construction of projects that will produce results in terms of protecting and restoring coastal Louisiana.”

Restoration of the Louisiana coast is a national as well as state concern. Above photo (L-R): Director of Regional Business for the Mississippi Valley Division of USACE Dan Hitchings, PBS&J Program Manager Bill Hinsley, Deputy Secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Natural Resources Randy Hanchey, and PBS&J Project Manager Webb Smith. Photo courtesy of Lane Lefort, USACE, New Orleans.