The state of Louisiana has lost thousands of acres of its coastal lands in the past century due to humans intervening in crucial natural processes. However, a $3 billion one-of-a-kind project has found a way to mimic those natural processes and potentially restore Louisiana’s coastal habitats.

Louisiana’s Coastal Crisis

Over the past two centuries, the United States there has seen a loss of over half of all its original wetland habitats. From 1932 to 2016, coastal Louisiana has lost over two-thousand square miles of land. While Louisiana’s wetlands represent about forty percent of the United States wetlands, over eighty percent of wetland loss in the country can be attributed to them. Another three-thousand square miles of Louisiana’s coast could be lost over the next 50 years if there is no intervention to address current levels of sediment loss.

There are several factors contributing to what is known as the “land loss crisis” in Louisiana. Natural evolutionary processes can account for some land loss seen, but human activities undeniably play a larger part in the receding coastline. Things like dredging wetlands for canals or draining and filling for the purposes of agriculture, grazing, and development, are responsible for much of the marsh habitat destruction.

The levee system in Louisiana, which has altered the flow of the Mississippi River, is considered to be the greatest contributor to land loss in the state. Multiple levees across Louisiana have cut off the water supply from the Mississippi into basins like the Barataria and Breton Sound. While the levees serve the purpose of protecting coastal communities from flooding, they also restrict the deposition of sediment and nutrients into these basins. The loss of this natural process has led to an inability to sustain healthy wetlands and ultimately has increased the rates of Louisiana’s coastal plain land loss.

Coastal communities are becoming more vulnerable to flooding due to the fact that the barrier islands, marshes, and swamps that reduce incoming storm surges are receding. Flood protection systems in place throughout Louisiana may also be at risk due to the land around them eroding. It has been estimated that the damage from flooding will increase from an average of $15.2 billion annually to a staggering $24.3 billion annually if nothing is done to address sediment erosion.

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

On April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon, an oil drilling rig operating in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded, killing eleven workers. This would become the largest oil spill in history, as over 4 million barrels of oil flowed into the ocean over an 87-day period before being contained on July 15, 2010. In December 2010, eight months after the spill, the United States filed a complaint against BP Exploration & Production in an attempt to hold someone responsible for the tragedy. As a result, a $5.5 billion Clean Water Act penalty was paid by BP Exploration & Production. Another $8.8 billion fine in natural resource damages was imposed on the company. Over $7.29 billion in settlement money was awarded to the State of Louisiana for coastal projects that are planned to be underway through 2031.

Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) was established and has since utilized the settlement money to launch numerous projects to combat the erosion of Louisiana’s coast. Currently, twelve projects are under or nearing construction and another twenty-six are in the design phase. CPRA aims to “create or benefit more than 150,000 acres of coastal wetlands using Deepwater Horizon settlement funds”. These funds have given an opportunity for Louisiana to create the largest scale coastal protection plan in the entire nation. The “Coastal Master Plan” is described as an “innovative, aggressive approach” to coastal land loss in Louisiana and will require over $50 billion to complete.

The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion

The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, an initiative of the Coastal Master Plan, is a first-of-its-kind coastal restoration project in Louisiana. It is taking $3 billion in settlement money to “reconnect the Mississippi River”. Louisiana representative Garrett Graves spoke about the project in a news release, saying, “The Mississippi River built Louisiana –- and finally reconnecting it with coastal areas that are currently starved of freshwater and sediment will ensure our future”. Once the project is completed, it will become one of the largest environmental infrastructure projects in the entirety of United States history. The project will establish sediment diversions, which are controlled structures that mimic natural land building processes. Large gates will be incorporated into an area of a levee sitting southeast of New Orleans in order to divert sediment-rich water from the Mississippi River into a channel that travels to Louisiana’s Barataria basin. It is hoped that the sediment will gradually build up and restore land to part of Louisiana’s coast.

The chair of CPRA, Bren Haase, estimates the project will build twenty to forty square miles of land over the next thirty to fifty years. However, issues such as subsidence (the inking of land) and sea levels rising are predicted to minimize the potential of the project and could even cause a net loss of land over time. Despite this daunting information, the project has been seen as a factor in increasing the importance of building up Louisiana’s coast. According to the CPRA, “After 50 years of operation, under the higher sea level rise assumptions used in the environmental review process, about 20% of the wetlands remaining in Barataria Basin will only be there because of the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion”.

The Project’s Potential

The project has the capability to rebuild thousands of acres of land that will provide increased storm surge protection, something threatened by the current land loss. The project will also ensure habitats to sustain a productive estuary system for a large variety of seafood, fish, wildlife, and other aquatic life. Above all the project could bring billions in economic benefit to Louisiana parishes that surround the project area. While the sediment diversions are being built, it is expected that an average of 3,095 jobs will be created across five parishes in Louisiana. These will primarily be construction-related jobs that will have significantly higher wages than local companies offer. A recent study estimated that the construction will lead to $308.2 million in total wage earnings in Plaquemines parish, where the project is being built.

Local Concerns

The restoration project has faced some backlash from locals in the Plaquemines parish. A stop-work order was placed on the site earlier in the year due to legal disputes from commercial fishers, oyster harvesters, and state and local officials. The introduction of the Mississippi’s freshwater into the brackish and saltwater areas may pose a threat to some wildlife, potentially killing bottlenose dolphins in the area and impacting fish and sea turtles in various ways. Above all, the freshwater threatens the seafood that the local economy relies on– shrimp and oysters. The parish is responsible for the majority, about 70%, of all commercial landings for oysters, crabs, finfish, and shrimp in the state. The oyster industry alone in Louisiana earns $317 million annually and supplies almost 4,000 direct jobs.

In response to these concerns, coastal officials created a plan that involved dedicating $10 million to supporting numerous projects to aid fishers and oyster harvesters who will be impacted as a result of the project. Overall, a total of $378 million has been allocated by the project to mitigate impacts on communities, including elevating docks and homes and offering buyouts for residents seeking to relocate. $54 million within this budget will also be used for building new oyster beds and expanding old beds. Due to the efforts made by project managers to address local concerns, on June 13, local officials reached an agreement that partially lifted the stop-work order put in place. The construction site has since resumed preparation for the sediment diversions.

Recap

Although humans may have caused the loss of over a thousand square miles of land in Louisiana’s coast, they also have the innovation and resources to restore it. After gaining billions of dollars from filing a complaint in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill along the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the CPRA is now funding a Coastal Master Plan that involves numerous projects aimed at restoring Louisiana’s Coast. One of these projects, the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, will divert sediment-rich water from the Mississippi River back into basins in Louisiana that have been blocked off by man-made levees. This will allow sediment to build up and will slowly restore coastal habitats in the area.

While there are many benefits to the project, local concerns about the fishing industry caused a halt in the project’s continuation. Managers of the project then allocated millions to ensure that these concerns were addressed. Now the project has resumed, but the delay has set back the original timeline.

References

1. EPA
2. CPRA- Deep Horizon 10 Year Anniversary
3. Mid-Basin Sediment Diversion Program
4. CPRA- A Changing Landscape
5. USGS
6. LSU
7. CPRA- Our Plan
8. Mid-Basin- Mid Barataria
9. APNews- A billion-dollar coastal project begins in Louisiana. Will it work as sea levels rise?
10. APNews- Progress announced in talks to resume stalled $3 billion coastal restoration project
11. Insurance Journal