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Restoring Louisiana's Coast
By MAGGIE I. JARUZEL
The first thing a visitor notices after stepping inside the second-story New Orleans office of the Gulf Restoration Network (GRN) is its soaring 14-foot ceilings. On nearly every wall are large, colorful maps, including one of Louisiana with hundreds of black dots along its coastline.
“Each of those dots represents an oil or gas rig,” said Cynthia Sarthou, executive director of GRN, a Mott Foundation grantee.
“The wetlands provide protection for the oil and gas infrastructure. Wetlands can lessen a storm's overall impact when it hits land. As we lose wetlands, everything becomes at risk.”
Sarthou’s sense of urgency about protecting Louisiana’s wetlands is shared by an unlikely ally, R. King Milling, president of the New Orleans-based Whitney Bank.
According to conventional wisdom, the business and environmental communities are supposed to be at odds, he said, but not after hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast in 2005.
“The necessary infrastructure required for the delivery of petroleum products was built assuming it would have the protections of this massive ecosystem,” Milling said. “After Katrina, oil spiked over $70 a barrel because there was damage that put production off for an extended period of time.”
He and Sarthou agree that without the natural protection of wetlands, future storms have the potential to destroy an infrastructure responsible for supplying one-third of oil and gas that is consumed in the nation — whether drilled in the Gulf of Mexico or drilled elsewhere and shipped through Louisiana’s ports.
 Wetlands can lessen a storm's overall impact when it hits land. |
In addition, 30 percent of the nation’s crabs, oysters, shrimp and fish are caught in these waters, which also function as an intercoastal transportation system that moves goods to and from several states, and to world markets.
Milling, a native of Louisiana, serves as chairman of the Louisiana Governor’s Advisory Commission on Coastal Protection, Restoration and Conservation. He also is chairman of America’s WETLAND Foundation. The foundation manages a Louisiana-sponsored public education campaign to raise awareness about the impact of the state’s wetland loss on the nation and world.
In addition, Milling is a board member of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL), a Mott Foundation grantee that has received $615,000 in general support since 2000.
“This is not just about the environment. It’s pure economics,” he said.
“From a business perspective, it’s critical to be involved. Prior to Katrina, some business leaders thought I was nuts getting involved in all of this. But Katrina took the hypothesis out of the discussion and turned it into fact. We must protect Louisiana and the national assets that are here.”
Sarthou is pleased that Milling, and other Louisiana business leaders like him, acknowledge how economically important it is — to both the state and nation — to protect and restore the wetlands.
But the national and global significance of Louisiana’s valuable biodiversity can’t be underestimated either, Sarthou said.
Wetlands are an ideal spawning and feeding grounds for fish and shellfish, she says. They provide nesting grounds for birds, such as eagles, and they also are home to waterfowl and many mammal species, including mink, otter and even black bears. A variety of plants, insects, reptiles and amphibians — some of which are endangered, such as the green sea turtle — also inhabit these areas.
“The coastal communities are filled with a variety of species that need the protection provided by wetlands,” Sarthou said.
Since 1994, GRN has been addressing environmental issues in the Gulf of Mexico states, including coastal land loss, on behalf of a network of about 50 non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Mott has provided GRN with seven grants totaling $655,000 since 2000 to support its work.
Wetlands are vitally important because they serve as nature’s “kidneys,” filtering pollutants and soil runoff from upstream sources, and as its “speed bumps” for major storms, Sarthou said. The shallow waters commonly found in bayous (swamp regions connected to lakes or rivers) reduce wave action, while marsh vegetation provides frictional drag.
As a result, scientists have concluded that wetlands can reduce a storm’s overall impact when it hits land and they also can lessen the height of a storm surge.
However, Louisiana’s wetlands have been disappearing at the rate of one acre every half hour for many decades, resulting in a loss of 1.2 million acres since the 1930s. A major cause of this wetland loss was the massive levy system put in place after the flood of 1927, Milling said.
While protecting people and property, the levy system had an unintended consequence of choking off the supply of fresh water and nutrients that fed the wetlands, initiating their slow death, he said.
Thus, hurricanes Katrina and Rita had few natural barriers to act like sponges and absorb the rain and wind they generated. When the storms blasted ashore, they claimed at least 1,400 lives, destroyed more than 200,000 homes and displaced about 1 million state residents.
Consequently, after the hurricanes caused the greater New Orleans’ economy to come to a halt — and affected the economies elsewhere in the state and nation — there was a much greater push to put coastal wetlands protection and restoration on the state and national agendas.
“Our goal is to educate the public and legislators,” Sarthou said. “There’s a large constituency that cares about the long-term repercussions of what’s happening in the Gulf Coast.”
To protect Louisiana and the nation’s assets, a draft master plan — unveiled in February 2007 and now under public review — addresses both the need for coastal wetlands restoration and hurricane protection.
The report, “Integrated Ecosystem Restoration and Hurricane Protection: Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast,” was authored by the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana (CPRA) Interagency Planning Team.
 Wetlands provide natural protection for the massive infrastructure of Louisianna's petroleum industry. |
The authority is comprised of about a dozen people who head a variety of state departments. Milling also participates wearing a couple of hats — as a prominent businessman and as chairman of the Governor’s Advisory Commission.
The banker and other authority members know that protecting and restoring Louisiana’s natural “speed bumps” comes with a tremendous price tag. While estimates vary widely, most people agree with Louisiana’s Department of Natural Resources staff, which predicts the costs could exceed $30 billion.
Much of the money is expected to come from a percentage of the $6 billion the federal government gets annually from offshore oil royalties in the Gulf of Mexico. In Louisiana, a recent constitutional amendment earmarks all such income for coastal restoration. These designated royalties are in addition to other public and private funds for rebuilding efforts.
The estimated $30-billion price tag is so high because there are no easy fixes, said Mark Ford, executive director of CRCL.
He said many pre- and post-Katrina studies show that several factors have contributed to Louisiana’s vulnerable coast, including rerouting the natural flow of the Mississippi River, erecting levees that were never completely interconnected and allowing people to build in wetlands.
From Ford’s viewpoint, enough studies have been done; it’s time to start acting.
“We’ve learned that we have much more success working with nature than against it. In the areas where there were natural marshes, the levees didn’t fail,” he said.
“This is the seventh largest delta system in the world. It’s an awesome system. It’s North America’s version of the Amazon, but we’ve disconnected the river from the land. We need to reconnect the water flows to the landscape.”
He suggests replacing lost sediment to encourage further vegetation growth, and restoring an outer fringe of wetlands to reduce storm surges by 25 percent or more. Also, educating people about the value of wetlands is a necessary storm defense tactic.
Ford points to the region’s Pearl River as one of the most unspoiled rivers in the north Gulf of Mexico. He calls the Pearl — almost 500 miles long and with its lower course forming part of the Mississippi-Louisiana border — a “poster child” for healthy rivers.
“It’s the one river that man didn’t mess with down here. We left it natural and it’s doing great.”
To those who suggest developing a storm protection system like that in Holland, Ford says that although the region can learn from the Dutch, the needs aren't comprable because there are too many differences, including protecting a much longer coastline in the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana alone.
Coastal Louisiana needs a comprehensive regional plan, much like that proposed by the CPRA in February 2007, Ford said. Such a plan should ensure that:
- natural barriers are protected and restored;
- residential and commercial developments in wetlands are reduced;
- levees are integrated into the landscape so they don’t harm the ecosystem;
- gaps in the levee protection system are filled; and
- the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers are allowed to flow more naturally.
Since the 2005 hurricanes, people are increasingly suggesting that the natural flow be restored to the Mississippi River, which stretches more than 2,300 miles and receives water from 31 states and two Canadian provinces.
“We’ve got to divert the Mississippi so the sediment stops going off the continental shelf where it does no good, especially when the wetlands desperately need it,” Ford said.
Before humans tried to control the river, he said, floodwaters would flow into the wetlands, depositing much-needed nutrients and sediment. This mud and silt brought stability to the land and created a favorable environment for plants to grow and hold the wetlands in place.
But when the water was constricted and forced to flow along a specific corridor, land started eroding, native flora and fauna declined, and wetlands started vanishing into open water.
For the wetlands to recover, they need both sediment and freshwater, researchers say. A diversion would send the river’s rich muddy water into marshes and shallow water. Waves and coastal currents — even big storms — could bring the sediment into the coast and new land slowly would be built.
Residents of New Orleans already have learned that rebuilding — whether it is by nature or man — doesn’t happen in a few months or even within a year.
Pam Dashiell, a mother and grandmother, is president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, one of two neighborhoods located in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, where the flooding hit especially hard. For her, protecting and restoring the state’s coastal wetlands is an environmental, economic and cultural concern.
“It’s the style, the arts and the heart of this city that draws people here. If we’re not protected from major hurricanes, who is going to want to live here or even visit?” asked Dashiell.
Restoring the region’s natural defense system has become personal for her.
“I had six feet of water inside my house, even though I live three blocks away from the river and my house is raised three feet off the ground.”
After the hurricanes, Dashiell and her grown daughter and granddaughter relocated to St. Louis, Missouri. She returned to her old neighborhood in December 2006 — but alone. Dashielle’s daughter already had created a new life for herself and her child; she didn’t want to resettle again.
Apparently, many others made the same decision, Dashiell said, as she looked around the eerily quiet streets and shook her head in disbelief. Only 10 percent of the Lower Ninth Ward’s 18,000 residents have returned.
One of the most disturbing signals of the community’s change was evident at its annual neighborhood Christmas party. A not-to-miss event for the past 25 years, the party typically draws 20 to 30 squealing children. In 2006 — more than a year after the hurricanes — there was not a single child in attendance, Dashielle said.
And the local elementary school remains closed due to extensive damage.
“My hope is that the neighborhood comes back — that it is sustainable and beautiful — and is as populated as it can be,” she said. “My fear is that it won’t.”
While that reality saddens Dashiell, watching NGOs work together after the hurricanes gives her hope, including collaboration between organizations such as GRN and CRCL, which have joined others in calling for complete closure of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MR-GO), a manmade shipping channel created as a shortcut between the Gulf of Mexico and the city of New Orleans.
When it was created, the channel was 650 feet wide and 76 miles long, said CRCL’s Ford. Today, due to erosion of the banks, the channel is 2,000 feet wide, which makes it wider and longer than the Panama Canal.
In December 2006, Ford and a team of three other state researchers co-authored “Mister Go Must Go,” a report that was endorsed by St. Bernard Parish (the local governmental unit) and eight environmental organizations.
According to the report, the channel changed water-flow patterns because it was cut through a natural ridge that previously had kept saltwater from flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico. With saltwater flowing in, other freshwater marshes and forests were destroyed or degraded.
Consequently, nature’s “speed bumps” were either eliminated or so severely compromised that the height and speed of storm surges were increased, prompting local residents to call the MR-GO channel a “storm surge superhighway.”
If nothing is done to restore Louisiana’s valuable wetlands, the consequences will be devastating, predicts Ford.
“Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were not our worst-case scenarios. Another big hurricane will come. It could be in four years or 40 years, but we need to be ready,” he said.
“Restoration work is expensive, but we’re either going to pay for storm prevention before or we’re going to pay billions for clean up afterward.”