(May 11)
The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project has become a massive mess, and no easy solutions present themselves. Going forward, the best approach may be an incremental one.
Begun with the best of intentions but with debatable judgment, the $3 billion project to restore Louisiana wetlands now may never come to fruition even though the state has spent $500 million on it. The project is indefinitely blocked by a state court, by Gov. Jeff Landry and by the Corps of Engineers, all while subject to a huge new controversy over a recently surfaced report from 2022 that questioned the diversion plan’s efficacy.
The 500-page report by an engineering consultant, commissioned by the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, was not widely shared with the public until now. The Corps now says state officials from the administration of then-Gov. John Bel Edwards “deliberately withheld” information from the report that might have caused the Corps to refuse approval for the project back then. (Edwards contests that claim.)
The project is intended to rebuild 21 square miles of wetlands, but the 2022 report suggested it might rebuild as few as 7 square miles while costing significantly more to operate even at that reduced efficacy. Local seafood and hospitality industries, along with wildlife advocates, strenuously have opposed the project. They object because the influx into the Barataria Basin of fresh water and pollutants from the Mississippi River is all but certain to wipe out — for years at least — most or all of populations of dolphins, oysters, and shrimp in the basin, and reduce other fisheries as well…..
Before the decision was made to start work on this project, I wrote that despite my long-standing support for freshwater diversion projects, the evidence suggested there were more cost-effective ways to refurbish marshes that also would cause far fewer harms to existing fisheries and oyster beds….. [The full column is at this link.]
